The Road Ends

From 20 January on, the remaining Japanese forces stayed in the Villaba sector, hoping that succor would come. On 20 January General Tomochika “waited on the beach” for a boat that never came. The men were “plunged into the depths of despair.” Time passed. On the evening of 17 March, two Japanese vessels appeared. General Suzuki and part of his staff boarded the craft and at 0030, 18 March, left the island of Leyte, For days the vessels sailed from island to island in the Visayas only to find that they were too late. The Americans were already in possession. On the evening of 16 April, the vessel bearing General Suzuki was bombed by American aircraft off the coast of Negros Island and Suzuki was killed[25] The Leyte Campaign had ended.

The liberation of Leyte had been accomplished at no slight cost. During the peak month, January 1945, there were 257,766 American Army, including Air Forces, troops on Leyte.[26] The total Army casualties for the Leyte Campaign were over 15,500, including more than 3,500 killed and nearly 12,000 wounded. (Tables 4 and 5)

It is impossible, with data now available to determine with any degree of exactitude the number of Japanese who participated in the campaign or their casualties. The estimates of the Sixth and Eighth Armies vary greatly, as do those of the various Japanese sources. The Sixth Army estimated that it had killed 56,263 and captured 389 men.[27] and that as of 26 December 1944 when it relinquished control to Eighth Army about 5,000 of the Japanese remained on the islands of Leyte and Samar.[28] The Eighth Army estimated that, for the mop-up period from 26 December 1944 to 8 May 1945, it killed and found dead 24,294 and captured 439 Japanese.[29] General Eichelberger stated that his forces killed “more than twenty-seven thousand Japanese.”[30]

Table 4—U. S. Army Battle Casualties at Leyte, 20 October 1944–8 May 1945

OrganizationTotal Killed Wounded Missing
Total15,5843,50411,99189
Sixth Army Troops961141831[31]7
Eighth Army Troops404613403
X Corps7,1261,6705,38472
Americal Div and 164th RCT7311625663
24th Infantry Division2,3425441,78414
32d Infantry Division1,9494501,4918
38th Infantry Division2726817133
1st Cavalry Division9312037262
11th Airborne Division53216835212
1st Filipino Division5214380
108th RCT5314390
112th RCT160321280
Corps Troops10415890
XXIV Corps7,0931,6325,4547
7th Infantry Division2,7645842,1791
77th Infantry Division2,2264991,7234
96th Infantry Division1,6604691,1892
Corps Troops443803630

Source: Reports of the Commanding Generals, Eighth U. S. Army, Inclosure 1, and Sixth U. S. Army, on the Leyte-Samar Operation, p. 155.

The Japanese historians of the Leyte operation estimate that the total strength of their army ground troops was 70,000 men.[32] General Tomochika, the chief of staff of the 35th Army, was interrogated several times after the war. On one occasion he estimated that the total number of Japanese involved in the Leyte operation, including naval and air personnel and those who lost their lives in transports sunk en route to Leyte, was 59,400 men, approximately one fifth of all Japanese forces in the Philippine Islands.[33] On another occasion General Tomochika estimated that 61,800 Japanese had been on Leyte, and that 13,010 were alive and 48,790 had been killed by 17 March 1945.[34]

In the plan for the defeat of Japan the objective sought in reconquering the Philippines was not only to liberate the Filipinos but also to cut off the Japanese from the rich empire that they had acquired in the Netherlands Indies, and at the same time to establish a base for the final assault on the enemy’s homeland. As early as 1942 Allied submarines had begun to gnaw at the lifeline between Japan and its new empire, rich in rubber, tin, rice, and, above all, in oil, without which Japan could not remain in the war. By the fall of 1944 the submarines had virtually cut this lifeline, which ran past the Philippines. The loss of the Philippines to the Allies would finally sever it.