Agnes Newton Keith
Encyclopedia
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
author best known for her three autobiographical
Autobiography
An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...
accounts of life in North Borneo
North Borneo
North Borneo was a British protectorate under the sovereign North Borneo Chartered Company from 1882 to 1946. After the war it became a crown colony of Great Britain from 1946 to 1963, known in this time as British North Borneo. It is located on the northeastern end of the island of Borneo. It is...
(now Sabah
Sabah
Sabah is one of 13 member states of Malaysia. It is located on the northern portion of the island of Borneo. It is the second largest state in the country after Sarawak, which it borders on its southwest. It also shares a border with the province of East Kalimantan of Indonesia in the south...
) before, during, and after the Second World War
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. The second of these, Three Came Home, tells of her time in Japanese
Empire of Japan
The Empire of Japan is the name of the state of Japan that existed from the Meiji Restoration on 3 January 1868 to the enactment of the post-World War II Constitution of...
POW
Prisoner-of-war camp
A prisoner-of-war camp is a site for the containment of combatants captured by their enemy in time of war, and is similar to an internment camp which is used for civilian populations. A prisoner of war is generally a soldier, sailor, or airman who is imprisoned by an enemy power during or...
and civilian internee
Internment
Internment is the imprisonment or confinement of people, commonly in large groups, without trial. The Oxford English Dictionary gives the meaning as: "The action of 'interning'; confinement within the limits of a country or place." Most modern usage is about individuals, and there is a distinction...
camps in North Borneo
North Borneo
North Borneo was a British protectorate under the sovereign North Borneo Chartered Company from 1882 to 1946. After the war it became a crown colony of Great Britain from 1946 to 1963, known in this time as British North Borneo. It is located on the northeastern end of the island of Borneo. It is...
and Sarawak
Sarawak
Sarawak is one of two Malaysian states on the island of Borneo. Known as Bumi Kenyalang , Sarawak is situated on the north-west of the island. It is the largest state in Malaysia followed by Sabah, the second largest state located to the North- East.The administrative capital is Kuching, which...
, and was made into a film of the same name
Three Came Home
Three Came Home is a post-war film made by Twentieth Century-Fox, based on the memoirs of the same name by writer Agnes Newton Keith. It depicts Keith's life in North Borneo in the period immediately before the Japanese invasion in 1942, and her subsequent internment and suffering, separated from...
in 1950. She published seven books in all.
Early life
Agnes Newton Keith was born Agnes Newton in Oak ParkOak Park, Illinois
Oak Park, Illinois is a suburb bordering the west side of the city of Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. It is the twenty-fifth largest municipality in Illinois. Oak Park has easy access to downtown Chicago due to public transportation such as the Chicago 'L' Blue and Green lines,...
, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
. Her family moved to Hollywood, California
Hollywood, Los Angeles, California
Hollywood is a famous district in Los Angeles, California, United States situated west-northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Due to its fame and cultural identity as the historical center of movie studios and movie stars, the word Hollywood is often used as a metonym of American cinema...
when she was very young. Her father was one of the founders of the Del Monte Company. The family moved again when Agnes was ten, this time to the nearby beach community of Venice, California
Venice, Los Angeles, California
Venice is a beachfront district on the Westside of Los Angeles, California, United States. It is known for its canals, beaches and circus-like Ocean Front Walk, a two-and-a-half mile pedestrian-only promenade that features performers, fortune-tellers, artists, and vendors...
, for her brother Al's health. She attended the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
for four years, and upon graduating got a job with the San Francisco Examiner. Eight months after starting her journalism career, she was attacked by an assailant who was convinced that the newspaper was persecuting him by printing Krazy Kat
Krazy Kat
Krazy Kat is an American comic strip created by cartoonist George Herriman, published daily in newspapers between 1913 and 1944. It first appeared in the New York Evening Journal, whose owner, William Randolph Hearst, was a major booster for the strip throughout its run...
cartoons. She received serious head injuries which affected her memory. She also became seriously depressed
Clinical depression
Major depressive disorder is a mental disorder characterized by an all-encompassing low mood accompanied by low self-esteem, and by loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities...
