The vermilion bridge

From NYtimes: Shelley Mydans was a journalist who with her husband, the photographer Carl Mydans, covered the war in Asia in World War II and later wrote a novel based on their 21 months in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. Mrs. Mydans was the author of three novels and co-author of a nonfiction book. She and her husband were Life magazine's first photographer-reporter team to cover the war. At the time of the attacks on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, they were based in Manila and were taken prisoner when Japanese forces arrived. After nearly two years in captivity, they were returned to the United States in a prisoner exchange. Mrs. Mydans's first novel, ''The Open City,'' published in 1945, was based on the experiences of Americans captured by the Japanese. After their release, she and her husband both returned to the Philippines. At the end of the war she moved to New York, becoming a commentator for a Time Inc. radio news program and writing for Time and Life; when Mr. Mydans was bureau chief for Time and Life in Tokyo, she also reported from there. Her other books were ''Thomas,'' a novel based on the life of Thomas à Becket; ''The Vermilion Bridge,'' a novel about eighth-century Japan; and ''The Violent Peace,'' a report on wars, insurgency and terrorism since World War II, which she wrote with Mr. Mydans.