Before Invasion: September 1, 1941

September 1, 1941

HERE in Sandakan, North Borneo, the season is spring, and that is the hotter season which precedes the hottest one. This season enables you to understand why this land has always had one strong defense: what no man wants but we, no man will trouble to take.

Today that defense has gone, for we are in the centre of Japan’s South Seas expansion scheme. For the first time since I have been writing about North Borneo there is a chance that someone may know where it is. We are on all of the war maps now, a shaded area like a black wolf’s head with arrows pointing towards us from Singapore, Netherlands East Indies, the Philippine Islands, and Japan.

Here in sun-faded frame houses that face on a harbor in the Sulu Sea live seventy-five Europeans and twelve thousand Asiatics. This spring the water in the harbor is lukewarm and palely blue, its surface seldom breaks, its reflections scarcely waver, and the heat spreads over it. like an invisible force. Drowned in a warm opaque inertia, the people in the town move slowly, those on the water doze in their boats, and those in their houses breathe laboriously. It is a surprise to find that the faculties of love and of hate and of fear still live, in this coma of heat, while a sweating people in a sweating land wait for the sky to cool, the stars to show, the heat to break, and the evening broadcast from London.

Some of us have already listened to Don Bell of Manila, at noontime, but we do not trust him completely. He gives uncensored news, and that is too strong for sensitive stomachs now. We prefer to consider him unreliable. When trouble is a safe distance from you, you can afford to believe rumors as well as facts; but when it is vital to you, your nervous system must be spared from false alarms, it must be kept in good condition for the approaching time when the supreme exertion will be demanded of it. So although we listen to other broadcasts, we order our fears and our hopes by Daventry. Censorship is a strong drug, and not easy to free yourself from when once taken.

Carroll Alcott will come over the air at 7 P.M. from Shanghai. He is not neutral, he is belligerent American. We like him, the Japanese do not. The air is full of rumors about him: rumors that do not come via the radio; rumors that he wears a metal waistcoat, that his life is constantly in danger, and that he has been beaten up three times by people friendly to the Axis. He is a brave man. Never once does his fierceness falter.

Tonight we wait for news of the war in Russia, where a single life has lost all value and a foe becomes a friend; for news of the war in Africa, where generals and regiments disappear like water dripping through sand; for news of the Battle of the Atlantic, where heroes’ bodies float like dynamited fish in cold North oceans. To say that we wait optimistically is wrong, but to say that we wait downheartedly is also wrong; rather we wait with emotion suspended. Whatever the news is, we can accept it; but no matter how bad it may be, it will never be bad enough to make us give up.

As for myself, an American by birth and still a United States citizen, I watch with pride in these my husband’s people. Wherever the map is British, there is cause for that pride. The world knows the word ‘defeat,’ but the British do not.

This tree-tangled land on the equator may soon be besieged; this tiny Asiatic town of flimsy shops and red roofs may be subject to attack by sea and by air; the very jungle that encloses us may become our refuge. Some of the colonials here are old and longing to go home to England, but there is no place for them in England, and no space in the ships to take them there, and no one to fill their jobs here if they go. Some are young, of the stuff that makes heroes or corpses, and they are ready to be either, and Empire Orders command them to be civil servants instead. Some are middle-aged and tired and need special medical care that they cannot get here; many are lonely for the wives who are not allowed out now; some have lost their homes by air raids in England, and others by occupation in the Channel Islands. All have had losses, all have suffered in ways that will win them no medals; all are without glory, but not without bravery.

Here are the parents whose children have grown suddenly into men without their seeing them — men who fight today in the Air Force and the Navy and the Army. Here are the fathers of eldest sons who have been lost at sea, and killed in action, and confined in German prison camps.

II

Take a look at our Asiatic Empire here. This is the enviable and fecund land that Japan now accuses the white man of bartering away from his Asiatic brother, and holding to its detriment against the projected Japanese New Order of Benevolence for Asia. See here before you the island of Borneo, with the northern part owing allegiance to a British King and revenue to a Chartered Company, and the southern two thirds — Dutch Borneo — bowing to the refugee Queen, Wilhelmina. The northern part, where we arc, is washed by the waters of the South China Sea, the Sulu Sea, and the Celebes, and if ever there was romance in names, here it is.

Look at the population of this state of North Borneo — 270,000 Asiatics and 350 European British. Observe that the natives of this country receive free medical care from Government; the women in the villages receive instruction and assistance in midwifery from Government nurses; the free functioning of village life and native custom is protected by Government; villages are neither moved nor disturbed for European convenience, and native labor is not exploited. Help and advice with crops are given to native smallholders by Government, and employment in European enterprises on estates and in towns is offered to natives and other Asiatics when they are willing to take it. There is no unemployment here — rather, we cannot get enough labor.

Notice that the Chinese immigrants live on a far higher scale than their compatriots in China, and that by middle age they have saved enough to retire to China and die magnificently on. Observe also the fact that in every economic way, life here for an Asiatic is on a more affluent scale than is life in Japan.

Observe the personnel of our armed constabulary of 550 men and five British officers, and draw your own conclusions as to whether the 550 men are being forcibly subjugated by the five European officers. And do not forget to glance at the volunteer force of 180 British and Asiatic civilians, with men of three colors and four races serving side by side.

Now reflect for a moment on Japan’s Oriental beneficence to Asiatics as exemplified in Korea, Formosa, Manchuria, the Japanese Mandated Islands, and Japanese Occupied China.

