[PW] Re: Kokoda Track versus Kokoda Trail

Fri Sep 1 01:01:32 PDT 2006

I did not make my comment without considering the evidence first, though 
my choice is based on personal bias.  The case can be made for either 
form, but only one offers justice to those who fought, died and won a 
famous victory.  They were Australians and used Australian vernacular.

Those who call it a trail have been misled by some clever snowmen who 
flourished in the 1940s.  I will ignore the commercial site -- they will 
go with whatever version they think will sell best.

The ABC discussion is uninformed and allows a specious claim to pass 
unchallenged. Geoffrey Reading may have been the first to use the term 
"Kokoda Trail" in print, but that proves nothing.  Like all of the war 
correspondents, he was brainwashed by MacArthur's We-Love-Doug publicity 
machine which lurked in the Deep South of Australia.  Some of them took 
a while to wake up, and the evidence suggests that Reading was a bit of 
a dingbat -- and that would be on one of his better days.

Keep in mind that MacArthur caused the US domestic press to believe that 
the fighting was being done by Americans, long before any ground forces 
from the US were deployed (the US air force was there, but not the US 
army).  NOW do you see why it had to be a trail?  It fitted the lie. 
You think I exaggerate?  Here is a later example from war correspondent 
(and later novelist) George Johnston, November 12, 1942:

" . . . Hanson Baldwin, writing in the _New York Times_, describes how 
the Americans saved the Australians from 'utter defeat'. Have written 
stories attacking Baldwin, who has never been in Australia, let alone 
New Guinea. No doubt he based his ignorant statement on the entirely 
misleading statement issued here by General MacArthur a few nights ago. 
The fact remains that no American ground soldier has fired a shot in 
this campaign so far, but there is a widespread tendency among many of 
the Americans to decry the Australian efforts and to perpetrate rumours 
that the A.I.F. is opposed only by a handful of Japs — some even say 
only '90', others put the figure at 250! One American was asked today if 
the hundreds of Australians coming in wounded had been in traffic 
accidents."

The key item: MacArthur's machine controlled what the press could say, 
supposedly in the name of security.  Here is Johnston again, this time 
from October 16:

"Up here everybody is incensed at new censorship bans including 
MacArthur's personal censorship of Stone's [articles] on his visit here 
which have been slashed to ribbons to convey the impression (a) that he 
went right up to the front line (which he certainly did NOT), and (b) 
that this was NOT his first visit to New Guinea . . . Censorship now is 
just plain Gestapo stuff."

Reading's only legitimate claim is to be the first to get it wrong.  He 
says he used the term "Kokoda Trail" on October 26, so he was a 
Johnny-come-lately who arrived only a few days before the Australians 
pushed back into Kokoda, after three months of fighting.  The name was 
long-established by then.

I was aware that there was such a claim, but I had never heard of 
Reading, and no historian of the track has felt moved to cite him. 
Anyhow, I looked him up, and noted that he had worked for an organ never 
lauded as a bastion of journalistic integrity, the 'Daily Mirror'.

Then I discovered the company a Sydney journalist of the same name kept 
in later years -- and defended most quixotically.  His mates were two of 
the most corrupt villains in the history of the state of New South 
Wales.  That does not make him wrong, of course, but it certainly makes 
me less willing to think him credible.

I have to assume this was the same character, and I must question his 
critical capacity if he thought Norman the Foreman was an honest cop or 
that Bob Askin could lie straight in bed.  I only lived in the same 
municipality as those two cowboys, and that was enough to know about 
them -- and to fall, indirectly, foul of one of their minions.  So 
Reading does not really carry a lot of weight as a witness for me.

Osmar White, a war correspondent who was there in the early days called 
it "the Owen Stanley track" (it crossed the Owen Stanly range, on the 
way to Kokoda), and referred to it as "the track".  So did Chester 
Wilmot, who would have said, on July 23, if the MacArthurian censors had 
not struck:  “I'm told by people who've been there that this is only a 
rough mountain track and that it's suitable for vehicles for only part 
of the way.”

Wilmot certainly referred to it as a track in a broadcast on September 
11, several times.  Wilmot, by the way, had his accreditation withdrawn 
in part because he was making enquiries about a corrupt Australian 
general, Thomas Blamey.  I won't mention MacArthur in this context, 
though I could . . . but there DOES seem to be a golden thread running 
through this narrative.

