Both Sides Of Kokoda

The Age

Thursday September 25, 2008

Michael Idato

This famous battle is recalled by veterans. By Michael Idato.

'WE KNEW the Japs were coming," recalls Sergeant Joe Dawson, B Company, 39th Battalion. "So we were going to kill as many as we could." Those words, spoken in the documentary Beyond Kokoda, capture perfectly the brutal simplicity of warfare.

The two-hour documentary, produced and directed for Foxtel's History Channel by Shaun Gibbons and Stig Schnell, is a confronting examination of one of the most memorable engagements in Australian military history. It gives a personal context to the conflict through interviews with veterans of the battle from Japan and Australia.

As they distilled more than 530 hours of interviews into Beyond Kokoda, the filmmakers sought to avoid the popular view that it was a failed invasion of Australia and to concentrate on first-hand accounts. "We started off with a bunch of historians and then we realised we wanted to get the guys to tell their stories themselves," says Gibbons, who filmed, directed and edited the program. Schnell, who was producer and co-writer, says: "We felt it was something people should hear."

The Kokoda Trail is a narrow path linking the two coasts of then New Guinea, from Gona Beach, where the Japanese landed, to just outside Port Moresby. It is steep in parts and famously unforgiving.

In 1942, the approaching Japanese intended to use the route to reach Port Moresby, from which they hoped to dominate the South Pacific. Between July and November a campaign was fought along the route between the Allies, primarily Australian soldiers, and the Japanese.

Port Moresby was defended by just two militia brigades. By the time the campaign was over, 10,000 Japanese soldiers had fought an Allied force three times their size. The Japanese lost more than 6000 troops, the allies around a tenth of that.

Beyond Kokoda personalises both sides of the conflict. Gibbons and Schnell felt earlier documentaries, such as Kokoda: The Bloody Track (1992), used Japanese accounts to contextualise the Australian story without fully exploring the Japanese side of the story. "We were left wanting for more. What were they feeling? Why did they retreat? There were so many questions," Schnell says.

The filmmakers joined associate producer Hajime Marutani, a Japanese academic who has researched Kokoda extensively. "We knew we had to tell both sides of the story," Gibbons says. "They had to fight the jungle conditions, the track itself and each other, and getting Haj on board was a stroke of luck. He was instrumental in setting up the interviews. He gave us a real understanding of the Japanese mindset."

The reflections of the veterans are powerful and moving. They underline the innocence of young soldiers on the battlefield and the uselessness of war. "We tried to avoid the facts and figures as much as possible and get to their feelings," Gibbons says. "There are a lot of similarities between what the Australians and the Japanese were feeling."

In its popularised context, many Australians see Kokoda as a battle that stopped a Japanese invasion attempt. Gibbons and Schnell don't agree entirely. Schnell says they tried to break down that notion by providing the context of what was happening in the Pacific at the time.

Beyond Kokoda includes archival footage from the Australian War Memorial, secured under a deal in which the producers agreed to donate their interview tapes to the memorial's oral history archive. It also features surviving fragments of film of the Japanese landing at Gona Beach and footage by Australian camera man Damien Parer who filmed the fighting in August 1942.

Among the most striking aspects of the program are the extensive

re-enactments filmed in Australia, Japan and Papua New Guinea.

Walking the trail in 2004 was most affecting for the filmmakers. "That gave us much more of a sense of the story and what happened than anything else," Schnell says.

Ultimately the most illuminating aspects of the program are the recollections of the soldiers. Private Charles Pyke, of D Company, 39th Battalion, remembers it as "just a track you walked, one behind the other.

"They chased us ... then we chased them back and killed them off; they were bombing us, we were bombing them and then they sign a bit of paper at the finish to say it's OK."

Beyond Kokoda airs Thursday at 8.30pm on The History Channel.

© 2008 The Age

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