I'm not really very interested in books about war or military history but I just picked up this audio book in the library because military history part of the history curriculum at school and I felt an obligation to be a little more informed about the Kokoda campaign than I was.
The six-month campaign on the Kokoda track in 1942-3 is iconic in Australia, the stuff of legend. All our best trained troops fought overseas when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour and she had Southeast Asia ravaged without control, apparently on their way to Australia, a misconception reinforced by the attacks on Darwin and other northern coastal ports. The task force set out to check the advance in New Guinea was hopelessly poorly trained, ill-equipped and dangerously naive about the terrible conditions in the field, but they managed to get the first defeat against the Japanese. A heroic victory like that guarantees of more than one preserved work of popular history and there are numerous books on it around, including the print version of Paul Ham Kokoda, 624 pages long and the husband of copy of Peter FitzSimons ' Kokoda, 512 pages, but after reading Stalingrad last year I the enthusiasm to read one of them couldn't muster. The audio book seemed like a more palatable way to get myself up to speed on the subject.
Paul Ham approach is as Antony Beevor in that it presents the perspectives of both sides of the fight. The bibliography shows that the author investigated extensively in both Australia and in Japan, and first-hand accounts of front-line troops on both sides. His sources included official military documents, participants diaries, personal documents and interviews, but it is this personal accounts whereby some aspects of the even more cooling.
Although the analysis deconstruction of Australia's shocking preparedness, are sometimes poor military leadership and the unjustified respect for Macarthur, is what remains in my mind the stories of soldiers fighting, hunger and disease, struggling along the track without medical help, and fight to the death because defeat was unreasonable. For the Australians was the battle of their homeland; It was for the Japanese to obey the Emperor's command to conquer more uncritical East Asia. It was a ferocious battle: contrary to the rules of war, neither side took many prisoners, and for the Australians, there was the added fear of Japanese cannibalism. But Ham also faces to Australian atrocities. I expect most Australian readers would find that if worrying if I did.
In a comprehensive review on the age (which I hope you can still see as Mexican) academic Charles Schencking notes that there are some factual errors, but he is not what they are than the Ham claim says that cannibalism a deliberate policy by the Japanese high command was to dispute. (Ham also says that the failure of Japanese supply lines that hunger for his troops in a disastrous extent causes a factor.) This particular atrocity was or was not policy doesn't seem relevant to me because so many of the Japanese atrocities were officially sanctioned that it seems like nit-picking to want to exonerate them on this one. Japanese treatment of prisoners of war and exploitation of women in prison as so-called ' comfort women ' was and remains outrageous, never apologize, nor fee paid.
Like most books on Kokoda, confront the reality of war is reading, I'm not at all sure that there is much in this book that I would like to share with elementary school children ...
Author: Paul Ham
Title: Kokoda
Publisher: Baker Publishing, 2010
ISBN: 9781742148281
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