Yamashita's gold

Tomoyuki Yamashita, 1945

Prince Yasuhito Chichibu

Template:Totally-disputed Yamashita's gold, also referred to as the Yamashita treasure, is the name given to the alleged loot stolen in Southeast Asia by Japanese forces during World War II and hidden in caves, tunnels and underground complexes in the Philippines. The theory has been particularly popularised by Sterling Seagrave but is disputed by other historians.

The looting and the alleged cover-up

Prominent among those arguing for the existence of Yamashita's gold are Sterling Seagrave and Peggy Seagrave, who have written two books relating to the subject: The Yamato Dynasty: the Secret History of Japan's Imperial Family (2000) and Gold Warriors: America's Secret Recovery of Yamashita's Gold (2003). They have supported their claims with CD-ROMs containing 900 megabytes of documents, maps and photographs, available with the initial edition of Gold Warriors.

The Seagraves contend that looting was organized on a massive scale, by both yakuza gangsters such as Yoshio Kodama, and the highest levels of Japanese society, including Emperor Hirohito. The Japanese government intended that loot from Southeast Asia would finance Japan's war effort. The Seagraves allege that Hirohito appointed his brother, Prince Yasuhito Chichibu, to head a secret organization called Kin no yuri ("Golden Lily"), for this purpose. Many of those who knew the locations of the loot were killed during the war, or later tried by the Allies for war crimes and executed or incarcerated. Yamashita himself was executed for war crimes on February 23 1946.

The stolen property reportedly included many different kinds of valuables looted from banks, depositories, temples, churches, other commercial premises, mosques, museums and private homes. It takes its name from General Tomoyuki Yamashita, who assumed command of Japanese forces in the Philippines in 1944.

According to various accounts, the loot was initially concentrated in Singapore, from where it was later relayed to the Philippines. The Japanese hoped to ship the treasure from the Philippines to the Japanese home islands after the war ended. As the Pacific War progressed, Allied submarines and aircraft inflicted increasingly heavy losses on Japanese merchant shipping. Some ships carrying loot back to Japan were sunk.

The Seagraves and a few others have claimed that United States military intelligence operatives located much of the loot; colluded with Hirohito and other senior Japanese figures to conceal its existence, and; used it to finance US covert intelligence operations around the world during the Cold War, though there is little evidence and no significant mainstream support for this.

Many individuals and consortia, both Filipino and foreign, continue to search for treasure sites. A number of accidental deaths, injuries and financial losses incurred by treasure hunters have been reported.

Treasure skeptics

University of the Philippines professor Rico Jose has questioned the theory that treasure from mainland South East Asia was transported to the Philippines: "By 1943 the Japanese were no longer in control of the seas... It doesn't make sense to bring in something that valuable here when you know it's going to be lost to the Americans anyway. The more rational thing would have been to send it to Taiwan or China."

Philippines National Historical Institute chairman and historian Ambeth Ocampo commented: “Two of the wealth myths I usually encounter are the Yamashita treasure and gossip that the Cojuangco fortune was founded on a bag of money…” Ocampo also said: "For the past 50 years many people, both Filipinos and foreigners, have spent their time, money and energy in search of Yamashita's elusive treasure.” Professor Ocampo noted “What makes me wonder is that for the past 50 years, despite all the treasure hunters, their maps, oral testimony and sophisticated metal detectors, nobody has found a thing.”

Related legal action

In March of 1988, a US lawsuit was filed by Rogelio Roxas against former Philippine dictator, Ferdinand Marcos and his wife Imelda Marcos. Roxas alleged that he was a treasure hunter who in 1971 was searching for Yamashita's gold. The evidence considered by the court included this direct quotation from the judicial opinion by the Hawaii Supreme Court:

