Battle of Leyte

• 1. Introduction

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  The Battle of Leyte began not with a single shot but with a promise. General Douglas MacArthur had vowed to return to the Philippines after President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered him to flee in 1942. That order came just a month before Japan forced the surrender of all American and Filipino forces. Roosevelt's true purpose was to prevent MacArthur's capture. But MacArthur framed his departure as a moral debt. He would spend the next two years insisting that the United States was obligated to liberate the Philippine people as soon as possible.

  The operation that would fulfill that vow, codenamed King Two, launched on the 20th of October 1944. American forces and Filipino guerrillas struck the island of Leyte, facing the Pacific Ocean, with its deep-water approaches and sandy beaches. What awaited them was not simply the Japanese 16th Division, estimated at around 20,000 soldiers. It was a decision by General Tomoyuki Yamashita to make Leyte the main effort of the entire Japanese defense of the Philippines, throwing reinforcements, warships, and the first organized kamikaze attacks in history into the fight.

  How did an island of over 900,000 farmers and fishermen become the stage for one of the largest naval battles in history? Why did the Japanese commit so much to a defense that they ultimately could not sustain? And what did the loss of Leyte mean for Japan's hold on the Pacific?

• 2. Why Leyte Mattered

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  Japan had conquered the Philippines in 1942, and controlling the archipelago was not merely a matter of territorial pride. The sea routes to Borneo and Sumatra ran through Philippine waters, and both rubber and petroleum traveled those routes to supply the Japanese war machine. Losing the Philippines meant losing access to those resources.

  For the United States, the calculation ran the opposite direction. Capturing the Philippines would isolate Japan's military holdings across China and the Pacific theater, cutting supply lines and strangling the industrial base that kept Japanese forces in the field. In July 1944, Roosevelt met MacArthur and Admiral Chester Nimitz in Hawaii to settle the question of whether to strike the Philippines directly or bypass it entirely. The decision came down in favor of invasion.

  Over the summer of 1944, carrier aircraft from Admiral William F. Halsey's 3rd Fleet probed the Philippines and found Japanese air resistance weaker than expected. Halsey recommended bypassing other planned operations and striking Leyte directly. The invasion date moved forward to October. Leyte's geography supported the choice. Highway 1 ran for 40 miles along the east coast between Abuyog and the San Juanico Strait. The Leyte Valley, extending from the northern coast to the long eastern shore, held most of the island's towns and roads. American air forces based there could reach enemy positions anywhere in the Philippines.

• 3. A-Day and the Wading General

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  Preliminary operations began at dawn on the 17th of October 1944, when the 6th Rangers moved on three small islands in Leyte Gulf. On Suluan, Rangers dispersed a Japanese detachment and destroyed a radio station. Dinagat was unoccupied. Homonhon fell without opposition the following day. Rangers then erected navigation lights to guide the amphibious transports that would follow.

  Four hours of heavy naval gunfire preceded the main landings on the 20th of October. At 10:00 that morning, Sixth Army forces came ashore on assigned beaches. X Corps crossed a four-mile stretch between Tacloban airfield and the Palo River. Fifteen miles to the south, XXIV Corps landed across a three-mile strand between San Jose and the Daguitan River. Within an hour, most sectors had secured beachheads deep enough to receive heavy vehicles and large quantities of supplies.

  By 13:30, General MacArthur waded ashore at Red Beach and broadcast a message to the Philippine people. "People of the Philippines, I have returned! By the grace of Almighty God, our forces stand again on Philippine soil." It was the fulfillment of a two-year pledge made in the bleakest hour of American-Filipino arms. The first day cost the Sixth Army 49 killed, 192 wounded, and six missing. Japanese forces under General Shiro Makino counterattacked the 24th Infantry Division through the night on Red Beach, without success.

• 4. The Navy's Fight and the First Kamikazes

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  On the 21st of October, MacArthur presided over a ceremony in Tacloban to restore civil government to Leyte. At the same time, General Yamashita, commanding with 432,000 Japanese soldiers across the Philippines, ordered the 35th Army to coordinate a decisive battle with the Imperial Japanese Navy. The Japanese intended to destroy American naval forces in Leyte Gulf and cut off the Sixth Army from resupply.

  On the 24th of October, some 200 Japanese aircraft approached American shipping and beachheads from the north. Fifty American land-based aircraft intercepted them and claimed between 66 and 84 enemy planes shot down. Air raids continued for four more days. Then, as conventional air strength diminished, the Japanese turned to a new weapon. A corps of suicide pilots, known as kamikazes, crashed bomb-laden aircraft directly into American vessels. Their first major target was the large transport and escort fleet gathered in Leyte Gulf. On the 25th of October 1944, a kamikaze sank the escort carrier USS St. Lo. It was the first major warship in history to be sunk by a kamikaze attack.

