Qualla: Battle of Kokoda

Battle of Kokoda: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Before the track, before the legend, before the textbooks, there was a grass strip and a few wooden buildings on a plateau shaped like a tongue. Rubber trees lined the southern edge. Cloud usually hung on the ridges to the east. The village of Kokoda existed in 1942 because someone had decided that a patrol of government officers, a small rubber plantation and an airfield were enough to mark colonial presence on the northern side of the Owen Stanleys. When the Japanese advance guard appeared out of the jungle at the end of July, there was nothing between them and Port Moresby except 148 exhausted Australians and Papuans, a horseshoe-shaped defensive line and a terrified understanding that this tiny place had suddenly become the most important crossroads on the island.

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Battle of Kokoda: A Tongue of Ground

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. To understand the battle, stand on the plateau. It juts north from the higher ground like a flat finger, bounded on the east by Eora Creek and on the west by the airstrip. Tracks approach from three directions: from Oivi in the east, where the Japanese were coming; from Pirivi ju...

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Battle of Kokoda: The First Night, 28-29 July 1942

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Around 200 Japanese from the 144th Infantry Regiment, under Captain Tetsuo Ogawa, arrived in the afternoon of 28 July. They sized up the Australian position and harassed it through the night with light mortars and a Type 92 battalion gun. The Australians had no way to answer that...

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Battle of Kokoda: The Second Attempt, 8-10 August

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. A week of reinforcement followed. Major Allan Cameron, brigade major of the 30th Brigade, took command and planned a three-pronged counterattack with roughly 430 men. Captain Noel Symington's A Company took a parallel eastern track that the Japanese had not spotted. C Company adv...

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Battle of Kokoda: What the Papuans Knew

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. The Australian accounts often centre on the Australians, but Kokoda was as much a Papuan fight. Lance Corporal Sanopa of the Papuan Infantry Battalion guided survivors south around the Japanese after the fighting at Oivi. Other Papuan soldiers fought in both engagements, and memb...

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Battle of Kokoda: Why Two Small Fights Mattered

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Judged by the scale of what followed, the Battle of Kokoda was modest. Casualties were light compared with Isurava, Brigade Hill or Oivi-Gorari. But Cameron's counterattack on 8 August surprised the Japanese enough to delay their advance on Deniki by four days, and four days matt...

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Image: Public domain