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Author: Charles Happell Publisher: Pan Australia ISBN: 1741981441 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 288
Book Description
Kokichi Nishimura was a member of the 2nd battalion, 144th Regiment of the Japanese Imperial Army. In 1942 he fought along every foot of Kokoda as the Japanese attempted to take Port Moresby. He was the only man from his company to survive the campaign. As he was evacuated to safety he made a promise that one day he would return to his comrades and bring them home to Japan for proper burial. After the war, Nishimura prospered. But under the surface, the driving ambition of his life was to fulfil his promise. In 1979, he shocked his family by returning to New Guinea to search for the remains of Japanese soldiers. For the next 25 years, Nishimura lived alone along the Kokoda Track. Armed only with a metal detector, a mattock and a shovel, he searched for his dead comrades. Over the years he found hundreds of them - some he was able to identify and return their bones to their families; others were unknown, and their remains were sent to Japan's official shrine for its war dead in Tokyo. In 2005 Nishimura, now in his mid-eighties and seriously ill, was forced to return to Japan. His story is an incredible adventure that gives us a radically different viewpoint on a battle that has become part of our national myth. Nishimura's life and quest above all offer a poignant reminder of the futility of war.
Author: Charles Happell Publisher: Pan Australia ISBN: 1741981441 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 288
Book Description
Kokichi Nishimura was a member of the 2nd battalion, 144th Regiment of the Japanese Imperial Army. In 1942 he fought along every foot of Kokoda as the Japanese attempted to take Port Moresby. He was the only man from his company to survive the campaign. As he was evacuated to safety he made a promise that one day he would return to his comrades and bring them home to Japan for proper burial. After the war, Nishimura prospered. But under the surface, the driving ambition of his life was to fulfil his promise. In 1979, he shocked his family by returning to New Guinea to search for the remains of Japanese soldiers. For the next 25 years, Nishimura lived alone along the Kokoda Track. Armed only with a metal detector, a mattock and a shovel, he searched for his dead comrades. Over the years he found hundreds of them - some he was able to identify and return their bones to their families; others were unknown, and their remains were sent to Japan's official shrine for its war dead in Tokyo. In 2005 Nishimura, now in his mid-eighties and seriously ill, was forced to return to Japan. His story is an incredible adventure that gives us a radically different viewpoint on a battle that has become part of our national myth. Nishimura's life and quest above all offer a poignant reminder of the futility of war.
Author: David W. Cameron Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1922615684 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 411
Book Description
Within 24 hours of the Japanese invasion of northern New Guinea at Gona in July 1942, the Australian militiamen of ‘B’ Company, 39th Battalion, spent four weeks fighting a delaying action against a crack Japanese force outnumbered by three to one. By mid-August, the rest of the battalion had arrived, and these men took up a position at Isurava, in the heart of the cloud covered mountains and jungles of the Owen Stanley Range. At Isurava, this small militia force of the 39th Battalion now numbering around 300 men was determined to make a stand against a crack Japanese force of the 144th Regiment and supporting elements, numbering at least 1500. Then on the day the Japanese launched their attack, to the great relief of these militiamen, reinforcements from the 2nd AIF who had fought with great distinction in the Middle East began to arrive in the afternoon having spent days struggling up the track from Port Moresby. Even so, the Australians were still outnumbered, as the Japanese also received reinforcements, and unlike the Japanese, the Australians had no supporting artillery or medium machineguns. The battle for Isurava would be the defining battle of the Kokoda Campaign and has rightfully been described as Australia’s Thermopylae. It was here that Australia’s first Victoria Cross in the Pacific war was awarded when the Japanese conducted several ferocious attacks against the Australian perimetre. Private Bruce Kingsbury led an Australian counterattack, rushing forward sweeping the Japanese positions with his Bren gun, saving he situation when all seemed lost — he was killed leading the charge. Another two men were also nominated for the VC during the fighting at Isurava. The outnumbered and poorly equipped Australians managed to hold back the Japanese advance for almost a week; only then did these battle scared and weary men begin a month long fighting withdraw towards Ioribaiwa Ridge just north of Port Morsby. However, their sacrifice provided time for the Australian 25th Brigade to be brought forward — finally forcing the Japanese to withdrawal just as they glimpsed the lights of Port Morseby.
