The entry of the Japanese into World War II, found Australia with the majority of its armed forces overseas and many months away from repatriation. The suddenness of the Japanese thrust and the collapse of Singapore showed how vulnerable Australia was to this external threat. The Japanese occupation of Rabaul and the subsequent landings on the north coast of Papua New Guinea at Gona and Buna set the stage for an overland push to threaten the back door of Port Moresby.
The garrison force of Port Moresby in the middle months of 1942 consisted in the main of militia forces who had been hastily sent north in anticipation of a Japanese attack. The 39th Australian Militia Battalion first contacted the Japanese north of Kokoda and in a series of engagements forever silenced the critics of the so called ‘chocko’ or chocolate soldiers. Their efforts and their courage in delaying a superior and better equipped force is one of the least know feats of Australians under arms.
The battles fought along the Kokoda Track in 1942 have been considered and discussed by many war historians, and for a small but growing number of today’s Australians the name Kokoda has joined Gallipoli as a part of the national identity. Most Australians, however, have little knowledge of the events of 1942, and how close-run the fight for Port Moresby was . On 21 July 1942 the Japanese landed troops at Gona and Buna, with the aim of capturing Port Moresby overland via Kokoda village and the Owen Stanley Mountain range. Kokoda had a small airstrip, and so was strategically important to both sides. The Australian 39th Battalion occupied Kokoda, but had to stage a fighting withdrawal when outnumbered 4 to 1 by the advancing Japanese. On 26 August, at the village of Isurava, the Australian 2/14 Battalion, who had made a 7-day trek over the mountains to the south, reinforced the 39th. However, the Japanese were reinforced more strongly from the north, and it is estimated that the Australians were outnumbered 10 to one. Over the next 4 days the Japanese mounted almost continual major attacks on the Australians. The brunt of these was borne by the 2/14 Battalion, who drove back the Japanese in repeated counter-attacks. It was in one of these actions that Private Bruce Kingsbury posthumously won his Victoria Cross, the first awarded in the South Pacific area, and the first on Australian soil. His rush toward the attacking Japanese pushed back an attempt to break through the Australian lines, and so prevented their advance toward Port Moresby.
On 29 August the Australians, now joined by the 2/16 Battalion, and later by the 2/27 Battalion, began a fighting withdrawal across the Owen Stanley Range. They were outnumbered and outgunned. Their aim thus became to slow down the Japanese southward advance toward Port Moresby, inflict casualties, force the Japanese to use up their supplies of food and ammunition, and enable additional Australian reinforcements to arrive. On 16 September the Japanese were stopped at Imita Ridge. From 16 September to 16 November the 25th and 16th Australian Brigades then fought the retreating Japanese in a series of battles back northward along the Kokoda Track, and then eastward to the Kumusi River.
The battles along the Kokoda Track were fought in the most appalling conditions, and resulted in 607 Australians killed, 1,015 wounded, and approximately 2,500 hospitalisations due to serious illness. Many others were seriously ill but were unable to be hospitalised. However, the battles for Isurava and the Kokoda Track were vital to the security of Australia, as possession of Port Moresby airfield would have given the Japanese access to north Queensland and the Coral Sea. The battle of Isurava was also one of the hardest fought by Australians during the war. Five hundred and forty six men of the 2/14th Battalion started up the Track. Five weeks later 87 came out. One hundred and sixteen had been killed, and many of their bodies have never been found. The rest were wounded, or cut off and trying to make their way out of the jungle.
For the remaining combatants the significance of the Kokoda campaign can be spelt out in simple terms. For most it was a series of firsts: their first experience in jungle fighting; their first experience fighting with extended and unreliable supply lines; their first experience fighting without heavy weapons or artillery support; their first experience fighting a professional and experienced enemy who would neither give nor ask for mercy; their first experience where the militia and AIF fought side by side; and most importantly, the first time that Australians fought on their doorstep an enemy intent on threatening or invading their homeland.
Sir Frank Kingsley Norris, a senior Medical Officer during the conflict provided perhaps the most effective description of the Kokoda track. He wrote:
Imagine an area of approximately 100 miles long. Crumple and fold this into a series of ridges, each rising higher and higher until 7,000 feet is reached, then declining in ridges to 3,000 feet! Cover this thickly with jungle – short trees and tall trees tangled with great entwining, savage vines and massive creepers. Through an oppression of this density, cut a little track 2-3 feet wide, where the track clambers up the mountain – sides cut steps – big steps, little steps, steep steps – or clear the soil away from tree roots. Every now and then, leave beside the track dumps of discarded, putrefying food, occasional dead bodies, and human fouling. About midday and through the night, pour water over the forest so that the steps become broken, and a continuous yellow-black stream flows down, and the few level places become pools of putrid, black, deep mud. Time and rain and the jungle will obliterate this little pad, but evermore will live the memory of weary men who have passed this way – ghosts of glorious men that have gone, gone far beyond the Kokoda Track.
