Retaking Kokoda

Commemorating the 80th Anniversary of the Battles in New Guinea David W. Cameron one of Australia's leading military historians new Kokoda Campaign series will take you from the Battle for Isurava to Port Morseby and finally the retaking of Kokoda. For the first time, these significant battles of Australian troops are comprehensively explored.

Japanese Major General Horii Tomitarô, commanding the South Seas Force, had the Australians on the back foot. Australia was holding the last defendable ridge in the Owen Stanleys, Imita Ridge. To his distress, Horii was ordered to fall back across the mountains to the Japanese beachheads at Gona, Sanananda, and Buna, leaving a force between Templeton’s Crossing and Eora Creek to stop an Australian advance. The Japanese evacuated Ioribaiwa Ridge just before the Australians attacked. On storming the heights, there was no resistance – the Japanese had gone.

Yet the fighting on the Kokoda Track was not over. Three more desperate actions were fought before the decisive battles for the Japanese beachheads – Templeton’s Crossing, Eora Creek, and finally Oivi-Gorari. Just 15-kilometres east lay the Kumusi River, the last geographical barrier before the strongly fortified Japanese beachheads.

About the Author

David W. Cameron is a Canberra-based author who has written several books on Australian military and convict history, as well as human and primate evolution, including over 60 internationally peer-reviewed papers for various journals and book chapters. He received 1st Class Honours in Prehistoric Archaeology at the University of Sydney and later went on to complete his PhD in palaeoanthropology at the Australian National University. He is a former Australian Research Council (ARC) Post Doctorial Fellow at the Australian National University (School of Archaeology) and an ARC QEII Fellow at the University of Sydney (Department of Anatomy and Histology).

He has participated and led several international fieldwork teams in Australia, the Middle East (Turkey, Jordan, Israel, and the United Arab Emirates), Europe (Hungary) and Asia (Japan, Vietnam and India) and has participated in many conferences and museum studies throughout the world.