The levelheaded Yamashita did not buy the Formosa victory fantasies. He pointed to recent evidence of major air strikes from Halsey’s carriers to make the argument that the job of shipping reinforcements securely to Leyte would be problematic. Even with safe passage, Yamashita doubted the troops could get to the island in time to destroy the Sixth Army. The massive reinforcement of Leyte promised to make Luzon less defensible and Fourteenth Area Army more vulnerable to follow-up American invasions elsewhere in the Philippines.