At some point in July, Lt Bert Kienzle, the first officer to walk the 
track (he started from Kokoda in March 1942) wrote "The track to Kokoda 
takes 8 days . . ."

When a hare-brained member of MacArthur's staff came up with a scheme to 
blow up a non-existent pass with unavailable explosives, General Syd 
Rowell (sacked later for standing up to MacArthur at his most pompous) 
demolished the notion, saying that there was no way to get explosives 
in: "Some parts of the track have to be negotiated on hands and knees . . ."

My point is that the Australians who were fighting there all called it a 
track, the sad bunch of seat-polishers, Dugout Doug's acolytes, were the 
ones who called it a trail, and they were control freaks, as even their 
fighting generals knew.  Let us recall that it was MacArthur who sent a 
message saying that not enough Australian troops were being killed, and 
so they were not fighting hard enough.  That was the measure of the man.

And let us not forget that any photographer who captured the gorgeous 
General on film without a cap to hide his balding head was dead meat. 
His own generals referred to him behind his back as "Sarah" because he 
did histrionics better than Sarah Bernhardt.

Let us keep in mind that after the war, General Willoughby wrote of 
MacArthur "He moved into Port Moresby personally, along with his staff, 
to join a handful of Australians and local Europeans who had come to New 
Guinea to prospect for gold and who remained to fight."

Willoughby was one of the snowmen, and so he conveniently forgot to 
mention several brigades of Australian soldiers, RAAF ground and air 
crew and enough American troops and airmen, already there in November, 
to line the entire route from the airstrip to the town.  I quote George 
Johnston, who had been snowed by the MacArthur machine but had then seen 
through it:

"General MacArthur arrived up here today. Roads from the 7-Mile 'drome 
lined with American troops standing at attention and a top-cover of 
fighters overhead and his car escorted by an armoured car with guns 
manned and pointed everywhere! Wouldn't it!!!"

The Australian War Memorial and other bodies have caved in and decided 
to stay with the version established by MacArthurian bombast.  Given 
that Douglas MacArthur came second only to Australian General Thomas 
Blamey in kneecapping the Kokoda campaign, I am disinclined to 
promulgate his version of the name.  Neither Blamey nor MacArthur ever 
went anywhere on the track where walking was required.  One can only 
wonder that they did not dub it a highway.

Not surprisingly, MacArthur suggested building a paved road over the 
roller-coaster layout that was the track!  Only a total ignoramus or a 
complete muppet would offer that as an original idea!

Australian soldiers and American airmen won Kokoda back, and US and 
Australian land and air forces won the mopup campaign that followed 
through to Buna, Gona and Sanananda, and they did it in the face of 
whinnying harassment from Blamey and MacArthur, two men of severely 
limited combat experience.  The only non-political fight MacArthur ever 
won was to misname the Kokoda Track.  I will not willingly help maintain 
a farce like that.

So as you see, you can take your pick, but for me, knowing a bit about 
the blokes who fought there, my choice is simple and direct.  It was a 
track.  Always was, always will be.

peter macinnis

(Graeme, please note the spelling!)

Useful references:
http://www.hyperhistory.org/index.php?option=displaypage&Itemid=696&op=page
http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A160666b.htm
http://www.users.bigpond.com/battleforAustralia/KokodatheFilm.html

Graeme Rymill wrote:
> Peter Mcinnis wrote: 
> 
> "There is also the problem that Douglas MacArthur's propaganda machine 
> was inclined to create standards out of nothing -- there is a segment of
> 
> the Australian population that still bristles when they hear the Kokoda 
> Track called a Trail, which was what the American publicists in 
> Australia dubbed it."
> 
> The Trail versus Track controversy in Australia isn't quite the straight
> forward case of U.S. cultural imperialism that Peter's post might
> suggest. There are several useful web sites that discuss the issue such
> as:
> 
>  Americanisms in Australian English
> http://www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/ling/stories/s55759.htm
> 
> 
> Kokoda Track or Trail?
> http://www.kokodatreks.com/history/thekokodatrail.cfm
> 
> 
> Graeme Rymill
> University of Western Australia Library
> 

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