Internment

Three Came Home (1950)

This film is based on the book of the same name telling the autobiographical story of the experiences of a woman interned by the Japanese during WW2. An American author is married to a British colonial official in Borneo and when the Japanese invade the family is split up and kept in different interment camps for the course of the war.

As you might expect life in a Japanese interment camp is not nice and the movie covers a number of trials and tribulations suffered by the heroine. There is little here that will surprise anyone that has a passing knowledge of WW2 history but this is a decently made film, if a little slow in places, and from the unique view point of a mother caught up in the war. While the film offers some ambiguity over the true motivations of the Japanese Colonel who over sees all the prisons it shies away from dealing with some of the atrocities committed under his command and does not really probe the subject of resistance to or collaboration with the guards.

An average entry into the genre 3/5 that does not get overly melodramatic as can be the tendency in some films.