When her novel "Guests of the Emperor" was optioned for a TV movie, author Janice Young Brooks was excited, but she didn't know quite what to expect.
She wasn't actively involved in the production of the movie, titled "Silent Cries" (8 p.m., Ch. 2), "But I did go down to New Orleans and watch about a week of the filming, though," Brooks said. "And that was absolutely fascinating. I had no idea how many people it takes and how hard and long they worked. I sort of pictured Hollywood . . . you know, eating bon-bons."But her first day on location taught her differently. Although supposedly in the steamy jungles of Sumatra, the cast was actually in 33-degree weather with a cold wind coming off the bayou.
"Those women were freezing. The parts of them that you can't see are covered with leggings and mittens and hand-warmers, but you'd never guess," Brooks said.
The book and movie are about Western women captured by the Japanese army during the early days of World War II. Interned by their captors, the women were subject to cruel conditions and seemingly unending imprisonment.
It's a subject few Americans are aware of - including Brooks, until recently.
"When I did start finding out about it I thought, my gosh, why don't we know about this? This is an extraordinary event in fairly recent history that tens of thousands of Americans went through," Brooks said.
She began to do research and discovered a number of diaries written by women who survived their ordeal. From those diaries and personal interviews with survivors came her novel.
"Most of what happens in the book and in the movie more-or-less happened to somebody. Not necessarily exactly as it was portrayed, but the spirit of it was based on truth," she said.
Reading those diaries, Brooks was continually surprised.
"What struck me was the difference between how the men and women felt about it. How they reacted to it," she said. "One of the things that I think there just was not time to portray in the movie that came to me out of the diaries was women handled this with a lot of humor. Those diaries ought to be real downers, and they're not.
"A lot of what got them through was laughing - at the guards, sometimes at themselves."
There is a bit of that in the movie. There's one scene where the women get silly while reading a book about birds aloud.
But "Silent Cries" is much more dramatic than humorous. A fine cast, headed by Gena Rowlands, portrays hopelessness surmounted by a will to survive.
And, far from Japanese-bashing, many of the enemy are portrayed in a rather favorable light. So favorable in some cases it's seems difficult to believe.
But Brooks said she knows of one group of ex-prisoners who meet periodically for reunions.
"One of the most honored guests who always attends the reunions is the camp commandant. They have all stayed friends with him. He did the best he could for them while still doing his duty," she said.
The movie portrays the difference between the two cultures. For the Japanese, surrender was unthinkable.
"They had just enormous contempt for these soft Westerners whom they considered downright immoral to have surrendered. And then to have been given the job of guarding those people was dreadful, and you wouldn't do that to a good soldier. They resented the prisoners enormously for what that said about them."
So guarding any prisoners was a disgrace, and guarding women doubly so. Japan assigned only soldiers who were considered unfit for duty for one reason or another.
Brooks is overwhelmingly positive about the film adaptation. But she does acknowledge that cutting a novel down to a screenplay is rather painful for the author.
"Well, yeah, it's like having some of your limbs cut off," she said. "But actually what survived is almost entirely my words.
"And, in fact, the cuts they made I thought were quite good. I'm real pleased with the result."