World War II: A chronology
Yamashita's gold
The 'gold' Buddha allegedly returned to Rogelio Roxas by Ferdinand Marcos. Roxas claimed that the Buddha he had found had been solid gold with a cavity in the removable head that contained diamonds
The Philippines is full of rumours of buried World War II loot, commonly known as 'Yamashita's Gold' or simply 'The Tiger's Gold'. Actually, the 'Tiger of Malaya' – Lieutenant General Tomoyuki Yamashita, Japanese captor of Singapore in 1942 and, later, commander of Japan's forces in the Philippines – personally had nothing to do with the gold. The treasure was supposedly dealt with by members of the Japanese imperial family and, later, high-level US government officials.
However, so much of this tale of buried Japanese treasure hoards is suspect that a great deal of what follows must be taken with a large grain of salt.
Golden Lily
In 1936, it is said, Emperor Hirohito realised that a new world war
was coming. He foresaw that to defeat the United States would require
extraordinary military forces backed by unprecedented financing. He organised
a special team to confiscate the wealth of Asia, overseen by his brother
Prince Chichibu. The latter's organisation was code-named kin no yuri,
or 'Golden Lily', the title of one of the emperor's poems.
Other princes headed different parts of Golden Lily across the conquered territories. One of these was Prince Takeda Tsuneyoshi, one of Hirohito's first cousins and grandson of the emperor Meiji, who is said to have been ultimately responsible for seeing that all the gold in the Philippines was buried.
Vast wealth
The first major project of this group – the rape of Nanking –
was only the tip of the iceberg. As the Japanese imperial army swept through
China and occupied virtually all of south-east Asia, it seized over 4,000
years' worth of stored gold, silver, precious gems and works of art.
Much of Europe's vast wealth had also been secretly placed in Japan's path. This included moving many of the national treasures of the Netherlands to the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), those of France to Indochina (now Vietnam) and those of Britain to Singapore.
All fell to Japan. Meanwhile, so the story goes, expert Golden Lily teams systematically emptied treasuries, banks, factories, private homes, pawn shops and art galleries, and stripped ordinary people of what little they had, while Japan's top gangsters looted Asia's underworld and its black economy. Golden Lily agents silently and efficiently swept up the spoils, refined most of the precious metals and began transporting them.
Strategic importance
Field Marshall Count Terauchi commanded the Japanese imperial forces
in the south-eastern Pacific. He sent orders to Admiral Masaharu (military
commander of the Philippines before Yamashita) and several other admirals
and generals (including Yamashita) saying that all war booty taken from
their respective occupied territories – Java, Sumatra, Singapore,
Malaya, Thailand, Burma and northern India – should be collected
and transferred to Japan.
However, from the end of 1943, the great bulk of the World War II treasures was sent to the Philippines, as the shipping lanes to Japan became too dangerous due to patrolling American naval vessels.
Japan had always appreciated the strategic military importance of the Philippines. More importantly, the Japanese imperial forces had a major post-war plan in which the Philippine archipelago was to play an important role. When the war was over, they would withdraw their forces from all other Asian countries but try to maintain their rule over the Philippines.
Ethnic survival
To this end, the Japanese proposed, under the banner of 'Asia for
Asians', some reforms in the guise of nationalism. (The Philippines had
been owned by the United States since being ceded by Spain at the end
of the Spanish-American War in 1898.) And, in 1943, in the hope of winning
over the Filipinos, they went as far as setting up a Filipino 'republic',
installing a puppet government with the judge José Laurel as president.
By winning over the people's hearts and, later, granting them 'independence', the Japanese forces hoped that they would be regarded as 'heroes'. This would allow them to have military bases on the islands on the pretext of protecting the Filipino people. In this way, they could remain in the Philippines for as long as they liked and to excavate the stolen loot at their leisure.
The Japanese strongly believed that they would be able to keep the Philippines as a concession for peace, then use the vast wealth hidden there to rebuild their empire. Thus, the relocation of the enormous shipments of war treasure to the Philippines was seen as Japan's only hope of ethnic survival.
However, it didn't work out – the Americans invaded the Philippines in October 1944.
Intricate tunnels
Before the US invasion, the Japanese forces were busy hiding and securing
the stolen loot. Elaborate tunnels were dug, some to depths of hundreds
of feet, to the final 'storage chambers'. Many of these tunnels were excavated
just below the water table during the dry season, which meant that they
would eventually fill with water – a deterrent to any future salvagers.
