Writing the Century - Agnes Keith
Posted: Thu Aug 02, 2012 8:20 pm
I wonder if anyone else is listening to this serial?
The site of the POW camp in Kuching is now a teacher training college. When we were there they had a room with various items of memorabilia about the camp. In the Officers' camp a British detainee, Frank Bell, organised classes, after his death his widow published his memoir Undercover University about his time there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Bell_(educator) We presented the college with a copy of this, when we were in Kuching. Many of the other ranks stayed in camps in Sandakan, where Agnes Keith had been before the war. They were notoriously badly treated, with an infamous death march to Ranau to build a landing strip, only 6 survived. When we left Borneo in 1996 the memorial in Ranau was in a very sad state but on our last visit, three years ago, it was a haven of peace and a real testament to the work of one man to ensure that it survived.
The site of the POW camp in Kuching is now a teacher training college. When we were there they had a room with various items of memorabilia about the camp. In the Officers' camp a British detainee, Frank Bell, organised classes, after his death his widow published his memoir Undercover University about his time there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Bell_(educator) We presented the college with a copy of this, when we were in Kuching. Many of the other ranks stayed in camps in Sandakan, where Agnes Keith had been before the war. They were notoriously badly treated, with an infamous death march to Ranau to build a landing strip, only 6 survived. When we left Borneo in 1996 the memorial in Ranau was in a very sad state but on our last visit, three years ago, it was a haven of peace and a real testament to the work of one man to ensure that it survived.