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The Bridge on the River Kwai is a late-1957 epic World War II drama by David Lean, considered among the greatest directors of epic films. Based on a 1952 French novel, Le Pont de la Rivière Kwai, by Pierre Boulle, the film is fictional. But it consciously invokes the 1942–43 construction of the Burma Railway as its historical backdrop.

The Bataan Peninsula on Luzon Island in the Philippines was the site of a humiliating defeat of 12,500 American and 67,500 Filipino troops at the hands of Japan’s Lieutenant-General Masaharu Homma, whose forces had invaded the Philippines in December, 1941. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had ordered American commander General Douglas MacArthur to evacuate to Australia, which he did on March 11, 1942. American forces, which were short on food, ammunition, and basic supplies, surrendered on April 9, 1942. Several thousand American troops had retreated to the island of Corregidor, but they surrendered on May 6, 1942.