Sometime in 1970, Roxas’s group began digging on state lands near the Baguio General Hospital. After approximately seven months of searching and digging “24 hours a day,” the group broke into a system of underground tunnels. Inside the tunnels, the group found wiring, radios, bayonets, rifles, and a human skeleton wearing a Japanese army uniform. After several weeks spent digging and exploring within the tunnels, Roxas’s group discovered a ten-foot thick concrete enclosure in the floor of the tunnel. On January 24, 1971, the group broke through the enclosure. Inside, Roxas discovered a gold-colored buddha statue, which he estimated to be about three feet in height. The statue was extremely heavy; it required ten men to transport it to the surface using a chain block hoist, ropes, and rolling logs. Although he never weighed the statue, Roxas estimated its weight to be 1,000 kilograms, or one metric ton. Roxas directed his laborers to transport the statue to his home and place it in a closet. Roxas also found a large pile of boxes underneath the concrete enclosure, approximately fifty feet from where the buddha statue had been discovered. He returned the next day and opened one small box, which contained twenty-four one-inch by two-and-one-half-inch bars of gold. Roxas estimated that the boxes were, on average, approximately the size of a case of beer and that they were stacked five or six feet high, over an area six feet wide and thirty feet long. Roxas did not open any of the other boxes. Several weeks later, Roxas returned to blast the tunnel closed, planning to sell the buddha statue in order to obtain funds for an operation to remove the remaining treasure. Before blasting the tunnel closed, Roxas removed the twenty-four bars of gold, as well as some samurai swords, bayonets, and other artifacts. Roxas twice attempted to report his find to Judge Marcos, but was unsuccessful in contacting him. During the following weeks, Roxas sold seven of the gold bars and sought a buyer for the golden buddha. Roxas testified that Kenneth Cheatham, the representative of one prospective buyer, drilled a small hole under the arm of the buddha and assayed the metal. The test revealed the statue to be solid twenty-two carat gold. Roxas also testified that a second prospective buyer, Luis Mendoza, also tested the metal of the statue, using nitric acid, and concluded that it was “more than 20 carats.”

Roxas went on to allege that after he discovered the treasure, he was arrested by Marcos, the treasure was seized, and he was tortured. After his release, Roxas died under suspicious circumstance, creating the impression that he might have been murdered. The lawsuit was asserted by his estate and The Golden Buddha Corporation, a company formed for the purpose of asserting Roxas' rights to the treasure. After a contested trial, a jury in Honolulu awarded $22 billion in compensatory damages -- representing the estimated value of the entire chamber filled with gold. The amount of the final judgment after adding pre-judgment interest exceeded $40 billion. However, on November 17, 1998, the Hawaii Supreme Court reversed the $22 billion portion of the judgment against the Marcoses (the chamber filled with gold). Nevertheless, the Court sustained the portion of the verdict that found that Marcos had converted the golden Buddha and 17 bars of gold (the 24 he took out of the chamber minus the seven that he sold). With respect to the claim for the Golden Buddha and the 17 bars of gold, the Hawaii Supreme Court specifically found as follows: 1) “There Was Sufficient Evidence To Support The Jury's Special Finding That Ferdinand Converted The Treasure That Roxas Found”; and 2) “There was sufficient evidence to support the jury's determination that Roxas "found" the treasure pursuant to Philippine law.” The case was remanded to the trial court for a new trial on the value of the converted golden Buddha statue and gold bars. Thus, there has been a judicial finding based upon substantial evidence that at least some portion of Yamashita's gold was found. The matter was remanded to the trial court to determine the value of the Golden Buddha and the 17 bars of gold. The matter was heard on February 28, 2000, and the Golden Buddha Corp. has a judgment against Imelda Marcos in her personal capacity to the extent of her interest in the Marcos estate in the principal amount of $13,275,848.37 plus taxable cost of $61,074.54. That judgment was ordered affirmed by the Hawaii Supreme Court on November 25, 2005.

Yamashita's gold in popular culture

• Yamashita's gold, though not mentioned by that name, serves as a major plot element of Cryptonomicon, a novel by Neal Stephenson.
• A film about the alleged treasure, Yamashita: The Tiger's Treasure, directed by Chito S. Roño was released in the Philippines in 2001.
• An episode of Unsolved Mysteries, first screened on January 27 1993, discussed the loot accumulated by Yamashita.
• The latter part of the console game Medal of Honor: Rising Sun is about the gold.
• Yamashita's gold serves as a plot element of Dragon, a novel by Clive Cussler.
• Malaysian movie, Senario:Pemburu Emas Yamashita tells about Yamashita's hidden gold in a cave in the Malaysian jungle.