The Narrow Road to the Deep North: the real story behind the construction of the Burma Railway
In 1942, using forced labour, the Japanese began building a 415km train track through heavy jungle, to link the town of Ban Pong in Thailand with Thanbyuzayat in present-day Myanmar. Jonathan Wright explores the story of the so-called ‘Death Railway’ and talks to the scriptwriter of a 2025 series that has the experience of an Australian PoW at its centre
In 2014, Australian novelist Richard Flanagan won the Man Booker Prize for his sixth novel, The Narrow Road to the Deep North. It tells the story of an Australian surgeon, Dorrigo Evans, who in later life finds fame as a Second World War veteran. But Evans is a man haunted by both a pre-war affair with his uncle’s wife and by his time as a prisoner of the Japanese, after being captured at the 1942 battle of Java.
The book has since been adapted as a mini-series, scripted by Shaun Grant and directed by Justin Kurzel, available to stream in the UK via BBC iPlayer.
Is The Narrow Road to the Deep North a true story?
Though the specifics of the plot are a work of fiction, the historical background of The Narrow Road to the Deep North – and the horrors of working on the Death Railway – are all true.
Working in brutal heat and humidity, and with inadequate food supplies, up to 16,000 Allied prisoners of war died during its construction – of poor health, in accidents and because of executions. In his acclaimed memoir, The Railway Man (1995), veteran Eric Lomax writes of torture, including waterboarding, and of nearly starving to death.
There were also around 90,000 civilian casualties; as many as 250,000 southeast Asians were subjected to forced labour.
Why did Japan build the Death Railway?
Japan began using prisoners of war to build the Death Railway to further its military ambitions in both China and India, following naval losses that threatened their supply lines.
The Japanese were intent on occupying Burma (present-day Myanmar), both because it wanted to cut off supply lines to the Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek in China [which were eventually defeated, in 1949, by the Chinese Communist Party] and because it wanted to capture Assam in India, where it hoped to foment opposition to British rule on the subcontinent.
Japan first invaded Burma (then part of the British empire) in early 1942, but was almost immediately faced with logistical challenges. Following defeats in the naval battles of the Coral Sea (in May) and Midway (in June), Japanese shipping became vulnerable to attack by Allied submarines.
To avoid the need to supply troops by sea, which typically involved a 3,200km journey around the Malay Peninsula, the Japanese decided to connect the cities of Bangkok and Rangoon (now Yangon, Myanmar) by rail.
And because of its successes earlier in the conflict, the Japanese military had a ready supply of PoWs who could be forced to work on the railway, including around 13,000 Australians.
How bad were conditions for POWs working on the Death Railway?
Throughout the 16-month construction, workers were buffeted by monsoon rains. To maintain a level track, it was necessary to excavate vast amounts of material, often using only hand tools.
One stretch of railway in Thailand became known as “Hellfire Pass” because the sight of emaciated prisoners working by torchlight was so horrific.
Speed was of the essence, so the labourers were organised into working units that were dotted along the length of the new line.
In mosquito-infested jungle, shifts could last as long as 18 hours, especially during the so-called ‘speedo’ period when time had to be made up because construction was running behind schedule.
What happened after the Death Railway was completed?
The Death Railway was completed in October 1943, the product of the unwilling sacrifices made by those who worked on the track, including civilians who continued to live and die in so-called ‘rest camps’ along the line long after it was completed.
Yet the complete route did not survive long beyond the Second World War, with the British using Japanese PoWs to remove a 4km section of the track in 1946 to protect its colony in Singapore.
The train line recurs in popular culture, including in David Lean’s 1957 film The Bridge On The River Kwai, which won seven Academy Awards – including Best Picture, Best Director and, for Alec Guinness, Best Actor, a role for which he was apparently not first choice.
More than 100 Japanese military officials were later tried for war crimes related to the construction of the railway, and 32 were sentenced to death.
Bringing the Death Railway back to life
We spoke to The Narrow Road to the Deep North scriptwriter Shaun Grant to discuss adapting Richard Flanagan’s novel into a five-part television series.
Was it daunting or exciting to adapt such an acclaimed book? Or was it a combination of both?
You’ve worded it perfectly. It was both daunting and exciting. I just didn’t want to screw it up, and I had actually turned it down previously!
Then director Justin Kurzel agreed to do it, and he managed to convince me to change my mind. I know some people say adapting classic literature is fraught with danger, but I’m a big believer in if it’s successful once, it’s because something about the piece is good, and typically it’s the story.
How much research did you do?
Richard Flanagan was great about me ringing if I had any questions or queries – which I did – and he obviously was meticulous. He was confident in his materials, so I was then confident in his material, and I built on that with textbooks and so on.
One of the great joys I have in being a writer is I get to immerse myself in a particular time or place that I had very little knowledge about before I started.
My grandfather worked on the railway, but he was really no use to my research, because he was very much a closed book. Although he was also a great influence, because I could see who he was as a man and how closed off he was, which I think, spoke to Dorrigo a little bit as a character.
Just how brutal was the experience of prisoners?
The Japanese treatment of their prisoners has been infamous ever since that period. Reading firsthand accounts is quite overwhelming – and I think I’ve got a pretty strong stomach for dark material.
We took the boys who played the main core of prisoners to the War Memorial in Canberra. It’s a great resource for video accounts of veterans, many of whom are no longer with us, speaking to what they went through. It’s hard to watch, and hard to listen to, so you just want to do justice to them.
Some people have said the series is hard to watch in parts, too. But I'm a big believer that that’s nothing compared to living through it. So if we have to watch the dramatised version of something for a small amount of time to remember and honour those men, then I think it’s the least we can do.
Can you tell us a bit about ‘mateship’ between soldiers?
Whenever I spoke to anyone that served, or if you go the War Memorial, ‘mateship’ is all they speak about. It could have been a person that came and went so briefly in their lives, but it was so significant.
When you wake up every morning not knowing if you’re going to die that day, only people that have gone through that can ever truly understand it. I can read all the books in the world, but I’ll never know a tenth of what that feels like. This ‘mateship’ was everything.
The Japanese, for all they’ve often been portrayed as evil, can be seen as victims too, in that they essentially lived under a militaristic and nationalist regime. Do you see a kind of political element in what happened?
The character of camp commander Major Nakamura [a drug-addled brute] is so essential to the book and, in turn, the series. The book breaks off for a section that really homes in on his point of view after the war; Justin and myself were adamant that we include that in the series to show how we’re all victims of war. There are no winners. I don’t think it’s as simple as being evil.
That said, the Japanese characters are saying and doing awful things. And when we sent the material to our Japanese consultant, they came back with: “Don’t water down what my kin did, it’s important to show the truth.”
The Narrow Road to the Deep North is available to stream in the UK via BBC iPlayer now. For more content like this, check out the best historical movies of all time as chosen by historians and ranked by you, history TV shows and films to stream tonight, and our picks of the new history TV and radio released in the UK this week