Three Came Home

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Agnes Newton Keith: Six-degrees north of the Equator, in the heart of the East Indies, lies Sandakan, the tiny capital of British North Borneo. In Sandakan in 1941, there were 15 thousand Asiatics, 79 Europeans, and 1 American. I was the American. My name is Agnes Keith. I was born in Oak Park, Illinois, and graduated from the University of California at Berkeley. My husband is Harry Keith, a colonial official of British North Borneo. Borneo became my home when Harry and I were married. And it was in Sandakan that I bore one child, and lost another. And it was in Sandakan that we waited - 45 white men, 24 wives, and 11 children - through the anxious days of 1940 and '41. Certain only of one thing: that sooner or later, Japanese guns would join in the thunders of war, and Japanese troops would come down through the East Indies. The men waited because it was their duty; the women because it was their choice.