Author: Warlord Games Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 1472817915 Category : Games & Activities Languages : en Pages : 134
Book Description
In 1942, Japanese forces invaded the island of New Guinea and started a bitter, three-year campaign against allied Australian and American forces. Fought in dense jungles and across rugged mountaintops, the grueling fight pushed men to their very limits and forced commanders to adopt new strategies and tactics for the harsh island terrain. Filled with new rules, scenarios, and unit types, this supplement for Bolt Action provides players with all of the information they need to set their games in this unforgiving battlefield.
Author: JFK Miller Publisher: Hybrid Publishers ISBN: 1922768073 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 155
Book Description
‘To walk the Kokoda Track is to undertake two journeys. The first starts at Owers’ Corner and undulates through 96 kilometres of primary jungle over the Owen Stanley Range until you reach the village of Kokoda on the other side. This journey is ordinarily taken in the company of others and with a backpack, which you may hire a porter to carry for you if you wish. The second journey began the moment you were born. It brings to the track baggage of a different kind. This you must carry yourself, and the journey you must make alone.’ So begins JFK Miller’s account of his ten-day jungle trek along Papua New Guinea’s Kokoda Track. The journey was effectively two journeys. The external journey was the physical ten-day trek over the track. The internal journey was the emotional aspect, including what Miller brought to the experience — the mental illness of depression — and what he gained from it.
Author: Lin Poyer Publisher: University of Hawaii Press ISBN: 0824891791 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 563
Book Description
War at the Margins offers a broad comparative view of the impact of World War II on Indigenous societies. Using historical and ethnographic sources, Lin Poyer examines how Indigenous communities emerged from the trauma of the wartime era with social forms and cultural ideas that laid the foundations for their twenty-first century emergence as players on the world's political stage. With a focus on Indigenous voices and agency, a global overview reveals the enormous range of wartime activities and impacts on these groups, connecting this work with comparative history, Indigenous studies, and anthropology. The distinctiveness of Indigenous peoples offers a valuable perspective on World War II, as those on the margins of Allied and Axis empires and nation-states were drawn in as soldiers, scouts, guides, laborers, and victims. Questions of loyalty and citizenship shaped Indigenous combat roles--from integration in national armies to service in separate ethnic units to unofficial use of their special skills, where local knowledge tilted the balance in military outcomes. Front lines crossed Indigenous territory most consequentially in northern Europe, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Islands, but the impacts of war go well beyond combat. Like others around the world, Indigenous civilian men and women suffered bombing and invasion, displacement, forced labor, military occupation, and economic and social disruption. Infrastructure construction and demand for key resources affected even areas far from front lines. World War II dissolved empires and laid the foundation for the postcolonial world. Indigenous people in newly independent nations struggled for autonomy, while other veterans returned to home fronts still steeped in racism. National governments saw military service as evidence that Indigenous peoples wished to assimilate, but wartime experiences confirmed many communities' commitment to their home cultures and opened new avenues for activism. By century's end, Indigenous Rights became an international political force, offering alternative visions of how the global order might make room for greater local self-determination and cultural diversity. In examining this transformative era, War at the Margins adds an important contribution to both World War II history and to the development of global Indigenous identity.
