THE sky was cloudless, the sun bright and hot. Once more, the bombing commenced that morning, only this time more furiously. Admiral Halsey's planes from the Third Fleet had joined other aircraft from Sprague's aircraft carriers in the assault, hitting towns and installations, trenches and pillboxes along the beaches, supply dumps and inland airstrips. From the Japanese defenders came the "feeble, almost pitiful, cough of intermittent ...anti-aircraft fire".
"It was impossible to distinguish one explosion from the other in the unbroken roar," wrote one soldier. By 9:30, the assault waves have been formed. A few minutes later, the race for the beaches began. At four knots, it was indeed a slow race, one that made boat occupants agonized. As the warships covering the assault lifted their fire inland, the forces in the barge were now open to whatever the Japanese had left in their arsenal. Surprisingly, quite a number of concealed Japanese mortars and machine guns were able to open fire on the incoming boats. For some brief moments, this fire was unanswered, until the range closed in to the shore. Then American landing craft and amphibious tanks responded, driving Japanese troops inland and giving protective cover to the troops that would soon dash to the beach. At exactly 10:00, the men on the landing craft felt a sudden thug, "a sickening lurch", as their boats grounded on the Leyte coast. At a few minutes after 10:00 on October 20, 1944, the first soldiers of MacArthur's liberation forces landed on Leyte. White Beach By some chance, Lt. Gen. Makino had evacuated Tacloban the night before to transfer his main force inland to Dagami, about 28 kilometers away. But some of his troops were still holed in Tacloban. That made the situation worse for them because communication facilities had to be hastily abandoned. As a result, all contact between the 16th Division and higher headquarters in Cebu and Manila were cut off until the 22nd, two days after the Americans had established beachhead in Leyte.This the Americans took advantage of. Moments after the troops had landed, soldiers of the four divisions were "running, creeping, or crawling forward" farther inland. In San Pedro Bay, troopers of the 1st Cavalry Division moved quickly over the White Beach, opposed only by a few scattered Japanese. Its mission was to capture the area around Tacloban and the shores of San Juanico Strait. Only a battalion of the Japanese 33rd Infantry Regiment and a small number of naval troops guarded these areas. |
By mid-afternoon, minor pockets of Japanese resistance were overcome and Gen. Mudge had established his command post ashore. Within a few more hours, the American troops had secured the coastal road in the beachhead area and the Tacloban airstrip. By then, all the ships had been unloaded and the artillery in position and ready to fire.
Red Beach It was a different story at the Red Beach immediately to the south of the 1st Cavalry. Japanese troopers provided stiffer resistance to the 24th Infantry Division, but this was not felt at the moment the troops had landed. It took some ten minutes before Japanese mortar and machine guns opened fire on the confident American troops, inflicting an undetermined number of casualties. The regimental commander Col. Aubrey S. Newman, who came in with the fifth wave, found nearly a battalion of his men pinned down at the beach. "The big redheaded officer stood erect and began to walk inland despite the heavy fire. `Get the hell off the beach!' he shouted to his men. `Get up and get moving. Follow me!'" Inspired, troops of the 34th Infantry Regiment dashed to the woods and swamps inland, knocking out half a dozen Japanese pillboxes, across foul-smelling water and slime, until they reached high ground and the coastal road. By late afternoon, they had secured the regimental objective and set up ties with the 1st Cavalry. Carrying the wounded The 19th Infantry to the left of the 34th was not so lucky. Driving towards Hill 522 that stood over Palo, Japanese defenders fired on its troops even before they were able to make a beachhead. Despite casualties, the troops pushed forward, overrunning the Japanese pillboxes that filled the wooded area immediately inland. In the late afternoon, most of the 19th Infantry beachhead area had been taken, but Hill 522 remained in Japanese hands. On its steep slopes, the Japanese had dug themselves in trenches and emplacements. From these positions, they could fire down at approaching American troops in the beaches, in Palo and the connecting roads. Only after fierce fighting and huge losses on both sides were the Americans able to occupy the hill. More than 50 Japanese died here while an undetermined number of American soldiers had to make the supreme sacrifice too. With the hill taken, the American beachhead now stretched more than 12 kilometers from the outskirts of Tacloban. |