The Japanese equivalent of the Australian War Memorial (AWM) in Canberra is the Military Archive at the National Institute for Defense Studies (NIDS). NIDS in Tokyo is the nation’s official repository of historical military documents related to the Imperial Army and Navy. The NIDS holdings on the Kokoda campaign are collections of unit records and more general theatre and campaign records. Unit records, often assembled by the veterans, are in the main collations of original documents with little supporting narrative or analysis. For Kokoda, those of 144th Regiment, 41st Regiment and 55th Mountain Artillery Regiment are of outstanding importance. One type of unit record that can sometimes be found at NIDS that has no Australian counterpart is a company history. NIDS holds several company histories for infantry, signals and artillery companies that fought in the Kokoda campaign.

In Tokyo there are two other key locations for researching World War II in New Guinea: the Yasukuni Shrine and the National Diet Library. The Kaiko Bunkyo, an archive attached to the Yasukuni Shrine to the war dead, houses a large collection of books written about the war. It has no Australian equivalent in that the collection is devoted only to Japanese authored accounts, whether technical, analytical or reminiscent. The East New Guinea Comrades Association, which has its office nearby, is the starting point for contacting veterans associations. These meet annually in the cities where the regiment was raised. The depot of 144th Regiment was in the Shikoku city of Kochi. The region is wholly mountainous, at least as rugged if not as tree-covered as the Owen Stanley Range. Japanese veterans will often comment that it is no surprise that the men of Shikoku excelled in mountain warfare. The most useful items in the regimental collection in Kochi are a detailed account of the regiment’s doings from 1941 to 1945 and a list of those who died while serving in the regiment. The list is especially important as it records day and place of death. Copies are held at NIDS.