PNG women’s wartime memories cast new light on Kokoda and the Pacific War

From The Conversation:

November 2017 marked the 75th anniversary of the end of the Kokoda Track Campaign. The campaign involved a series of battles between Allied and Japanese forces during the second world war, along the mountainous 96km track connecting Kokoda Station, in Papua New Guinea’s Oro Province, with the capital Port Moresby.

Women are barely represented in the popular museum at Kokoda Station, or in the Australian-funded war memorial in the provincial capital, Popondetta.

As in all contexts of remembrance, the experiences of Oro women do not add up to a cohesive, singular narrative. Rather, these and other wartime memories represent multiple accounts of a complex, transformative time that is remembered in sometimes ambivalent ways.