AGNES KEITH HOUSE

One of Sandakan unique attraction is a historic house which has just been conserved by the Sabah Museum. Along Jalan Istana, once Ernestina Road, at the back of Sandakan town is the house where Agnes Keith, the American author once lived. The present JKR
House No. 2005 was built after the war after the design of Agnes Keith. It was built on the destroyed foundation of a previous almost similar house which the Keith family had lived since 1934 until May 1942 when the family was interned by the Japanese at Berhala Island. It was the first permanent timber house to be built after the war.

Agnes Goodwillie Newton Keith, once a journalist married Henry George Keith ( Harry) in Los Angeles California in 1934. Both of them then set sail for Sandakan, Sabah. Then British North Borneo where Henry was Conservator of Forest, employed by the British North Borneo Chartered Company since 1925. He was also the Director of Agriculture, Game Warden and Honorary Curator of the Sandakan Museum.

In a new land where “ different feet have different ways”, Agnes Keith wrote about Sandakan and her peoples and the travels into the formidable interior with her husband and sent these articles to the Atlantic Monthly magazine in America. She was persuaded to compile all of these into a book. In 1939, the book Land Below the Wind was published. The book was unanimously judge the winner of the Atlantic Monthly prize stories to the magazine, the first story being that of Saudin the Murut in New York.

Not to rest on her laurels, Agnes Keith set about writing her next book, a novel. While in the midst of it, war descended on Sabah. In January 1942, the Japanese occupied Sandakan. All Europeans were interned on Berhala Island. Agnes, Henry and son henry “George” Keith, then years old together with other civilians, then an Batu Lintang prison Camp in Kuching. It was while in Kuching that she wrote in scraps of paper life in the camp. All of these were hidden in George’s toys, mattress and buried in tins in the ground. Upon liberation in September 1945, Agnes collected all of these and brought them back to Victoria, Canada where after recuperation she set about writing Three Came Home which was published in 1947. In 1950, the movie Three Came Home was released and Agnes Keith became famous. Claudia Corbett starred as Agnes Keith in the Movie.

Barely half a year after liberation, Henry was recalled to Sabah to assist in the rebuilding of a devastated Sandakan. Agnes and George joined him a year later. The postwar period of the Keiths in Sandakan was again captured by Agnes in third book White Returns, published in 1951. In January 1952, the Keiths left Sabah for the Philippines. Agnes’ unfinished and sole novel based in Elopura, (Sandakan) was finally published as Beloved Exiles in 1972.She passed away on 30th March 1982 in Victoria, British Columbia Canada aged 81. In 1995 Agnes Newton Keith was posthumously awarded the Alpha Gamma Delta Distinguish Citizen Award (Achievement in Letters as Distinguished Author). Alpha Gamma Delta founded in 1904 at Syracuse University is a premier women’s organization committed to academic excellence, leadership development, high ideals and sisterhood. Of all her books,Three Came Home probably sold the most copies but in Sabah, it is The Land Below the Wind which is most popular and highly demanded.