Gordon, a young Scots captain, is among a small group of Allied soldiers captured during the waning days of 1941 after the Japanese invasion of Singapore. In his group are defiant Maj. Ian Campbell and Lt. Jim Reardon, a cynical Yank. After an exhausting march through the woods the group is imprisoned in a camp deep in the Burmese jungle.
The Japanese military officers in charge of the camp are fanatic emperor worshipers who see their prisoners as inferiors to be treated savagely for the slightest infraction. Those who resist merely make everything worse, especially with the advent of the arduous construction of the "Railway of Death", intended as a supply line for the invasion of India.
Supported by the deeply spiritual Dusty Miller, Gordon establishes an informal Jungle University to raise the morale of his fellow POWs, which in turn sparks an ever-expanding spiritual awakening throughout the camp that Campbell regards as a threat to his dream of escape. Soon a split occurs within the camp between those who follow Campbell's tireless efforts for physical freedom and those who follow Gordon's more transcendent pursues.