Advance to Kokoda

Late on the afternoon of July 21, the Yokoyama Force, in three heavily-escorted transports, began landing on the New Guinea coast just east of Gona. Allied planes arrived and damaged two transports, but only 40 men were lost, and there was no other opposition. At Gona the missionaries had fled, and Buna was found to be deserted when the marines arrived next day to start building an airfield. Colonel Yokoyama concentrated his army troops at a point about half-way between Gona and Buna, where a corduroy road led inland for about 15 miles.

On the evening of the landing the infantry battalion (Lieutenant-Colonel Hatsuo Tsukamoto) and a company of engineers began the march inland, about 900 men with torches, some on bicycles, with orders to "push on night and day to the line of the mountain range”.

Half-way to Kokoda they were fired upon by a few Australian and native soldiers, but these were easily dispersed. The natives melted away into the jungle. The Australians, part of a company of raw militiamen, tried to stop the invaders by destroying the bridge that carried the road over the Kumusi river, but when the Japanese threw up a bridge and pressed on, they retreated. On the night of July 28, in a thick mist, Tsukamoto bombarded Kokoda with mortars and a mountain gun and drove the defenders out.

The Japanese were puzzled by the weakness of the opposition. They did not know that the Allies, after recovering from the surprise of the landing, had persuaded themselves that the object of the landing was only to establish airfields in the Buna area. The Australians found it impossible to believe that the Japanese would attempt an overland attack on Port Moresby. The "road” over the mountains was only a native footpath, two or three feet wide.

Known as the Kokoda Track, the path crossed a range of mountains described graphically by an Australian who had made the crossing on foot: "imagine an area of approximately one hundred miles long. Crumple and fold this into a series of ridges, each rising higher and higher until 7,000 feet is reached, then declining in ridges of 3,000 feet. Cover this thickly with jungle, short trees and tall trees, tangled with great, entwining savage vines.” The days were hot and humid, the nights cold; frequent afternoon rains made the track "a treacherous mass of moving mud”.

By August 21, when the main Japanese force got ashore under cover of a storm, Horii had landed on the New Guinea coast a total of 8,000 Army troops, 3,000 naval construction troops, and some 450 marines of the Sasebo 5th S. N.L. F. At the head of a formidable body of fighting troops he rode into Kokoda astride his white horse on August 24.

He found that Colonel Tsukamoto’s infantry had already pushed up the Kokoda Track for several miles and taken the next village, Deniki, from which the Australian militiamen, evidently reinforced, had been trying to retake Kokoda. Defeated at Deniki, they had withdrawn up a steep slope to Isurava. This was to be Horii’s first objective. He began shelling it on August 26.