, and after two years of illness her father sent her and her brother Al to Europe to recuperate. Returning refreshed to the States, Agnes decided to become a writer, but soon afterwards lost her eyesight for two years as a delayed result of her injuries. During this period she studied dancing, modelled
Model (person)
A model , sometimes called a mannequin, is a person who is employed to display, advertise and promote commercial products or to serve as a subject of works of art....
clothes and 'did bits in the movies'.
In 1934 she married Henry G. Keith
Harry Keith
Henry George Keith , known as Harry Keith, was a British forester and plant collector. Keith is credited with starting the process of large-scale conservation of the forests of North Borneo . In 1984 a new species of Rafflesia endemic to Sabah, Rafflesia keithii, was named in his honour...
, known as Harry. Keith, an Englishman
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
, had been a friend of Al's when both boys had been at the same school in San Diego
San Diego, California
San Diego is the eighth-largest city in the United States and second-largest city in California. The city is located on the coast of the Pacific Ocean in Southern California, immediately adjacent to the Mexican border. The birthplace of California, San Diego is known for its mild year-round...
, and Agnes had first met him when she was eight years old. Keith had gone on to work for the Government of North Borneo, and Agnes had not seen him in ten years when he visited California while on leave in 1934. However, as soon as they re-met they decided to get married, and were wed three days later. Three months after their marriage, following an operation to cure Agnes's eyesight, they sailed for Borneo.
Life in Borneo
Harry was Conservator of Forests and Director of Agriculture for the government of North Borneo under the Chartered CompanyBritish North Borneo Company
The North Borneo Chartered Company or British North Borneo Company was a chartered company assigned to administer North Borneo in August 1881. North Borneo became a protectorate of the British Empire with internal affairs administered by the company until 1946 when it became the colony of British...
, and was also Honorary Curator of the Sandakan (State) Museum. He had worked in Borneo since 1925, and was based in Sandakan
Sandakan
Sandakan is the second-largest city in Sabah, East Malaysia, on the north-eastern coast of Borneo. It is located on the east coast of the island and it is the administrative centre of Sandakan Division and was the former capital of British North Borneo...
. Agnes spent an idyllic five years at Sandakan, sometimes accompanying her husband on trips into the interior of the country. Harry persuaded her to write about her experiences and enter it in the 1939 Atlantic Monthly Non-fiction Prize contest. The judges voted unanimously for her entry to win, and it was partly serialized in the magazine before being published in November of that year as Land Below the Wind. The book received favorable reviews: The Scotsman
The Scotsman
The Scotsman is a British newspaper, published in Edinburgh.As of August 2011 it had an audited circulation of 38,423, down from about 100,000 in the 1980s....
described it as "A delightful book ... It has abundant humour and a pervading charm ... An original and engaging description of a country and people of extraordinary interest."
The Keiths were on leave in Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
when war was declared on 3 September 1939. Harry was immediately ordered back to Borneo. Agnes's first child, Henry George Newton Keith, known as George, was born in Sandakan on 5 April 1940.
Berhala Island, Sabah
Berhala Island is a small forested island situated in Sandakan Bay in Sandakan, Sabah, East Malaysia.The island is approximately 5 hectares in size and has prominent cliffs at its northern end...
(Pulau Berhala) near Sandakan, in a building that had once been the Government Quarantine Station, along with other Western women and children. Harry was imprisoned nearby. They spent eight months there before Agnes and George were sent to Kuching
Kuching
Kuching , officially the City of Kuching, and formerly the City of Sarawak, is the capital and most populous city of the East Malaysian state of Sarawak. It is the largest city on the island of Borneo, and the fourth largest city in Malaysia....
in Sarawak
Sarawak
Sarawak is one of two Malaysian states on the island of Borneo. Known as Bumi Kenyalang , Sarawak is situated on the north-west of the island. It is the largest state in Malaysia followed by Sabah, the second largest state located to the North- East.The administrative capital is Kuching, which...
