"A Place to Run to"

The fighting on Leyte was in many ways the most remarkable of the Pacific war. The Japs made only a halfhearted attempt to defend the beaches, then fled inland in disorganized haste. Before they could regroup for a real fight, they had lost half their total force -- 14,405 killed and wounded, by General Douglas Mac-Arthur's count.

Major General John R. Hodge, commanding the XXIV Corps (7th and 96th Divisions), called the fighting the fastest in the Pacific war, observed that "the Japs will run if they have a place to run to ... they are running in all di rections." Jap pillboxes were flimsily constructed. When Lieut. General Shiro Ma-kino's 16th Division men counterattacked, they came not in overpowering thousands, but in driblets of 50 to 200 men who were easily mowed down by machine-gun fire.

U.S. casualties were relatively light. In the first week's fighting 518 had been killed. 139 were missing, 1,503 had been wounded.

Of many reasons for the swift U.S. success, not the least was the Filipinos themselves, whose guerrillas had been harassing Jap command posts, spying on sea movements, running weather stations and flashing messages to U.S. listening posts. Since the fall of 1942, when a weak radio signal was received in Australia from Panay, Douglas MacArthur had been supplying the rebels by submarine. Last week the guerrilla chief on Leyte and Samar, lithe, impassive Colonel Ruperto Kangleon claimed that his men had killed 3,800 Japs in the past year. Kangleon's chief of staff was a U.S PT-boat officer who missed the last Fortress out of Mindanao --one of many U.S. soldiers and sailors in the island who never surrendered.

Exploitation. General MacArthur and his Sixth Army commander, Lieut. General Walter Krueger, had chosen Leyte as their target because its capture would seal off Mindanao and the other southern and central Philippine Islands, furnish bases for U.S. planes to cut Japan's supply lines to the East Indies storehouses. Then they had picked for the main assault the spot on Leyte where their armor and fire power could be used most advantageously: the upper half of the eastern shore line which leads down into the fertile Leyte Valley.

Last week Major General Franklin Sibert's X Corps, which had made the northern (right flank) landing on the eastern shore, pushed inland after capturing the capital city of Tacloban, where Philippines President Sergio Osmena promptly set up his provisional capital. Then Sibert's troops fanned out along the north coast, and southward to join Hodge's XXIV Corps, which was moving north from Burauen after driving inland from their beachhead.

The Japs fought fanatically for the inland town of Pastrana, and U.S. casualties there were heavy. But the Japs, after losing the Leyte Valley and its excellent airfield terrain, streaked for the west coast, began embarking for Cebu in barges and other small craft, under fire from U.S. PT boats. Meanwhile the 21st Infantry, which had landed on A-day at Leyte's southern end, overran the southern third of the island with help from guerrillas. This week Douglas MacArthur announced that two-thirds of Leyte, including 212 miles of north and east coastline, had been liberated.

When the first land-based planes appeared from New Guinea, U.S. troops dived for foxholes, thinking they were Japs, then, seeing the U.S. markings, tossed their helmets and bellowed for joy.

Expansion. Immediately north of Leyte, on the larger island of Samar (5,040 square miles to Leyte's 2,713), U.S. troops landed without opposition; the Japs had evidently--and fruitlessly--withdrawn their troops from Samar to Leyte. In tanks and trucks the Americans raced 45 miles up the west coast road of Samar, captured the capital, Catbalogan, kept going. Samar was soon "completely in American hands." President Osmena said he expected to have its civilian government functioning in two weeks.

From the northwestern tip of Samar, only 15 miles across San Bernardino Strait, lies Luzon, largest of the Philippine Islands, site of Manila, Bataan and Corregidor. When and if MacArthur chose to cross over to Luzon, he was not likely to find the Japanese the pushovers they were on Leyte. But the reconquest of the Philippines last week seemed much less of a problem than it had the day before his troops poured ashore at Leyte.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.