III

We have gone through many war ‘crises’ here in North Borneo. When the shops are suddenly out of everything at the same time, tinned milk to corned beef, then I know that those who have ‘information’ have hastily stocked up, and we are having a crisis. When a boat is taken quietly off the Hong Kong run, and the captain writes a sad farewell letter that reads like a last will and testament, we are having a crisis. When my husband comes home and starts talking evacuation again for George and me, we are having a crisis.

There was always one secret hope for avoiding war in the East, but nobody was supposed to hope it; this was the possibility of immediate and definite aid from the United States in the Pacific. This possible aid was always mysteriously referred to as ‘ Mr. McCarthy may come!’ There was a reason for this mysterious phrase, but that reason is also a secret.

It was a relief in such days to work, and I prepared privately for a possible invasion in many small ways. I had not been afraid, before George was born, for Harry or for myself, but now with a one-year-old baby to look after I was terribly pregnable to danger.

Harry and I went over it all in our minds again and again, whether George should go or should stay. In my imagination I faced the situation nightly: the risk of bombs from planes; the dangers of a harbor town which might be shelled by enemy ships; the danger of waiting too long and then making a forced evacuation under fire; and, worst threat of all, the possibility of invasion and a Japanese concentration camp for George. In this fashion, and almost to distraction on my part, we thought it out night after night, and always to the same conclusion. I was unwilling to leave my husband, we did not know how to get George to the United States without me, and even if we could get him there, neither of us could face the idea of life here without him. So we decided that George should stay.

Two years ago when I had finished my book I wrote of my husband and myself, ‘To journey together is happiness.’ That was written in peacetime, when we rode the wave, and the crest flew high on the Sulu wind. Today we are living in war, and the conditions are those of war, but we still journey together, and we still know that in this is our happiness. But in deciding to keep George here we knew that we took on ourselves the responsibility of providing shelter and safety for him, for the European women and children had been warned that if they remained in this country in the face of possible war they must be responsible for their own safety and protection.

IV

One morning several months ago the radio reports said the Japanese had landed forces on Hainan Island off French Indo-China, and naval forces were moving up the Saigon River.

The next day found me measuring a great many tins and bottles to determine their exact sizes, then wrapping them carefully and fitting them into carrying boxes, packing them in with old towels and old sheets and pillows, old blouses and shorts and socks, and any old pieces of cloth that might come in handy for camp living. It was noticeable that nothing just ornamental went into those boxes. While I worked I was thinking to myself, and sometimes even talking out loud: —

‘This is the last alarm! This time I must get everything in order; send home the papers and valuables; send home the unfinished manuscripts; send home the Chinese porcelain, the baby’s pictures, the best books — send home all the things that we say we cannot live without, and then live without them.’

And now Harry and George and I are getting ready to act for ourselves. We are preparing to take the one precautionary step that we three people can take, and still remain together in North Borneo. We are preparing to establish a jungle camp where George can be hidden in case of invasion.

Now with every tin of powdered milk that I pack in this box today I am making George more safe from danger, I am saving one child for the future, I am helping one little boy to grow up to be strong and well and sane and healthy and better able to live decently in a world that we hope may be decent. And that is enough. That is my war aim.

Close the boxes. Nail them down. There are food and clothing in them, and that is all a woman and a child in a jungle in wartime need.

V

‘ When the time comes for George to be evacuated to the jungle I’ll not be able to leave Sandakan,’ Harry said. ‘You’ll have to manage the trip alone.’ It was with this eventuality in view that we planned and rehearsed the evacuation.

We left Sandakan in a clear warm dawn. How far we went, or where, or what was our manner of travel, it is not important to say. But in due time we came to a certain river in the jungle, and we were in small open boats like canoes then, and the rain began. It came down hard, shutting out everything else, and it was what we wanted, it was the final element in escape. It hid the sky from sight, and the Sulu Sea and the red sand cliffs and the tree-lined shores and the world outside were gone. There existed then only the slow-moving river at our feet, and the trees bending over us, and the mangrove forest opening before us.

There was no war there, no urgency and high purpose, no fierce patriotism and confused loyalty, no hatred and desolation and destruction. There was no call on the heart for compassion, or on the tongue for eloquence, or on the nerves for strength; there was rest from emotion. I crouched low in the boat in the falling rain, and thanked God for the dumbness of trees.

Harry and I were together in the Forest Department number-one native gobung, She had the perilous balance and doubtful poise of a drunken tightrope walker with a closed umbrella. We liked her because she drew very little water and saved us from wading through the mud at the head of shallow tidal rivers, and where a heavier boat had to be abandoned.

A canoe followed us in which were just visible the rim of George’s blue baby bath, the top bars of his crib, and a chamber pot with a pink and white lamb painted on it to stimulate art with evacuation. A third boat followed this, with sailcloth-covered contents hidden, and a fourth boat followed around the bend.

At home in Sandakan George is under wire every evening at sunset because of malarial mosquitoes, his dishes are washed in boiled water because of waterborne dysentery, his potatoes are imported from Hong Kong, his fruit is coldstorage, his vitamins come out of bottles, and his milk comes out of tins. His needs preempt everything else in the household, and his commanding voice brings five people running. No mother’s handbook takes up the problem of adapting the jungle to George.

The rain had almost stopped, and we drew close to the bank of the river to light cigarettes and wait until the boats with the luggage caught us up. I thought to myself, for a people who are at war there is only one point of view; that is the point of view that will most quickly bring an end to the war with themselves victorious. No scholastic debate and no philosophical indifference are possible. War is like pain: there is nothing that changes your indifference to it as quickly as experiencing it yourself.