[PW] Re: Kokoda Track versus Kokoda Trail

[Graeme Rymill]

To avoid any appearance of being an un-Australian pro-Macarthur sympathizer I would like it on record that I too prefer Kokoda Track to Kokoda Trail as the official name for "The Track".

Not withstanding this, the allegation that the naming of the Kokoda Trail was part of a Macarthur lie is at best unproven. My personal bias leads me to believe that the "Kokoda Trail" emerged from inconsistent Australian usage combined with an understandable preference from the Americans to use terminology familiar to them.

>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. 

Judging by the New York Times Macarthur failed miserably if this was his intention in calling the Track the Kokoda Trail. A search of the Historical New York Times (a subscription database available through ProQuest) shows that in 1942 the phrase Kokoda Track appeared 5 times and the phrase Kokoda Trail only once. If anything this merely serves to illustrate the indifference of the U.S. press to the fighting taking place in New Guinea at a time when the world was convulsed with war.

There is a useful discussion of the evidence in the Track versus Trail debate on pages 126 and 127 of Hank Nelson's article in the Journal of Pacific History (Vol. 37, issue 1, 2003) entitled "Pacific currents"

Here is an extract:

"What seems to have been happening in 1942 is that journalists 'somewhere in Australia' and writing from MacArthur's communique´s were adopting 'trail'. To some extent, then, the claim that 'trail' was an American imposition is true. This seems to be confirmed in the Argus on 2 October, when it published two articles side-by-side. In one, Mervyn Weston reporting from Australia used 'trail' and gave distance in 'trail miles'; and in the other Geoffrey Hutton, who had just returned from Papua, wrote of the track and pointed out that distances were measured in hours not miles. But the Australian assertion that 'trail' was never used in Papua in 1942 is also open to doubt. George Johnston, in his diary for 1 September, wrote 'up on the trail', and in a published article on 12 September he used 'trail' several times, but in his diary he normally referred to the 'track'. More significantly, Bert Kienzle, long-term resident of Papua and one of those who had walked the track before the campaign, on 9 September called a nearby track the 'old Kokoda trail' and on 17 October he wrote of seeing Japanese graves and camp sites on the 'trail'. Reg Leonard, the Herald
correspondent in Papua, used 'trail' on 2 October, but earlier the Herald correspondents in Papua had used 'track'."

Peter will be glad to hear that Hank Nelson also refutes Geoffrey Reading's claims to have coined the term Kokoda Trail:

"Geoffrey Reading has intervened in disputes to claim responsibility for the change
of name. In 1992, he wrote to the Sydney Morning Herald, 'The Americans didn't name the track over the Owen Stanley Mountains the Kokoda Trail. I did.' He first used the term, he said, in a dispatch dated 26 October 1942...... But the problem with Reading's claim is that 'trail' had long been used in Australian newspapers. For example, a page-one article in the Melbourne Herald of 10 September 1942 used 'trail' at least six times. The accompanying map then normally used by the
Herald was headed the 'road'."

Graeme Rymill