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.