Saw last 3/4s of movie. Didn't find it all that bad. Acting good & held you. Understand argument at end of movie. Bronze Star was based on their meritorious specialized service, medical. Military doesn't appear specific about awarding the inclusive V to noncombatants but that appears to be the consistency of it. 2 months after MacArthur left PI & Corregidor fell, there were many POWs. My father included. He spent 3 years as a POW. The first 4 months were in a concentration camp. These women are fortunate that they got the recognition they did. What I fail to understand is the concentration camp consisted of Americans & foreigners. Where are all the Filipinos that served alongside them? Only Filipinos shown were guerrilla fighters.

A group of American army nurses end up prisoners of war, and like the women in older movies like "Cry Havoc", "So Proudly We Hail" and "Three Came Home", they face some truly awful conditions. Susan Sarandon was a popular working actress, not yet a superstar, when she made this TV movie, along with Kristy MacNichol, Valarie Mahaffey, Alberta Watson and later Neva Patterson, they deal with brutish guards (one in particular is downright rotten, forcing Sarandon and MacNichol to have a slap down with each other), that is until commanding officer Patrick Bishop steps in, shoes a bit of compassion, but that doesn't stop additional violatons including rape, beatings and murder.

While the women do look a bit weather beaten and exhausted at times, it is obvious that they would end up being much dirtier in the real war, so this is still quite tame in spite of certain monstrous situations that would drive the average person mad or to dying of disease or their own hands. It's obvious that at least one woman survives because of the way the film begins, but overall it's worth seeing for the elements of truth it does show, fortunately adding some compassion to the enemy, one no. English speaking guard who expresses friendliness and of course the gentle spirited American born Japanese commander living by his presumed duty, not his own conscience. Sarandon is quite commanding and gets a gold star for her efforts in creating a believable and courageous character finding some humanity as she struggles to survive and protect the others with her.

If you like the classics Three Came Home and A Town Called Alice, you might want to watch the more modern version Women of Valor. Starring Susan Sarandon, it follows a group of Army nurses who refuse to evacuate from their station in the Philippines and get imprisoned by Japanese soldiers. There's a variety of characters, from the meek to the bold, but nothing about this version really stands out from the original 1950 drama. It's very, very similar to Three Came Home. There's an attempted rape, scrambling for food, a sympathetic Japanese colonel, and one of the women sneaks out to meet her husband at the separate men's camp. Sarandon fans can check it out, but there's no comparison to Claudette Colbert's award-winning performance.

Incidentally, Sarandon was the only woman in the cast brave enough not to shave her armpits (you can catch her bold choice again in White Palace) - which I loved. POWs were not given razors! It's about time women were shown to be grungy, braless, sweaty, filthy, and without makeup or hair products (I guess Kristy McNichol had a natural shaggy 'do). It almost makes up for Alberta Watson's reason for almost missing the evacuation bus: she had to put on a lacy black negligee. I'm not kidding. She couldn't just grab it and stuff it in her suitcase (or God forbid, leave it behind when her life is at stake). She had to give a dramatic reveal to her fellow nurses as to why they all almost were killed. Had I been one of the supporting characters, I probably would have pushed her off the bus.