LEYTE

Allied plans for the defeat of Japan were developed in the summer and fall of 1944. The success in the Marianas and northern New Guinea opened the possibility for new strikes at the Japanese empire. It was not yet settled among the American planners whether an attack on Luzon, the largest and most important island in the northern Philippines, was preferable to a landing on Formosa (Taiwan) as the basis for the direct attack on Japan itself, but agreement had been reached on an invasion of Leyte in the central Philippines as an essential prerequisite for either of the two alternatives. From Leyte, with its great anchorage facilities and its assumed potential for air bases, subsequent assaults could be mounted over the intervening space to either Luzon or Formosa.

The Formosa project, especially dear to Admiral King, however, fell victim to three developments in the fall of 1944. The collapse of the Chinese Nationalists made the idea of a base off the China coast for the coordination of operations from there in the great assault on Japan an unrealistic project. The continuation of the war in Europe into 1945 precluded the early transfer to East Asia of the troops and shipping needed for the Formosa operation. The logistic needs of a Formosa landing, especially past a Japanese-controlled Luzon, were beyond the anticipated resources of the Central Pacific theater, so that Admiral Nimitz increasingly favored a Luzon over a Formosa operation as a follow-up to Leyte. Even while the Leyte plans were being developed, therefore, the central Philippines landing increasingly took on the character of a prelude to a landing on Luzon as a step to an assault further north—toward Japan itself—and with less and less direct connection to the war on the Chinese mainland.

There were three further repercussions to this change. In the first place, there came to be increasing concern in Allied headquarters about the possibility of a continuing campaign against the large Japanese forces in China even after a defeat of Japan in its home islands. The huge area held by the Japanese armed forces in China, together with their control of some industry there, seemed to open up the possibility of an extended further war to reduce those units.