Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Photographs
- Maps
- Tables
- Key to military symbols
- Acknowledgements
- Note on the text
- Glossary
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Chapter 2 Strategy
- Chapter 3 Military intelligence
- Chapter 4 The Nankai Shitai
- Chapter 5 From the landing to Deniki
- Chapter 6 Isurava
- Chapter 7 Guadalcanal and Milne Bay
- Chapter 8 The Japanese build-up
- Chapter 9 First Eora–Templeton’s
- Chapter 10 Efogi
- Chapter 11 Ioribaiwa
- Chapter 12 Japanese Artillery
- Chapter 13 Malaria and dysentery
- Chapter 14 The Japanese supply crisis
- Chapter 15 Second Eora–Templeton’s
- Chapter 16 Oivi–Gorari
- Chapter 17 The war in the air
- Chapter 18 Conclusion
- Note on sources
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 8 - The Japanese build-up
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Photographs
- Maps
- Tables
- Key to military symbols
- Acknowledgements
- Note on the text
- Glossary
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Chapter 2 Strategy
- Chapter 3 Military intelligence
- Chapter 4 The Nankai Shitai
- Chapter 5 From the landing to Deniki
- Chapter 6 Isurava
- Chapter 7 Guadalcanal and Milne Bay
- Chapter 8 The Japanese build-up
- Chapter 9 First Eora–Templeton’s
- Chapter 10 Efogi
- Chapter 11 Ioribaiwa
- Chapter 12 Japanese Artillery
- Chapter 13 Malaria and dysentery
- Chapter 14 The Japanese supply crisis
- Chapter 15 Second Eora–Templeton’s
- Chapter 16 Oivi–Gorari
- Chapter 17 The war in the air
- Chapter 18 Conclusion
- Note on sources
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The Kokoda myth’s view of Japanese supply arrangements is a simplistic one. It stresses that Nankai Shitai supply was poorly organised and that their retreat and defeat was largely because the Japanese ran out of food. Those who subscribe to the myth imagine that the members of the Nankai Shitai were issued with between 15 and 20 days food and expected to be in Port Moresby by then, or risk starvation. It is a startling claim that a 20th-century regular army such as the IJA would conduct operations in this way. And it is quite untrue. In fact the Japanese in Papua were supplied in the conventional manner of regular armies, but with certain important Japanese characteristics. The 15–20 days food supply each man carried on his back on arrival in Papua did not constitute the Japanese supply plan, but was rather a measure to allow time for a permanent supply system to be put in place.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Kokoda Campaign 1942Myth and Reality, pp. 95 - 108Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2012