Three Came Home

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          Three Came Home
Sometime after World War II, I recall seeing a motion picture titled "Three Came Home." The film told the true story of Agnes, Harry Keith, and their two year-old son George who spent over three years in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. I was recently given a copy of the book published in 1947, from which the movie was made.

The author Agnes Newton Keith was from Hollywood California, and married Harry Keith, a British civil servant Conservator of Forests and Director of Agriculture of North Borneo. Borneo is the 3rd largest island in the world, and is located southeast of the Malay Archipelago in the Pacific Ocean. The island rich in timber,palm oil,rubber and minerals.

The Japanese captives included civil servants,civilians, priests, nuns, doctors, and others. They were soon taught to bow correctly to their captors. Feet together, bowing at a 15 degrees from the waist, and not rising until a count of five.

Mrs. Keith was well-known to her captors as the author of "The Land Below the Wind," in a Japanese translation, very much admired.  During her captivity she took notes on scraps of paper and hid them in tin cans under the barrack, in the latrine, stuffed inside her son's teddy bear, a false bottom of her son's chair.

The men and women were kept apart in separate barracks behind barbed wire. Their diet consisted of five tablespoons of rice,a cup of rice gruel, greens, and salt per day. The need for some protein was acute. Smuggling food obtained by bartering from those outside the camp was widely practiced. An egg was better than gold, rotting fish a luxury,and a banana a treasure. When the camp was liberated in 1945, she weighed only 80 pounds.

In addition to starvation,Mrs. Keith fought off a Japanese soldier who tried to rape her. When she reported the event, she refused to sign a confession that the event never took place. She was beaten, her arm pulled out of its socket and ribs broken.

The Japanese also made some of the prisoners to dress their best and appear in propaganda films.

In spite of starvation, dysentery, malaria,  and torture, Mrs.Keith went to great lengths to see that her son remained alive.

When the camp was liberated September 11,1945, the family was at last reunited. She wrote at the end of the book "I believe that:
While we have more than we need on the continent, 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. "

     Aloha
     Grant

Screeching In

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           Screeching In
If you are old enough to be reading this, you must remember as we all do, what took place on September 11,2001. The tragedy unfolded on television and in newspapers for all to see. But what was not seen or talked about was the rerouting of thirty-eight jets to Gander, Newfoundland stranding seven thousand passengers for up to five days.

Gander had been a refueling stop in the days before long-range jet travel. When the airport opened in 1938, it was one of the largest in the world. The town had less than a population of thirteen thousand,and five hundred hotel rooms.

The town's mayor Claude Elliot declared a state of emergency. Elementary schools housed the newcomers. the Salvation Army and the Red Cross made lunches. The hockey rink became a walk-in refrigerator. They ran out of underwear and so more came from St. John's two hundred and seven miles away. People on the planes came from ninety-five countries. Kosher meals were required, and a place for Muslim passengers to pray. The town's vet took care of animals carried on the planes.

The Royal Canadian Legion Hall initiated the passengers as honorary Newfoundlanders in a ritual named "screeching in." Visitors were made to wear yellow sou'westers, eat hard bread and pickled bologna, kiss a cod on the lips, then drink the local rum, called screech, while on-lookers banged an "ugly stick" covered in bottle-beer caps. the mayor recorded that they "began with seven-thousand strangers and finished with seven-thousand family members."

This event is now a new Broadway musical, "Come from Away." The information for this article is from the New Yorker magazine March 27, 2017 written by Michael Schulman.

    Aloha
    Grant

On the Road with Harry

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         On the Road With Harry
When President Franklin Roosevelt died while in office, he left some mighty large shoes to fill. His Vice-President Harry Truman was up to the job. While he was in office he had to decide to use the Atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in order to end WWII. He saw to it that our armed forces became integrated. He fired the popular hero General MacArthur for wanting to carry the Korean War into mainland China. And he stood up to Stalin and the Russians.

All of the above is well known, but few Americans realized that when Harry left office,there was no fanfare, no Secret Service protection, office staff, and above all,no pension. (This was later changed.) He and his wife Bess simply jumped into their car and drove to their home in Independence. Missouri. He was the last president to return quietly to public life.

Today ex-presidents get retirement packages  that can be worth more than a million dollars a year. Harry was broke. He had taken out a loan from a Washington bank in order to make ends meet. When he took office his salary was seventy-five-thousand dollars a year, and he had to pay for all White House expenses. But before leaving office he had made a deal with Doubleday Publishers for an advance of six hundred thousand dollars on his memoirs, a huge sum in 1953, when the average worker barely made more than four thousand dollars a year. But there was a catch. The advance would be taxed as income at a rate of 67 per-cent. He said later that he gained just thirty-seven thousand dollars.

Still, Harry had enough money to take Bess on a vacation to Hawaii, and to buy a new car. His choice was a Chrysler New Yorker, and it was offered to him for free, but he chose to pay for it himself as a private citizen. Nobody knows what the car cost. It was a black four-door sedan with chrome wire wheels and whitewall tires.

 Harry planned to take a road trip from Independence to New York city. Harry packed eleven suitcases, and off they went.

Harry loved to drive fast, but his wife Bess forced him to drive at a top speed of 55mph. One time Harry was driving in the left lane of the Pennsylvania Turnpike with a string of car behind him. A state trooper ordered him to turn off the road and when he bent down to look inside he got a shock, it was Harry Truman and his wife. The trooper thought to himself "Shit, what was I gonna do now?"

Harry and Bess stopped at hotels and diners where he had eaten when he was a member of the U.S. Senate. Sometimes he was recognized and forced to pose for pictures.  He and Bess went unnoticed. They were simply having a great time.

The above information is taken from a great book "Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure," by Matthew Algeo, published in 2009 by Chicago Review Press. Mr. Algeo and his wife traced Harry's trip, staying where he had stayed, and eating in diners where Harry and Bess had eaten. It is a really fun ride for the reader.

I feel that I must insert here that while Harry was buying his Chrysler New Yorker in 1953, my father bought a new Chevrolet Bel-Air. As I was a teen driver, I was very careful with his new car. I also have a connection with Harry Truman.

Truman was known as a letter writer, and that he answered every letter sent to him. I was teaching a high school government class of 47 students, and I wrote a letter to him and he replied. He wished me well on my new career. I no longer have the letter, as one of my daughters has it.

     Aloha
     Grant