. They left by a small steamer on 12 January 1943 and arrived on January 20. They were imprisoned in Batu Lintang camp
Batu Lintang camp
Batu Lintang camp at Kuching, Sarawak on the island of Borneo was a Japanese internment camp during the Second World War. It was unusual in that it housed both Allied prisoners of war and civilian internees...
near Kuching, unusual in that it accommodated both prisoners of war and civilian internees in between eight and ten separate compounds. Harry later arrived at the camp. The camp was finally liberated on 11 September 1945 by the 9th Australian Army Division under the command of Brigadier T. C. Eastick
Thomas Eastick
Sir Thomas Charles Eastick CMG, DSO, ED was an Engineer, and, during the Second World War, an Australian soldier. Eastick rose to the rank of Brigadier, and was military governor of Sarawak in 1945-46.-Early Life:...
. All three members of the Keith family had survived their internment.
Although punishable by death if discovered, many inmates of the camp, both civilian and POW, kept diaries and notes about their imprisonment. One of Agnes's fellow female internees, Hilda E. Bates, described Agnes in her diary entry dated 21 September 1944:
"Among my companions in camp are some outstanding personalities, and the following [is one] of these. Mrs A.K. - a noted American novelist, who proposes to [write] a book on our life here. She is much sought after by the Japanese Camp Commandant, as he has read one of her previous books about Borneo. He evidently holds the opinion that a cup of [coffee] given in his office, and a packet of biscuits as a gift for her small son, will ensure him appearing as a hero in said book!
"Mrs A.K. has an unusual appearance, being six feet in height, very thin, and with the stealthy lops of a Red IndianIndigenous peoples of the AmericasThe indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
. She dresses in a startling and very flamboyant fashion, in very bright colours, while her hair is worn in two plaits, one over each shoulder, thus adding to a slightly Indian aura!".
Mary Baldwin, a 70-year old fellow-internee, did not get on well with Keith, suspecting that she was "too ready to be polite and co-operative with the Japanese guards and their officers in return for favours - notably food and medicine for her infant son." Co-operation with their captors was very much frowned on by the prisoners, although understandable in this case, given Keith's no doubt powerful desire to provide for her son.
Victoria, British Columbia
Victoria is the capital city of British Columbia, Canada and is located on the southern tip of Vancouver Island off Canada's Pacific coast. The city has a population of about 78,000 within the metropolitan area of Greater Victoria, which has a population of 360,063, the 15th most populous Canadian...
, where Harry had had a small country house since his bachelor days. In February 1946 he was asked to return to Borneo by the new Colonial Administration which had taken over from the Chartered Company. He was to be in charge of food production. He agreed to go, and so he and his family were split yet again. Agnes and George remained in Victoria, and Agnes worked on her second book, an autobiographical account of her imprisonment: on her release Agnes had gathered up her notes and diary entries from their various hiding places, and she used them as the basis for her book, Three Came Home
Three Came Home
Three Came Home is a post-war film made by Twentieth Century-Fox, based on the memoirs of the same name by writer Agnes Newton Keith. It depicts Keith's life in North Borneo in the period immediately before the Japanese invasion in 1942, and her subsequent internment and suffering, separated from...
, which was published in April 1947. It detailed the hardships and deprivations which the internees and POWs had undergone under the Japanese, and became a bestseller
Bestseller
A bestseller is a book that is identified as extremely popular by its inclusion on lists of currently top selling titles that are based on publishing industry and book trade figures and published by newspapers, magazines, or bookstore chains. Some lists are broken down into classifications and...
. In 1950, it was turned into a motion picture
Three Came Home
Three Came Home is a post-war film made by Twentieth Century-Fox, based on the memoirs of the same name by writer Agnes Newton Keith. It depicts Keith's life in North Borneo in the period immediately before the Japanese invasion in 1942, and her subsequent internment and suffering, separated from...
, with Claudette Colbert
Claudette Colbert
Claudette Colbert was a French-born American-based actress of stage and film.Born in Paris, France and raised in New York City, Colbert began her career in Broadway productions during the 1920s, progressing to film with the advent of talking pictures...
playing the role of Agnes.
