Two books with Cambridge University Press and Pen & Sword. 40 years of research on the Pacific War, the Kokoda Campaign, and the men — on both sides — who fought them.
Scholarly work published by Cambridge University Press and Pen & Sword — both drawing on Japanese archival sources rarely read in English.
“A rare English-language perspective on how the war was experienced by those who fought for the Emperor.”
Personal accounts from Japanese veterans of the Pacific War, drawing on years of fieldwork interviewing the Emperor's warriors. A rare English-language perspective on how the war was experienced by those who fought on the Japanese side.
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“The standard scholarly account of the Kokoda Campaign — and a corrective to the myths.”
A rigorous re-examination of the Kokoda Campaign that challenges the popular 'outnumbered heroes' narrative with fresh archival evidence from Japanese and Australian sources.
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150K+ views Williams on years of fieldwork in Japan, interviewing Imperial Japanese Army and Navy veterans of the Pacific War — the source material behind Japan’s Pacific War.
Watch on WW2TVWilliams’s career centre of gravity. Japan’s Pacific War (Pen & Sword, 2021) collects years of interviews with Japanese veterans. Earlier work in Wartime Magazine, the Headmark Journal, and Australian Warship (2006–2007) covered the Japanese 18th Army in New Guinea, an Imperial Japanese Navy pilot’s war, and the Zero fighter programme — all drawing on primary Japanese sources.
The scholarly standard: The Kokoda Campaign 1942: Myth and Reality (Cambridge University Press, 2012), complemented by Kokoda for Dummies (Wiley, 2012) for general readers and the chapter “Against Overwhelming Odds? On the Kokoda Trail” in Kokoda: Beyond the Legend (Cambridge, 2017). Commissioned reports for the Department of Veterans’ Affairs (2010–2011) translated the research for public audiences.
“The Ottoman Artillery Bombardment at Gallipoli” (Wartime, 2005) and “The Battle of Anzac Ridge, 25 April 1915” (2008), followed by a Turkish-language monograph — Çanakkale Savaşı Kanlısırt Muharebesi (Istanbul, 2009). Later reports for DVA covered Australia’s Korean War involvement (2011) and the Australian presence in wartime Britain (2015).
Peter Damian Williams is an Australian military historian, born in 1957 in Hobart. BA, Dip. Ed, MA, PhD. He taught history in the Northern Territory and in Japan before settling in Canberra. His work appears in the Sydney Morning Herald, Wartime magazine, and scholarly journals.
Williams also consults — providing expert historical analysis on Australia’s military engagements, with a focus on the Pacific campaigns. Past clients include the Department of Veterans’ Affairs.