  At sea, the Imperial Japanese Navy committed its entire remaining surface fleet to a decisive engagement. The plan used four aircraft carriers, carrying almost no aircraft, as a decoy to lure the 3rd Fleet northward away from Leyte Gulf. The resulting Battle of Leyte Gulf, fought from the 23rd to the 26th of October, became the largest naval battle in the Pacific and one of the largest in history. The Japanese suffered a decisive defeat. Even so, by the 11th of December, the Japanese had managed to move more than 34,000 troops and over 10,000 short tons of material to Leyte, most through the port of Ormoc on the west coast.

• 5. Breakneck Ridge and Kilay Ridge

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  On the 7th of November, the 21st Infantry Regiment entered the mountains along Highway 2 near Carigara Bay and immediately collided with the newly arrived Japanese 1st Division. The enemy had built a network of heavy log fighting positions, interconnecting trench lines, and spider holes across the road. Americans named the position Breakneck Ridge. Japanese forces called it the Yamashita Line. A typhoon hit on the 8th of November, adding falling trees and mud slides to enemy fire and cutting off supply trains.

  General Frederick A. Irving devised a two-pronged flanking attack. Lieutenant Colonel Robert B. Spragins swung east around Hill 1525, cut back to Highway 2 three miles south of Breakneck Ridge, and blocked the Japanese supply line. Lieutenant Colonel Thomas E. Clifford took the 34th Infantry's 1st Battalion across water from the Carigara area in eighteen LVTs of the 727th Amphibian Tractor Battalion, landed two miles west of the highway turn, and drove inland. After crossing a ridge line and the Leyte River, Clifford's men reached Kilay Ridge, the highest terrain behind the main battle area. Both battalions were within 1,000 yards of each other on opposite sides of the highway by the 13th of November.

  Clifford's battalion spent two weeks struggling through mud and rain, often fighting within dangerous proximity of friendly mortar and artillery fire. On the 2nd of December, they finally cleared the heights overlooking the road. The cost was 26 killed, 101 wounded, and two missing, against an estimated 900 Japanese dead. Both flanking battalions received Presidential Unit Citations. Clifford and Spragins each received the Distinguished Service Cross. The 32nd Division finally cleared the entire Breakneck-Kilay Ridge area on the 14th of December and linked up with the 1st Cavalry Division on the 19th of December.

• 6. The Fall of Ormoc

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  On the 7th of December, the 77th Infantry Division under Major General Andrew D. Bruce landed south of Ormoc City. The 305th and 307th Infantry Regiments came ashore at 07:00 unopposed. Admiral Arthur D. Struble's naval convoy endured fifty-five kamikaze aircraft making sixteen raids during the operation. The 77th Division's arrival squeezed Japanese defenders from the south while the 7th Division pressed from the north.

  Camp Downes, a prewar Philippine constabulary post, offered strong resistance. With the newly arrived 306th Infantry Regiment and two field artillery battalions in support, Bruce's troops pushed through on the 9th of December and entered Ormoc City on the 10th. The 7th and 77th Divisions linked up the following day. In the final drive, American forces killed roughly 1,506 Japanese soldiers and took seven prisoners, at a cost of 123 killed, 329 wounded, and 13 missing.

  The last Japanese stronghold north of Ormoc sat at Cogan, where the 12th Independent Infantry Regiment held a concrete blockhouse for two days. On the 14th of December, the 305th Infantry closed on the position using heavy artillery, flamethrowers, and armored bulldozers. Medal of Honor recipient Captain Robert B. Nett's leadership cleared the blockhouse area in hand-to-hand combat. On the 25th of December, infantrymen landed at Palompon and secured the small coastal town within four hours, cutting off the last port available to Japanese forces on Leyte. MacArthur announced the end of organized resistance the same day.

• 7. What Leyte's Loss Meant for Japan

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  General MacArthur transferred control of operations on Leyte and Samar to the Eighth Army on the 26th of December. The 1st Cavalry Division reached the coast on the 28th of December. The 24th Division cleared the last enemy positions from the northwest corner of Leyte on the same day and met 32nd Division patrols two days later.

  The campaign's consequences for Japan were severe. The army lost four divisions and several combat units. The navy lost 26 major warships, 46 large transports, and hundreds of merchant vessels. Japanese land-based air capability in the Philippines fell by more than half. Some 250,000 troops still held Luzon, but without the air and naval support lost at Leyte, General Yamashita was left with no realistic option except a passive defense of the largest island in the Philippine Archipelago.

  In practice, the loss of Leyte meant Japan had conceded control of a strategic region from which its supply lines from Southeast Asia could be severed and from which Allied forces could launch assaults on the Japanese home islands. Then, in 1998, a claim surfaced in Australia before a Royal Commission on Espionage: Allied estimates of Japanese troop strengths on Leyte, underestimated by MacArthur's intelligence officer General Willoughby, had been passed to Tokyo through the Soviet consulate in Harbin, Manchuria. The allegation was that Stalin wanted to delay an American victory until the Soviet Union could enter the Pacific war. The Ultra intelligence that might have corrected those estimates was never passed to the Soviets; according to the claim, the information instead came from members of Australian Foreign Minister Evatt's staff.