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For many years, I had a clear memory that in my childhood my favorite movie, and also the first movie I ever saw, was Three Came Home. I remembered having seen it with my mother when I was four years old. It was about American women who were captured by the Japanese on a Pacific Island and their experience in the Japanese internment camp. I had vague memories of scenes in which the women were abused and beaten by the Japanese. At the end of the film, allied warplanes flew overhead, and the allies retook the island, freeing the women. In the last scene, three soldiers walked up a road, arm in arm, with the middle one missing the lower part of one leg. I thought that they were the husbands of the women being freed.
Because it seemed to have been important to me at one time, I had a good deal of curiosity about the film. It never appeared on television or in the video stores, so I was unable to see it again. A few years ago, I looked it up in a book listing films, which I found in my accountant's waiting room. I don't know exactly what I expected to find, but I think that I was excited and relieved to find a tangible relic of this special childhood memory. The brief description roughly fit my memory, but I was slightly disturbed that the film was listed as having been made in 1950. Since I was born in early 1945, it seemed unlikely I had seen it at four, as I had been firmly convinced. Even then, I thought that perhaps I had seen it at the beginning of the year, or that it had been released early.
I had also always wondered about the title. I assumed it referred to the three returning soldiers. However, the film focused on the women.