Papua New Guinea’s Kokoda Track is open again, after local landowners ended a protest that closed the famous trail for three weeks. According to RNZ Pacific, the government agreed to review the joint aid program with Australia, which manages the track. We have more from Neal Conan in today’s Pacific News Minute.
Every year, thousands of tourists make the difficult hike over the Owen Stanley Mountains on the route of a military campaign that’s taken on mythological status in Australia.
In the spring of 1942, Japanese forces surged across the South Pacific in an effort to cut supply lines between Australia and the United States. One key target: Port Moresby on the southern coast of New Guinea.
The Japanese army marched over land from the north coast. What started as a road soon turned into a single file jungle track that ran sixty miles over the mountains. Both Japanese and Australian troops suffered from heat, rain, malaria, dengue fever and, on high mountain slopes, from cold, too. The Japanese pushed close enough to see Port Moresby, but the Australians dug in, supplies ran out and then the Australians chased the starving Japanese all the way back.
Brutal treatment of the Papuan tribesmen they used as laborers made Japanese supply problems even worse. Reduced to eating grass and roots, some Japanese troops resorted to cannibalism. Australians treated Papuans much better, but even so, the tribesmen who ferried supplies up the trail and carried wounded back down suffered from exhaustion, hunger, exposure and disease.
In Australia, the Kokoda Track is often portrayed as an epic victory against impossible odds. Long after historians pointed out that the numbers were actually on Australia’s side.
