MAJOR COMBAT OPERATIONS ON LEYTE WIND DOWN
Tacloban, Leyte Island, Philippines • December 30, 1944 The island of Leyte, the first island in the Philippine archipelago captured by returning GIs, was securely in U.S. hands by this date in 1944. It only remained for Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of the Southwest Pacific Area, to announce the end of organized Japanese unit resistance,…