Kokoda, PNG’s own Golgotha

The National Weekender

By MARJORIE FINKEO
THERE is a place in the northern part of the country called ‘Golgotha or ‘Calvary’ but it is not the proper name as many people will refer to this as the Biblical name made famous some 2,000 years ago.
I met a man of around 70 years who was fascinated and eager to tell about his research work of over two decades on how Kokoda in Northern got its name.
He is the executive director of Kokoda-Buna Historical Society, Maclaren Hiari. He told me that many people were familiar with the name Kokoda which means ‘the place of death and hell’. Apparently, in Papua Kokoda can be ‘Golgotha or Calvary’.
He said according to the oral tradition of the Tuna and Tutufa clans of the Songe tribe at Saga and Amanda, the Orokaiva killed many of their enemies in the mountain Koiari tribe during tribal wars and kept about 200 skulls as trophies in seven traditional houses along the Kokoda Trail.
“Kokoda is Papua’s Golgotha or Calvary which has a similar history as the Golgotha or Calvary in Jerusalem in Israel,” he said.
Jesus who was crucified on the cross at Golgotha more than 2,000 years ago.
Kokoda is now the name of the government station which is located on the small Pavau plateau at the foot of the Owen Stanley Range in Northern.
According to the Hiari’s research, Kokoda is very famous for many factors but the main reason why it is important is its renown for the battle that was fought along this mountain track during World War 2 between the Australian and Japanese from July to November 1942.
The Australian army deployed 5,000 men to fight 9,400 Japanese soldiers on the Kokoda Trail.
Australian casualties numbered 625 dead and 1,293 wounded while the Japanese lost 5,000 men and 2,000 were wounded.
Hiari’s research found that 759 native carriers of Papua and New Guinea lost their lives through hunger, sickness, exhaustion, cold, injury, Japanese brutalities and even from eating food dropped from aircraft.
More than 500 were identified to be New Guineans and 192 were from the Koiari mountains; the remaining causalities were from Milne Bay, Northern, Central, Gulf and Western.
“It is perhaps the highest number of native casualties ever uncovered in a single campaign of the WW2,” he said.
He said many books and thousands of articles have been written about the Kokoda Trail battle and it has received wide coverage throughout the world.
Kokoda receives the highest number of visitors in PNG annually.
During PNG’s 20th Independence anniversary celebrations on Sept 16, 1995, Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating visited Kokoda to open the Herbert Kienzle Memorial Museum.
Keating said then that Kokoda was the place where the rock of friendship and the foundation stone of relations between Australia and Papua New Guinea rested and both countries had a long history together in places like Port Moresby, Miline Bay, Lae, Bougainville, Rabaul and Wewak. But it was really at Kokoda that the soul of the relationship sat.
“Because it was at Kokoda that Australian soldiers decided to defend the liberty of Papua New Guinea and Australia, Papua New Guinea decided to defend themselves and helped Australians fight for the first time against the prospect of invasion,” Keating said.

  •  Part 2 will be the story of the hanging of Maclaren Hiari’s father during WWII.