And if that were not enough, most if not all of the tunnels were booby-trapped
with 1,000- and 2,000-lb bombs and poisonous gas.
In most cases, PoW labour was used to dig the intricate tunnelling systems. In all cases, when securing the gold in the pits was completed, the PoWs were executed and buried along with the treasures. In rare cases, Japanese officers even had their own soldiers killed and buried along with the treasure, to protect the secret locations.
When the Americans invaded the islands, there was still much treasure remaining to be buried. Japanese forces took it with them during their retreat and interred it in many different locations.
In the Philippines, there are said to be 172 'documented' official Japanese imperial burial sites (138 on land and 34 in deliberately scuttled ships), not to mention the numerous instances of World War II loot buried by greedy officers and renegade soldiers. The worth of all this booty is estimated to be as much as $3 billion at 1940 rates – the equivalent of over $100 billion today. According to various post-war estimates, the gold bullion alone totals 4,000 to 6,000 tons.
Clandestine operation
What happened next often reads like the most unbelievable James Bond
thriller. A great many facts have been accumulated, maps have been found,
witnesses have sworn their testimonies, but the truth remains shrouded
in mystery and lies.
For instance, it is said that, in October 1945, American intelligence agents learned where some of the Japanese loot was hidden. Agents of the OSS (forerunner of the CIA) watched as Japanese troops buried treasure on the island of Luzon. They began a clandestine recovery operation that lasted until 1948.
This was headed by a Filipino-American OSS – and later CIA – officer, Severino Garcia Santa Romana. Santa Romana, in turn, worked under the watchful eye of the CIA operative General Edward Lansdale, who would later become embroiled in the abortive CIA invasion of Cuba during the Kennedy administration.
General William Donovan, head of the OSS, knew of the Lansdale-Santa Romana recoveries, as did General Douglas MacArthur, and former US president Herbert Hoover. So, too, did Cold War warrior and later head of the CIA Allen Dulles. President Truman may also have been in the charmed circle of those who were in the know.
The OSS/CIA had no intention of returning any of the plunder to its rightful owners. Instead, Santa Romana set up numerous front companies to launder the secretly recovered gold bullion. This is supposed to have become the basis of the CIA's 'off the books' operational funds during the immediate post-war years, used to create a world-wide anti-Communist network.
Imelda Marcos, widow of disgraced Filipino president Ferdinand Marcos: did she benefit from her husband's theft of some of the lost gold?
Legal actions and law suits
Researchers have, they say, obtained evidence of Golden Lily loot from
straightforward legal actions in the US. These include examining Santa
Romana's will and verifying his tax records. Legal evidence of his fortune
deposited in the US, Switzerland, Hong Kong and elsewhere supposedly provides
hard proof that the world is awash with clandestine bank accounts growing
out of Golden Lily.
Other lawsuits in the US provide proof to enthusiasts that Golden Lily war loot was indeed hidden in the Philippines. Rogelio Roxas, a Filipino locksmith, is said to have found a one-tonne solid-gold Buddha and thousands of gold bars in a tunnel near Baguio in 1971, only to have them stolen by President Ferdinand Marcos. Roxas subsequently died in suspicious circumstances, leading some to believe that he was murdered. In 1996, a US Federal Court in Hawaii awarded his heirs a judgment of $22 billion against the Marcos estate. (This was later massively reduced on appeal.)
Relentless pursuit
Despite all the disappointments and dead-ends, the fortune hunters
remain undaunted. In a nation where the average annual income is $1,000,
it is hardly surprising that, for the past 55 years, hundreds of Filipinos
have also been busy looking for the lost treasure.
In fact, dozens have died digging up roads, riverbeds and mountainsides in a relentless pursuit of the Yamashita gold. For example, in late 2000, two men were buried alive when a tunnel collapsed near the Mindanao town of General Santos after they had dug as far as 24 feet (7.3 metres). Four others suffocated in Lumban, Laguna. And in 1998, three men were killed in Nueva Ecija in Luzon province when a tunnel they had dug caved in.
As many of these projects have ended in failure, a side industry has emerged based on the fever itself. Foreign investors are often enticed into funding the digging of holes known to contain nothing. In areas of high unemployment, workers are happy to dig meaningless holes for two or three US dollars a day. Con men claim to have recovered treasure but will only meet with buyers in secluded rural areas – abduction points for allegedly wealthy travellers. Others will try to sell gold-plated brass Buddhas and fake gold bars for thousands of times their actual value.