Agnes and George finally returned to Sandakan in 1947, a full year after Harry. Borneo was a much-changed place, having suffered doubly, first under the Japanese occupation
Japanese occupation of Malaya, North Borneo and Sarawak
Throughout much of World War II, British Malaya, North Borneo and Sarawak were under Japanese occupation.The Japanese Empire commenced the Pacific War with the invasion of Kota Bahru in Kelantan on 8 December 1941 at 00:25, about 90 minutes before the Attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii at 07:48 on 7...
and then from the ferocious Allied attacks
Borneo campaign (1945)
The Borneo Campaign of 1945 was the last major Allied campaign in the South West Pacific Area, during World War II. In a series of amphibious assaults between 1 May and 21 July, the Australian I Corps, under General Leslie Morshead, attacked Japanese forces occupying the island. Allied naval and...
as the liberation of the island took place. In 1951 the third book in Agnes's Borneo trilogy was published, entitled White Man Returns. This chronicled the time from Agnes's and George's return to Borneo up through December 1950. The Keiths remained in Sandakan until 1952.
Agnes and Harry had one other child a daughter, Jean Allison Keith, born on August 30, 1937, in Sandakan. She is mentioned, though not by name, in Keith's first book, "Land Below the Wind", on page 174 of the first edition: "A picture stood on the table by us of our little girl at home in her party dress." On page 171, while discussing small-boy Usit with Harry, she says "I'm afraid I'm too lazy to take on the job of being a parent again." Copies of White Man Returns are dedicated "To my children George and Jean". It has been stated that Jean will be invited to the celebrations for the reissue of Land Below the Wind in Sabah on 6 July 2007.
Newlands
Bungalow
A bungalow is a type of house, with varying meanings across the world. Common features to many of these definitions include being detached, low-rise , and the use of verandahs...
, but the couple soon relocated to a government building on a hilltop. They lived there until they were interned in 1942. After the war the Keiths returned to Sandakan to find the house destroyed. They built a new house in 1946-47 on the original footprint and in a similar style to the original. They named this house Newlands and lived there until they left Sabah in 1952. After nearly 50 years of gradual deterioration, first under tenants and then as an empty shell, the house was restored by Sabah Museum
Sabah Museum
The Sabah Museum is the state Museum of Sabah, Malaysia. It is sited on 17 ha of land at Bukit Istana Lama in Kota Kinabalu, the state capital. The complex contains not only the museum proper, but also an ethnobotanic garden, a zoo and a heritage village. The main building also houses the Sabah...
in collaboration with the Federal Department of Museums and Antiquities in 2001. The house is a rare survival of post-war colonial wooden architecture. It was opened to the public in 2004 and is a popular tourist attraction. It contains displays on Agnes and Harry Keith as well as information about colonial life in Sandakan in the first half of the twentieth century, and is commonly referred to as the Agnes Keith House.
Philippines, Libya and later years
In 1953 Harry joined the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United NationsUnited Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
, and was posted to the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
, based in Manila
Manila
Manila is the capital of the Philippines. It is one of the sixteen cities forming Metro Manila.Manila is located on the eastern shores of Manila Bay and is bordered by Navotas and Caloocan to the north, Quezon City to the northeast, San Juan and Mandaluyong to the east, Makati on the southeast,...
. Agnes wrote Bare Feet in the Palace about post-war life in the Philippines, culminating in the 1953 election. It was published in 1955.
Harry then became FAO Representative in Libya
Libya
Libya is an African country in the Maghreb region of North Africa bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west....
, and served six years as forestry
Forestry
Forestry is the interdisciplinary profession embracing the science, art, and craft of creating, managing, using, and conserving forests and associated resources in a sustainable manner to meet desired goals, needs, and values for human benefit. Forestry is practiced in plantations and natural stands...
adviser in the country. He retired in 1964. True to form, Agnes wrote about her experiences in the country, publishing Children of Allah, between the Sea and the Sahara in 1966.
In 1959 Agnes was named an Alpha Gamma Delta
Alpha Gamma Delta
Alpha Gamma Delta is an international women's fraternity, who are mainly sluts, founded in 1904 at Syracuse University. The Fraternity promotes academic excellence, philanthropic giving, ongoing leadership and personal development, and a spirit of loving sisterhood. Also known as "Alpha Gam" and...
Distinguished Citizen.
