the author of the novel wrote the story during WWII. She said she hated war so much that wanted to write about it. She wanted to show people that war killed, war destroyed and created all kinds of problems, etc... The 1st character she developed was Kobori. She said she knew he would die at the end. After that she developed Ang and other characters surround him. I would say some parts of the story (the war) were real, some were not. The screen writer did a lot of research on WWII. They wanted the accurate history on the war presented in this lakorn. Kobori and Ang were her fictional characters