Two weeks after Deniki the first major battle of the Kokoda campaign occurred at Isurava. Far from being Australia’s Agincourt or Thermopylae, Isurava was a defeat with few redeeming features. It is claimed that a vastly outnumbered Australian force inflicted many more casualties than it took and held the Japanese to a standstill for four vital days, upsetting their timetable and causing them later to run out of food. Apart from the fact that the Australians did inflict more casualties than they suffered, this account, the Kokoda myth version, is not an accurate description of events.

It is generally accepted that the Japanese had a numerical superiority that was at the very least three to one and was more likely five or six to one. Subscribers to the Kokoda myth describe the Australian problem at Isurava as ‘like trying to stem a tidal wave’ or fighting against ‘monumental odds’. Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Honner and Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur Key, two battalion commanders who fought there, were convinced that the Japanese were ‘definitely in superior numbers’, but in fact about 2300 were engaged on each side. The Japanese did suffer almost twice the casualties they inflicted, but the delay imposed was of small importance for, as will be described in the following chapter, Seventeenth Army had already decided to postpone the Nankai Shitai's attack on Port Moresby.