Kokoda

The battles of the Kokoda Track campaign, along with Gallipoli in The Great War, have played a part in modern Australia's military history that through popular narrative has seeped into modern psyche as what defines us as a nation.

https://www.dcceew.gov.au/parks-heritage/heritage/places/list-overseas-places-historic-significance-australia/kokoda-track

This Australian Federal Government parks and heritage web site states “The story of Kokoda is one of courage, endurance, mateship and sacrifice. These qualities are declared on the Australian memorial erected at Isurava, the site of a major attack by the Japanese in the last days of August 1942, in which both sides suffered heavy casualties.”


Author Paul Ham has written an account of the campaign in this very detailed book that probably deserves a wider readership beyond just that of Australia and those WW2 buffs who have delved deeper into the so-called lesser campaigns.

Ham has divided this telling into 5 parts covering each phase of the war. He is generous with very good maps throughout. The bibliography is extensive and uses both allied and Japanese sources, and what end notes I checked were good. The blurb on the back of my copy states that this is a “.....balanced portrayal...” that accounts for both perspectives. To give the author his fair due, I am not going to disagree. My read of Ham's book on Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War fell into very one-sided poor and populist rantings at times, but Kokoda has a far superior balance and certainly does not fall into the overuse of slang and vernacular as in that book.


Be that as it may, Ham is an author who wears his opinions on his sleeve and with that lacks subtly to lead the reader in a direction without some semblance of forceful opinion in his writing. An example would be his utter disdain with Australian General Thomas Blamey who he called “This appalling man...” Ham thought Blamey a self-promoter who took the glory of the eventual success of the campaign while deriding those below who were trying to win what were a series of brutal battles in the fact that there was no quarter given nor prisoners taken during fighting in at times virtually impenetrable jungle. Ham had no time for Blamey concerning his criticism and use of nearly untrained militia (derisively called Choco's in the vernacular, as in chocolate soldiers) that were thrown head first very early against an invading Japanese force that was battle hardened due to other campaigns since as early as 1936. His treatment of some of the commanders on the track itself also came in for some serious criticism. Blamey, along with MacArthur it can be added, he accused of being a spin doctor.

Page 479 “Blamey and MacArthur received the warmest congratulations from their respective Governments, and praised the ‘magnificent and prolonged effort' of the troops. The commanders singled out Brigadier Wooton for high decoration, in recognition of his ‘soundness and steadiness in control' and ‘valour and determination in execution'
Macarthur personally congratulated Eichelberger ‘Dear Bob' he wrote ‘I am glad that you were not injured in the fighting. I always feared that your incessant exposure might result fatally. With a hearty slap on the back, Most cordially, MacArthur'
The supreme commander later failed to correct the impression that he personally oversaw the victory as Buna, and allowed the idea to percolate that he was somehow involved in a front-line role. An understandably embittered Eichelberger wrote to he wife at the time: ‘The great hero went home without seeing Buna before, during or after the fight while permitting press articles from his GHQ to say he was leading his troops into battle.'”


A final word from a Second Lieutenant in the Japanese army.
Page 491. “Troops began to wonder why they had shed so much blood for a place of no consequence, at the extremity of the empire. Rinzo Kanemoto wrote plaintively:
‘When you look around ... there is no agriculture. No towns ... What possible plus can our occupation of such a place offer to our national strength? Yet even given that, here we are, two large groups of white and yellow fighting over the Girwa area, flinging the fires of war at each other ... What on earth is all this for? That soldiers ... had to die so horribly to secure such a completely worthless piece of land! What is the bloody sense of that”

Recommended to anyone who has an interest in World War 2.