Note 27 — Chapter XXII · Leyte Is Liberated

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