Iorabaiwa
By September 17 the Australians had fallen back on Ioribaiwa, high on the slopes of a ridge in the last area of high country before the approaches to Port Moresby. This proved the turning point of the Japanese advance. Here, as a result of their maulings down the Track and their rapidly deteriorating supply situation, they were forced to reconsider their position.
Ioribaiwa would have been an excellent defensive position, except that the Australians were on its forward slope and the Japanese appeared with their mountain guns on the northern side of the valley. Unbelievably, they had managed to break them down into man-sized parts and lug them over the Track and reassemble them.
With almost every shot, the Diggers suffered casualties as Phil Rhoden recalled.
“Fellows who had got through the whole thing unscathed were shot dead. That upset me. By the time we got back to Ioribaiwa we were down from 550 to about 200 men. By the last days there we were five and 86 - five officers and 86 other ranks. The rest were killed, wounded sick or missing.”
But Ioibaiwa was the end of the line for the Japanese. Their commander Major General Horii was forced to finally accept reality and admit his Kokoda campaign was over. Because there was no word in the Japanese military lexicon for ‘retreat’ he ordered his men to ‘advance to the rear’.
It was the beginning of the end for the Japanese South Seas Detachment.
