Agnes Newton Keith

* i took this article from : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnes_Newton_Keith Hello everybody..seperti mana yang saya janjikan, jom kita berkenalan dengan Agnes Newton Keith..sebenarnya saya pun baru juga baca2 ckit artikel tentang beliau..selama ini saya tidak tahu pun cerita ttg beliau..saya cedok dari wikipedia..let's get started!! Agnes Newton Keith (July 4, 1901 – March 30, 1982) was an American author best known for her three autobiographical accounts of life in North Borneo (now Sabah) before, during, and after the Second World War. The second of these, Three Came Home, tells of her time in Japanese POW and civilian internee camps in North Borneo and Sarawak, and was made into a film of the same name in 1950. She published seven books in all. In 1934, she married Henry G. Keith, known as "Harry Keith", an Englishman. He had been a friend of her brother Al when both boys had been at the same school in San Diego, and Agnes had first met him when she was eight years old. He had gone on to work for the government of North Borneo, and she had not seen him in a decade 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.[5] Their son, Henry George Newton Keith, was born on April 5, 1940. Their daughter Jean is mentioned, though not by name, in Keith's first book, "Land Below the Wind", on page 174 of the first edition, dated 1939: "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". Jean was invited to the celebrations for the reissue of Land Below the Wind in Sabah on July 6, 2007.[6] Harry was Conservator of Forests and Director of Agriculture for the government of North Borneo under the Chartered Company, and was also Honorary Curator of the Sandakan (State) Museum. He had worked in Borneo since 1925, and was based in Sandakan.[7] 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 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."[8] The Keiths were on leave in Canada when war was declared on September 3, 1939. Harry was immediately ordered back to Borneo.[9] The Japanese invading forces landed in Sandakan on January 19, 1942. For the first few months of Japanese occupation of British Borneo, the Keiths were allowed to stay in their own home. On 12 May Agnes and George were imprisoned on Berhala Island (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.[10] They spent eight months there before Agnes and George were sent to Kuching in Sarawak. They left by a small steamer on January 12, 1943 and arrived eight days later.[11] They were imprisoned in Batu Lintang camp near Kuching, unusual in that it accommodated both prisoners of war and civilian internees in between eight and ten separate compounds.[12] Harry later arrived at the camp.[13] The camp was finally liberated on 11 September 1945 by the 9th Australian Army Division under the command of Brigadier T. C. Eastick.[14] All three members of the Keith family had survived their internment. On arriving in Sandakan in 1934, Agnes moved into Harry's bachelor bungalow, but the couple soon relocated to a government building on a hilltop, where they lived until internment in 1942. After the war they 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 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.[20] In 1953 Harry joined the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations, and was posted to the Philippines, based in Manila. 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 became FAO Representative in Libya, and served six years as forestry adviser in the country. He retired in 1964.[21] 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, she was named an Alpha Gamma Delta Distinguished Citizen.[22] 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 in 1982; her husband died the same year. 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.[25] 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 both contain scenes based on episodes in the book. ****** Ok, artikel ini agak panjang kan? tapi tidak apa..yang penting kita sudah mengenali siapa itu Agnes Keith dan tahu kenapa Agnes Keith mempunyai connections dengan sejarah kita...Sabah negeri Dibawah Bayu...Land Below The Wind..tajuk buku beliau yang terkenal..so, ingat Sabah, ingat land below the wind..ingat Agnes Keith..ok..bye for now :)