Three Came Home

I just finished a great book called Three Came Home by Agnes Newton Keith. It is the biographical account of a woman who survived a Japanese internment camp during WWII in Borneo. She and her fellow prisoners, including her husband and son, went through starvation, disease, and beatings among other things.

Being in Singapore I have learned more about the Pacific side of WWII and how people were treated in POW/internment camps in this area. I enjoyed the book in the sense that it was well written and a first hand account of what war can do to innocent people. It was hard to read the content of what Mrs. Keith went through, but I think it's better to know what really happened.

The biggest impression it made on me was that Mrs. Keith drew closer to God through this horrible time in her life. It would have been so easy to curse God and fall away, but she did not. Her faith grew throughout her 3 1/2 years in prison. While in captivity she shared her camp with nuns and she noted that they were happy because they had all they needed: God. (p. 95)

Her last few sentences are as follows:

Tears come. This is our son. He lives. God has been good.

Plus her thoughts on war and her enemies is insightful. Here is a quote from a side note at the beginning of her book:

The Japanese in this book are as war made them, not as God did, and the same for the rest of us. We are not pleasant people here, for the story of war is always the story of hate; it makes no difference with whom one fights. The hate destroys you spiritually as the fighting destroys you bodily.

On the last page of her book she makes this statement:

I believe that: While we have more than we need on this continent [N. America] and others die for want of it, there can be no lasting peace. When we work as hard in peacetime to make this world decent to live in, as in wartime we work to kill, the world will be decent, and the causes for which men fight will be gone.

I think this book is worth a read.