How Did The Kokoda Trail Attack Australia

Not long before 10:00am, on February 19, 1942 the Japanese forces commenced air raids on Darwin. Over 260 enemy planes attacked Australian and US shipping, the harbour of the town, military and civil aerodromes and the local hospital. There were two waves of attacks which were part of Japan's efforts to harm Australia's confidence, hold back the use of Darwin's military base, and at last secure neighbouring Timor. At least 243 people were killed in the attack and up to 400 people were injured. Eight ships in the harbour were sunk and twenty military aircraft were destroyed. Over a space of almost two years the air attacks continued and about half of Darwin's population ended up moving south.

As the Kokoda fighting began in July 1942 , the scheme of both sides was in transition. The Japanese felt it was time to defend their gains, and halt the fighting and advancing. But the Allies were thinking differently. Having massive amount troops, ships, aircraft and supplies in New Zealand and Australia, they made the decision to launch a counterattack to defend and retake some of the islands that were occupied by the Japanese. Papua had no particular resource that they desired, but it was a useful link in the chain of defences of the newly conquered area of Japan. So because Japan was quickly gaining new lands closer to Australia, posing a threat to Australia’s safety, the battle of Kokoda was the most important Australian-fought victory, in terms of winning the war. The campaign helped to shape Australia’s post-war training practices and military operations. Although it was not they first victory against Japan, it allowed the allies to make thrust forward through ‘island hopping’ and ultimately win the war. Kokoda was the battle that ended Japan’s dominance and permitted the Allies to go on the offence. Australia greatly learned from their Kokoda experience, and subsequently improved their strategic thinking. They learned to not purely rely on naval defences, and realised that they cannot just let other countries dot the fighting. “…the modern Australian professional army was

In addition to the conditions face by the Japanese soldiers barely being covered, there was no real depiction of them at all. In all shots of the Japanese in the film, their faces were either concealed by darkness or the shot was of the back of their head. For example, when the Japanese were attacking the Australians, they were hidden among darkness with only enough light to outline their bodies and the fighting. This indicates that the film portrayed the Japanese as the enemy and grouped them together as one dark force. The depersonalisation of them discreetly rid their humanity and took away their perspective of the war. For example, the film shows a scene where they were torturing an Australian soldier and only the back of the Japanese head could be seen. This gives the impression that it was only the Japanese that were doing wrong and that they were evil. However, historian Kede Lawson, states that they were fighting for their beliefs and their country, and what they thought was right, just as the Australians were. A Japanese soldier that fought at Kokoda, Minoru Honda, stated that he lost one of his best mates to an Australian air strike. This

On February 19, 1942, Darwin was bombed by Japanese aircraft, wiping out military infrastructure and vehicles, as well as killing soldiers and civilians.

Australia’s identity was developed because of the qualities the Australian soldiers demonstrated on the Kokoda Track, despite facing major obstacles. According to Macinnis (2007: 49), the Maroubra Force was “The name given to the mixed troops of

The Battle of the Philippine Sea was an engagement between the United States Pacific Fleet and the Japanese navy in World War II. This Battle occurred started on June 19 and ended on June 20 in 1944. The Japanese goal at the very beginning of this conflict was to discourage American forces by incurring such great damage to the military that the public majority would become weary of the war and discontinue its support of the war. The loss of support from the public would then cause the US Government to retract its forces from Japan.( Willmott, H.P. June 1944. New York, NY: Blandford Press, 1984. ISBN 0-7137-1446-8) Willmott 1984, p. 143.)

The Western Front, while the main focus of combat in WW1, many Australians ignore this part of the war, as they focus more on the Gallipoli campaign and its legend. However with the centenary of the First World War here, many people have begun to realise that Australia was involved in other theatres of the war, and not just Gallipoli. The focus of this essay will be on the Events leading up to Australia’s involvement, the weapons of the western front, life in the trenches, trench warfare, The Battle of Fromelles and the End of the war.

The Japanese had strong discipline and a war attitude, which they brought with them to the Battle of Kokoda. The odds were always in the Japanese favour, there was approximately four Japanese to every one Australian. “The Japanese warriors – the samurai – had always lived to die, if you won,

The next battle, in which there was significant Australian contribution, was in El Alamein, in the Mediterranean theatre of war. This was a battle which after the loss of Tobruk, halted and turned around the German forces which were advancing towards Egypt. After the battle Churchill said “Before El Alamein, we never had a victory, after El Alamein, we never had a defeat”. This campaign managed to destroy the Germans hopes of capturing Egypt.

Not only were the British army dismissive of the idea that the Japanese would launch attacks, when the news broke out, they were convinced that Japanese armies would assault from the sea and accordingly distributed forces to the coasts. This lead to a lack of armies and forces on the the island’s north-east, where the Japanese militaries came from. After the loss of men in the battle at Malaya, there was an insufficient amount of soldiers and due to miscalculations, armies were spread thinly across Singapore, which proved to be ineffective to defend a large mass of Japanese

The Battle of Sio, fought between December 1943 and March 1944, was the break-out and pursuit phase of General Douglas MacArthur's Huon Peninsula campaign, part of the New Guinea campaign of World War II. Following the defeat of the Japanese in the Battle of Sattelberg, Australian Army forces broke through positions around Finschhafen. Constant pressure from US Navy PT boats, Australian land forces and Allied aircraft brought the Japanese logistical system to the brink of collapse, resulting in disease, malnutrition and privation for the Japanese soldiers. Australian and Papuan troops advanced along the coast, employing infantry, tanks, and air strikes against the Japanese positions, which were generally sited at creek crossings in the jungle.

Before their attack on Midway Island, the Japanese had to take over Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands in early May of 1942. Yamamoto planned the Battle of the Coral Sea with hopes of gaining new islands in the Pacific Ocean that would aid the Japanese during its attack on Midway

It was also believed that if the Japanese were able to complete this airfield that it would be too advantageous for them and would also aid in invading Port Moresby on the Western coast of New Guinea.

The Japanese brutality was heavily influenced by bushido, a historic code of honour and morals that dictates how you act and live. The Japanese treated the Australian soldiers the way they did because their code tells them that those who surrender are weak and do not deserve your thoughts, and it is considered an unspeakable disgrace. Although the Japanese Imperial military committed to follow the samurai code of bushido after the restoration of the emperor in 1868, the code that they followed was a falsification of bushido. For the Japanese soldiers, bushido meant giving their life to the emperor; surrender was shameful; those who surrendered were thought of as dead; and sympathy for the defeated was weakness. No sympathy for the defeated was definitely not a part of the traditional bushido, the one practised by the samurai. This

The events of World War Two such as the failed Malaya campaign, the fall of Singapore, the bombing of Pearl Harbour and the stretched resources of Britain, led to Australia developing a more independent foreign policy however, independent of Britain. The changing of alliance between Britain, Australia and the United States of America has led to a substantial impact on shaping Australian society and where Australia are today. The fall of Singapore and the Malaya campaign brought the war extremely close to Australia even reaching Australian soil for the first time and generated new opinions and perspectives on the war for all Australians. Furthermore, with its greatest military defeat of all time, Britain had to recover and Australia had to