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Japanese Artist’s Rendition of Leyte Beachhead

Image Information
Japanese Artist’s Rendition of Leyte Beachhead
Image Filename wwii1229.jpg.jpg
Image Size 4.41 MB
Image Dimensions 3000 x 2146
Photographer Unknown
Photographer Title
Caption Author Jason McDonald
Date Photographed 12/17/1944
Location Nisshin Corporation Magazine
City
State or Province
Country Japan
Archive
Record Number
Status Caption ©2007, ©2024 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission


Artist’s rendition of the Japanese counterattack on Leyte that appeared in a Nisshin Corporation magazine. Note M3 Grant tanks and a wide range of landing craft. The size of the American force is incongruous with the battle damage the fleet has received; astute Japanese could read between the lines of the state-controlled press and realized that Japan was losing the war. Actually, the Americans dominated the air and sustained combat operations prevented the Leyte garrison from mounting any major counterattack. The Japanese public was denied accurate information about Pacific War operations. Unlike the Americans, who used after-action reports as intelligence as much as they used them for propaganda, the Japanese military subtly encouraged inflated tallies of battle damage, claiming that many aircraft carriers, ships and aircraft were sunk, while ignoring the huge losses to their own forces. The inflated reports were published as fact, and the real losses were classified. Eventually many officers believed their own propaganda, thinking the Americans had suffered unrecoverable losses. The debacle of losing the last effective surface fleets in the battle of Leyte Gulf was not revealed until after the war.

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