U.S. Coast Guard Captain Frank Higbee (center), head beach master in the Leyte Island invasion, confers with Coast Guard Commander Eskridge (left), commanding officer of a Coast Guard-Manned invasion transport, and Captain Foreston, Commandant of Navy Personnel on Leyte, somewhere along the liberation beach during the height of the drive that drove out the Japanese. Captain Higbee, from Claremont, California, was a veteran LST flotilla commander who also played a leading role in the irresistible advance of American forces toward the Philippines.