Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

provided by

This clip uses black-and-white archival footage, photographs, music and interviews to re-create a series of events in 1942 in which Japanese troops were prevented from advancing along the Kokoda Track to Port Moresby. An image of a map opens the sequence and a narrator explains the events. Footage shows Mustang aeroplanes and Australian Imperial Force (AIF) troops who resisted the Japanese landing forces. The clip includes interviews with two Australians who took part. Footage of AIF troops marching and images of dead Japanese soldiers are shown.

Educational value points

• The clip tells the story of two important episodes in the war in the Pacific during the Second World War. With their defeat at Milne Bay in late August and early September 1942 and their reversal on the Kokoda Track a few weeks later, the seemingly unstoppable Japanese were halted and so were their hopes of taking Port Moresby. A quarter of the Japanese force died at Milne Bay. It is estimated that more than 7,000 Japanese were killed in the Kokoda campaign.

• The clip shows a key event in Australia’s history at a time when the nation was threatened by the possibility of Japanese invasion. From December 1941, when Japanese troops began their invasion of Malaya, their advance southwards seemed unstoppable. Rabaul, the capital of the then Australian Mandated Territory of New Guinea, fell on 23 January 1942, followed by Ambon, Timor, Singapore and Java. In May and June Japan attacked Australia by air and sea.

• The dramatic re-creation of this important event in Australia’s wartime history does not convey how close the conflict came to being a defeat for Australia. Initially, undertrained Australian and Papuan forces faced the massive forces of the Japanese. Even when reinforcements arrived the Australians could not prevent the Japanese advance but their constant attacks put severe pressure on Japanese supply lines. In mid-September the Japanese began to withdraw.

• The clip shows Australian conscripts fighting in New Guinea in the Second World War, raising the issue of wartime conscription, significant in Australian political history. The First World War had seen the defeat of two referendums proposing conscription for overseas service. In 1939 the government of Robert Menzies had introduced compulsory military training for home defence. In 1943 prime minister Curtin extended the definition of ‘home’ to include the south-west Pacific.

• The clip tells of the militiamen, dubbed the ‘chocolate soldiers’ by the AIF, who showed extraordinary fortitude in their battle to prevent the Japanese advance along the Kokoda Track, giving the AIF time to arrive and regroup. These men, relieved by the AIF in August 1942, were troops from the Citizens Military Force (CMF), which was made up mainly of men rejected for service in the AIF and conscripts who were ‘under-equipped, under-trained and mostly under 20’ (http://ink.news.com.au).

• Just as the ‘rats of Tobruk’ had symbolised Australian desert fighting, so the ill-equipped soldiers shown in the clip, who fought along the Kokoda Track across the Owen Stanley Ranges, became a symbol of jungle warfare. Both El Alamein and Kokoda have become icons of Australian military history just as Gallipoli was in the First World War, showing how Australian soldiers could endure against seemingly insurmountable odds and in appalling conditions.

A map shows Papua New Guinea, focusing on Milne Bay.
Narrator The Japanese landed at Milne Bay, where they met fierce resistance from a combined force of Australian soldiers and airmen.

Black-and-white footage of Mustang aeroplanes and Australian Imperial Force troops resisting the Japanese landing forces.
Narrator For the first time in the Pacific War, a Japanese land invasion was turned back.

Footage of Australian soldiers on the Kokoda Trail and in the jungle. Soldiers sharpen bayonets in readiness for battle.
Narrator This left the Kokoda Trail as Japan’s last hope of reaching Port Moresby. There, on the edge of the jungle, the AIF reinforcements prepared for the battle to defend Australia.

Aerial shots of the jungle.
Narrator Up on the ridges, the exhausted militiamen had been fighting for a month. They were near collapse when their compatriots arrived.

Black-and-white footage of soldiers marching. A veteran is interviewed.
Veteran Well, they looked like gods from the heavens. It was so good to see them .They’d been in training in Queensland. They’d come from the Middle East. They were brown. And they had a spring in their step. They were going to show those little yellow bastards.

Black-and-white footage and stills of Australian soldiers in the jungle.
Narrator The Australians were alone and confronting a determined enemy.

Another veteran is interviewed.
Veteran 2 They had a complete disregard of loss of life, so it was just a question of mowing them down and trying – killing them as quickly as they replaced and put in another attack.

Black-and-white footage of Australian soldiers.
Narrator The militiamen and the AIF held the Japanese at bay for four crucial days.