Author: Peter Williams Publisher: Casemate Publishers ISBN: 1526796147 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 337
Book Description
‘I had no qualms fighting the Australians, just as I have killed without remorse any of the Emperor’s enemies: the British, the Americans and the Dutch’, so admits Takahiro Sato in this ground-breaking oral history of Japan’s Pacific War. Thanks to years of research and over 100 interviews with veterans, the Author has compiled a fascinating collection of personal accounts by former Japanese soldiers, sailors and airmen. Their candid views are often provocative and shocking. There are admissions of brutality, the killing of prisoners and cannibalism. Stark descriptions of appalling conditions and bitter fighting blend with descriptions of family life. Their views on the prowess of the enemy differ with some like air ace Kazuo Tsunoda who believed the Australians ‘worthy’. Some remain unrepentant while others such as Hideo Abe are ashamed of his part in Japan’s war of aggression. The result is a revealing insight into the minds of a ruthless and formidable enemy which provides the reader with a fresh perspective on the Second World War.
Author: Don Tate Publisher: iUniverse ISBN: 1475920407 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 489
Book Description
...a memoir that is at once dramatic, disturbing, sexually charged, and often very funny, but ultimately a moving portrait of a man who has found the inner strength to overcome.... - Paul Ham, international journalist and author This is a complex, virtuoso analysis of an Australian life written by an unabashed and unrepentant authoran acidic dissection of the role that genes and environment have in developing a persons character, as well as a sauntering chronicle of social analysis. In turn, we follow the life of the author as he comes to terms with being a disaffected youth, a patriotic but naive infantryman in the Vietnam War, and an alienated, disabled veteran struggling with male status anxietyapparently inexhaustible in its capacity to cause suffering. Along the way, Tate examines the dark crevices of the male psyche as he battles inner demons and the unconditional love of his beautiful Christian wife, Carole. Above all, this memoir is a celebration of the human condition and of a man with a can-do, cavalier attitude to life and his desire to rise above mediocrity. An outstanding contribution to Australias rich heritage of memoir.
Author: David Watters Publisher: Xlibris Corporation ISBN: 1453554939 Category : Reference Languages : en Pages : 802
Book Description
This book deals with the history of surgery in Papua New Guinea from the early 1800s until the beginning of the 21st Century. It spans the period from the first European contact to the emergence of highly educated sub-specialist national surgeons. It tells the story from the first impressions of ships surgeons to the introduction and development of surgery. Between 1870 and 1950 the country and the lives of its peoples changed greatly as a result of exploration, evangelisation, colonisation and war. The history traces the surgical challenges encountered as well as the colourful characters who provided the health services run by missions, companies, governments and armies. After World War II PNG progressed politically from an Australian Administered Territory to become an Independent Nation. Within a generation it had trained its own doctors and surgeons. The history is set within the context of tropical pathologies, introduced diseases, surgical progress and the lives of the medics who have contributed to the Stori bilong kamapim long dokta bilong katim man (The history of surgery).
Author: Paul Ham Publisher: HarperCollins Australia ISBN: 0730449882 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 91
Book Description
For the first time ever, the compelling story of the infamous Kokoda Track campaign has been told from both sides of the conflict. In a unique and balanced portrayal, renowned journalist Paul Ham recounts both the Australian and Japanese perspectives of the events on the hellish Papuan jungle trail where thousands fought and died during World War II. Based on extensive research in Australia and Japan, and including previously unpublished documents, Kokoda intimately relates the stories of ordinary soldiers in 'the world's worst killing field', and examines the role of commanders in sending ill-equipped, unqualified Australian troops into battles that resulted in near 100 per cent casualty rates. It was a war without mercy, fought back and forth along 90 miles (145 km) of river crossings, steep inclines and precipitous descents, with both sides wracked by hunger and disease, and terrified of falling into enemy hands. Defeat was unthinkable: the Australian soldier was fighting for his homeland against an unyielding aggressor; the Japanese ordered to fight to the death in a bid to conquer 'Greater East Asia'. Paul Ham captures the spirits of those soldiers and commanders who clashed in this war of exceptional savagery, and tells of the brave souls on both sides of the campaign whose courage and sacrifices must never be forgotten.
Author: Charles Happell
Author: Charles Happell
Author: David W. Cameron
Author: Warlord Games
Author: JFK Miller
Author: Lin Poyer
Author: Peter Williams
Author: Don Tate
Author: David Watters
Author: Paul Ham
Author: Laura Simms