The Keiths retired to British Columbia, where Agnes continued writing. Her first novel, Beloved Exiles, was published in 1972. It was set in North Borneo in the period between 1936 and 1951. Her last book, Before the Blossoms Fall: Life and Death in Japan, was published in 1975.
Agnes Newton Keith died at age 80 in Oak Bay, British Columbia
Oak Bay, British Columbia
Oak Bay is a municipality located on the southern tip of Vancouver Island, in the Canadian Province of British Columbia, Canada. A member municipality of the Capital Regional District, it is a community east of and adjacent to the City of Victoria...
. Harry died the same year.
The Keiths' library
Both Agnes and Harry Keith were ardent bibliophiles. Following their deaths, their collection of books and documents on Borneo and South East Asia was auctioned in 2002. The collection numbered over 1,000 volumes, and had been gathered over many years. Agnes wrote of the collection, which they were forced to abandon to the occupying Japanese forces, in Three Came Home: "Harry's library of Borneo books, perhaps the most complete in existence, his one self-indulgence...". The auction press release commented that "Many of these items are not listed in any institutional holdings, including the British LibraryBritish Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...
, and may well be the only surviving extant copies".
Legacy
The title of Agnes's first book about the then-North Borneo, Land Below the Wind, has become the unofficial motto of Sabah. The phrase was used by sailors to describe all the lands south of the typhoon belt, but Agnes popularised the special connection of the phrase with Sabah, by applying it exclusively to North Borneo in her book.As well as inspiring the film of the same name, Three Came Home has been cited as one of the sources for cinematic and television depictions of women in Japanese camps during World War II. Paradise Road and Tenko
Tenko (TV series)
Tenko is a television drama, co-produced by the BBC and the ABC. A total of thirty episodes were produced between 1981 and 1984 for women, followed by a one-off special , Tenko Reunion, in 1985 - also for women in mind.The series dealt with the experiences of British, Australian and Dutch women...
both contain scenes based on episodes in the book.
Works by Agnes Newton Keith
- Land Below the Wind Boston, Mass, Little Brown and Company (1939, November)
- Three Came HomeThree Came HomeThree Came Home is a post-war film made by Twentieth Century-Fox, based on the memoirs of the same name by writer Agnes Newton Keith. It depicts Keith's life in North Borneo in the period immediately before the Japanese invasion in 1942, and her subsequent internment and suffering, separated from...
Boston, Mass, Little Brown and Company (1947, April) - White Man Returns Boston, Mass, Little Brown and Company (1951)
- Bare Feet in the Palace Boston, Mass, Little Brown and Company (1955)
- Children of Allah, between the Sea and the Sahara Boston, Mass, Little Brown and Company (1966)
- Beloved Exiles Boston, Mass, Little Brown and Company (1972)
- Before the Blossoms Fall: Life and Death in Japan Boston, Mass, Atlantic Monthly-Little, Brown and Company (1975)
- Agnes Newton Keith also had articles published in The Atlantic MonthlyThe Atlantic MonthlyThe Atlantic is an American magazine founded in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1857. It was created as a literary and cultural commentary magazine. It quickly achieved a national reputation, which it held for more than a century. It was important for recognizing and publishing new writers and poets,...
.
Further reading
- Moo-Tan, Stella (2002) "A Portrait of Agnes Newton Keith: Noted Author, Survivor, Heroine" Sabah Society Journal 19
- Ooi, Keat Gin (1998) Japanese Empire in the Tropics: Selected Documents and Reports of the Japanese Period in Sarawak, Northwest Borneo, 1941-1945 Ohio University Center for International Studies, Monographs in International Studies, SE Asia Series 101
External links
- A 360-degree view of the Agnes Keith House, Sandakan, Sabah, Malaysia.
- Tourist information for Newlands, Agnes Newton Keith's house in Sandakan
- Report on a trip by members of Heritage of Malaysia Trust to Newlands
- Press release on the auction of the Keiths' library in 2002
- Contemporary review of White Man Returns in Time magazine, 6 August 1951
- Agnes Newton Keith (1939, Reprint 2004) The Land Below the Wind
- Agnes Newton Keith (1946, Reprint 2008) Three Came Home
- Agnes Newton Keith (1951, Reprint 2008) White Man Returns