To Kokoda

Download or read book Kokoda (TV TIE IN) written by Paul Ham and published by HarperCollins Australia. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 91 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The inspiration for a major two-part ABC documentary, KOKODA is set to win over a whole new audience 'Never in my life ... had I seen soldiers who looked so shocked and so tired and so utterly weary as those men' Brigadier John Rogers, Australia's Director of Military Intelligence, 1942Now a major two-part ABC documentary series produced with Screen Australia's Making History, Paul Ham's KOKODA is the bestselling history of the crucial battles in Papua New Guinea that saved Australia from the threat of Japanese attack.In this acclaimed account, Ham describes both sides of the appalling struggle along the Kokoda track in 1942 when a few badly trained Australian troops confronted the Imperial Japanese Army in the worst terrain imaginable.Few of us know the true story behind that legend; few know the guts inside the myth. Kokoda was a war without mercy; a predatory war, where men hunted down men like wild animals. No army had fought in such conditions; no Allied general believed it possible.Yet Kokoda was a vital struggle; undoubtedly a turning point in the Pacific War. Had the Japanese captured Port Moresby, Australia would surely have been bombed and cut off as the only base in the South West Pacific for the Allied counter-offensive.the diggers were fighting for their very country's survival as the last free nation in Asia.Paul Ham is the author of VIEtNAM: tHE AUStRALIAN WAR and the Australia correspondent for the LONDON SUNDAY tIMES. He co-wrote, co-produced and appears in the ABC's two-part documentary based on this book, which, for the first time, took a camera crew along the full length of the KOKODA tRACK.

Download or read book The Kokoda Campaign 1942 written by Peter Williams and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-03-02 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fighting on the Kokoda Track in World War II is second only to Gallipoli in the Australian national consciousness. The Kokoda campaign of 1942 has taken on mythical status in Australian military history. According to the legend, Australian soldiers were vastly outnumbered by the Japanese, who suffered great losses in battle and as a result of the harsh conditions of the Kokoda Track. In this important book, Peter Williams seeks to dispel the Kokoda myth. Using extensive research and Japanese sources, he explains what really happened on the Kokoda Track in 1942. Unlike most other books written from an Australian perspective, The Kokoda Campaign 1942: Myth and reality focuses on the strategies, tactics and battle plans of the Japanese and shows that the Australians were in fact rarely outnumbered. For the first time, this book combines narrative with careful analysis to present an undistorted picture of the events of the campaign. It is a must-read for anyone who is interested in the truth of the Kokoda campaign of 1942.

Download or read book The Bone Man of Kokoda written by Charles Happell and published by Pan Australia. This book was released on 2008 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kokichi Nishimura was a member of the 2nd battalion, 144th Regiment of the Japanese Imperial Army. In 1942 he fought along every foot of Kokoda as the Japanese attempted to take Port Moresby. He was the only man from his company to survive the campaign. As he was evacuated to safety he made a promise that one day he would return to his comrades and bring them home to Japan for proper burial. After the war, Nishimura prospered. But under the surface, the driving ambition of his life was to fulfil his promise. In 1979, he shocked his family by returning to New Guinea to search for the remains of Japanese soldiers. For the next 25 years, Nishimura lived alone along the Kokoda Track. Armed only with a metal detector, a mattock and a shovel, he searched for his dead comrades. Over the years he found hundreds of them - some he was able to identify and return their bones to their families; others were unknown, and their remains were sent to Japan's official shrine for its war dead in Tokyo. In 2005 Nishimura, now in his mid-eighties and seriously ill, was forced to return to Japan. His story is an incredible adventure that gives us a radically different viewpoint on a battle that has become part of our national myth. Nishimura's life and quest above all offer a poignant reminder of the futility of war.

Download or read book Kokoda written by Karl James and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-27 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kokoda: Beyond the Legend provides readers with a complete understanding of this major turning point in the Second World War.

Download or read book The Path of Infinite Sorrow written by Craig Collie and published by Allen & Unwin. This book was released on 2012 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'We were all skin and bone, as if our stomachs were stuck to the inside wall of our back.' Two armies, Japanese and Australian, each in turn pushing the other back along a muddy, precipitous track over the mountainous spine of New Guinea. Few prisoners were taken, most were shot. War conventions were routinely flouted, by both sides.

Download or read book The Lost Battlefield of Kokoda written by Brian Freeman and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2012 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brian Freeman knows the Kokoda Trail better than almost any other living Australian. The former Specialist Forces soldier has set records running the length of it and led dozens of treks along it for his adventure travel company. But in more than a decade of involvement with the trail, even he never suspected the secret held by the villagers of Alola, a tiny community perched high in some of the trail's most difficult terrain.Since 1942 the villagers had passed down a secret from generation to generation – the location of a lost battlefield, where advancing Australian forces and retreating Japanese soldiers had fought in the Second World War. It was one of the bloodiest engagements of the campaign, yet inaccurate references in maps drawn after the fighting meant that when the tide of war moved on, the battlefield was forgotten and quickly reclaimed by the jungle.After years of friendship, in which Brian earned the villagers' trust, they decided to let him in on the secret, knowing that such a revelation required a trustworthy person to help them manage the intense interest they suspected would follow. Their decision was vindicated as Brian authenticated and mapped the battlefield with professional archaeologists and helped set up a trust to act as guardian for the special site.Part fascinating military history, part gripping archaeological mystery, part exciting adventure, The Lost Battlefield of Kokoda is the story of the trail and that long-ago battle – how it was fought, then lost and found.

Download or read book Walking with Ghosts in Papua New Guinea written by Rick Antonson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-09-10 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Acclaimed travel writer Rick Antonson (Full Moon Over Noah’s Ark) tackles his most challenging adventure yet: a formidable trail through the remote jungles of Papua New Guinea. Rick Antonson has traveled to parts of the world that are not simply exotic but sometimes damned near inaccessible. He has climbed to the summit of Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey, traveling beyond to Iraq and Iran and Armenia. He has undertaken an improbable overland journey to the ancient city of Timbuktu, an enlightening look into efforts to preserve the city’s priceless manuscripts. Now he has traversed the notorious Kokoda Trail in Papua New Guinea, a country some call “the last wild place on earth.” The trail is a narrow, 60-mile footpath featuring rough jungle, 6,000 feet in elevation change, and punishing weather extremes. In a country unfairly locked in Western misperceptions, the track is inhospitable terrain yet home to hospitable indigenous peoples, who live among the rusting reminders of the Japanese, Australian, and American armies that clashed in some of the deadliest protracted combat of World War II. In Walking With Ghosts in Papua New Guinea, Antonson shares a journey of physical and mental endurance in his inimitable way, in the company of a mixed band of resolute adventurers, blending fascinating historical context with the tribulations of unexpected discoveries in faraway lands.