The Kokoda Campaign 1942: Myth and Reality

A re-examination of the 1942 Kokoda Campaign based on Japanese and Australian archival sources.

The Kokoda Track campaign of 1942 is central to Australian national memory. The popular story is of a small Australian force holding off a much larger Japanese force in the Owen Stanley Range. The Kokoda Campaign 1942: Myth and Reality tests that story against the primary records.

Peter Williams worked from Japanese unit diaries, including South Seas Force (Nankai Shitai) records, together with Australian archival material at the Australian War Memorial and the National Archives.

Published by Cambridge University Press in 2012.