On 13 March 1941, nine months before the Japanese made their move in the Pacific, Major Toyufuku Tetsuo stepped ashore at Port Moresby. He walked around asking questions, visited the Government Land Office to buy maps, and drove a short distance inland. Toyufuku was an IJA intelligence officer disguised as a seaman on the Japanese merchant ship Takachiho Maru. He was not the first Japanese officer to go to New Guinea for intelligence purposes, but he was the most important. Later the senior intelligence officer of the Nankai Shitai and wounded at Isurava, Toyufuku wrote a report that undermines the Kokoda myth that when the Japanese began the campaign they knew very little about Papua.

The best-known example of the myth is that the Japanese believed a vehicular road existed over the Owen Stanley Range, and a few comments to that effect can be seen in documents and diaries: ‘It is thought there is a poor motor road between Kokoda and Port Moresby.’ No doubt some Japanese, those without access to intelligence reports, believed this, but the Nankai Shitai senior officers and planning staff knew it was not so. In fact the term ‘road’ meant little; both sides freely use the words ‘road’, ‘track’ or ‘trail’ almost interchangeably.