[CPProt.net] Hunt for lost treasure of Yamashita is on

[MSN CPPnet (Ton Cremers)]

Hunt for lost treasure of Yamashita is on 

(AFP / by Cecil Morella)

August 14, 2005

Rumours of secret maps, symbols carved in rocks and booby-trapped
underground chambers filled with looted gold have lured treasure hunters to
the Philippines for decades. They are drawn by a legend that Japanese
occupying forces stashed away billions of dollars' worth of bullion and
precious artefacts looted from across Asia when they realised their empire
was collapsing in 1945.
In a tale filled with rumours of cover-ups and conspiracy, treasure hunters
claim that US forces spirited away much of the horde after the war and that
billions of dollars' worth of loot remains unaccounted for. For many,
though, the Yamashita treasure, named after the wartime military governor of
the archipelago, General Tomoyuki Yamashita, is nothing more than a fable
with no evidence to back up the booty hunters' outlandish claims.
Today, armed with a pruning hook, Nicanor Brun guards the general's memorial
stone from weeds and tomb raiders. The shrine lies on the lower slopes of a
mountain, surrounded by an orchard beside a mountain brook.
Brun says his late mother told him Yamashita was strung up from a branch of
an old mango tree at the site on the lower slopes of Mount Makiling south of
Manila in early 1946. "There are a lot of diggings around," says the 47
year-old grandson of an anti-Japanese resistance fighter. He says there have
been several excavations in the area, including at the base of a waterfall
called Dampalit where residents say treasure hunters recovered stones with
Japanese characters inscribed on them.
According to legend, after defeating British forces in Malaya and Singapore,
where he earned himself the moniker the "Tiger of Malaya", Yamashita looted
12 countries in East and South-East Asia and shipped the booty to the
Philippines. Six decades after the Japanese surrender, Internet chatrooms
are alive with tales of networks of tunnels and chambers filled with gold
and protected by booby-traps, pressure mines and trip wires laid by Japanese
engineers.
"One of our companions died in a poison trap, fortunately he was able to
bring home two bars of gold," writes one treasure hunter. "We know the site
but our problem is how to get our hands on the treasure without getting
poisoned. The site is within a poisoned waterfall."
Others write of buying up plots of land in areas where Japanese troops were
stationed or made their last stand against US troops. They say the sites are
dotted with markings such as hearts, arrows and pyramids carved into rocks.
One describes "three big rocks one meter below the ground with a mark on
top, a hand-painted square with a dot at its centre, the number six and a
key."
"My friends found a huge arrow pointing to the river. The river floor was
checked and they discovered a man-made tunnel," writes another.
"What they discovered was a big seven-foot high engraved heart shape with a
curved tail on the tunnel wall. In the middle of the engraved heart was a
deep hole large enough for the whole arm to insert in.
"Do you think it is a Japanese treasure site?" Another rumour claims that
the same sappers who designed the warrens deep underground were buried alive
with the treasure by their commanders setting off explosive charges to
ensure that the locations be kept secret.
An even darker side of the story has it that the stashes were cursed by the
Japanese and dotted with decapitated heads, while tales abound of treasure
hunters dying or disappearing in mysterious circumstances.
By and large, however, experts give little credence to the stories.
"Despite all the treasure hunters, their maps, oral testimony and
sophisticated metal detectors, nobody has found a thing," says Ambeth
Ocampo, chairman of the Philippine government's National Historical
Institute.
Since the existence of the treasure has never been proven, theories of what
it likely contains range from lines of gold bullion piled metres (yards)
high, of solid gold Buddha statues weighing more than a tonne, of loose
diamonds, gold coins and priceless artefacts looted from temples.
One account claims the existence of gems, rare art, such as ancient Chinese
scrolls and precious metals, all plundered from Asian treasuries, banks,
private homes, art galleries and pawn shops owned by Chinese tycoons, Malay
royalty, Buddhist sects, drug lords, and triad gangs.
Unlike art looted by the Nazis in Europe, none of the Yamashita "treasures"
has been found, regional governments insist. "We have heard of people
searching for the so-called Yamashita treasure. But we cannot tell if it is
true or not," a Japanese foreign ministry spokeswoman said in Tokyo. Other
countries are similarly circumspect.
But failure has not deterred the dreamers, who have bored underneath
historical sites, Japanese cemeteries, wartime-era military fortifications,
government buildings, churches, and even private lots for half a century -
with or without government permits.
Authors Sterling and Peggy Seagrave in their 2003 book "Gold Warriors:
America's Secret Recovery of Yamashita's Gold" allege the US government
covertly recovered the booty and used it to bankroll the Cold War.
No Filipino historian takes the claims seriously. Feeding the rumours are
further rumours, of secret maps, of snippets of information given by
Japanese soldiers as they went to their deaths.
One theorist alleges that Yamashita's driver was tortured by US agents into
revealing treasure sites. Another suggests that General Douglas Macarthur,
who commanded US forces in East Asia and went on to accept Japan's
surrender, ordered Yamashita's trial and execution to keep him quiet. "It's
become something like an urban legend-type story," said University of the
Philippines professor Rico Jose, a local authority on the Japanese period
here. Some of the hunters, foreign and Filipino, have approached him for
help in deciphering maps and manuscripts that supposedly detail the treasure
sites.
The booty was supposed to have been shipped into the Philippines late in the
war after Yamashita became governor of the islands. Japan occupied the
Philippines in May 1942 adding it to its expanding empire.
But Jose said that by 1943 "the Japanese were no longer in control of the
seas" around the Philippines as US submarine warfare wiped out Japanese
convoys.
"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," he says.
"The more rational thing would have been to send it to Taiwan or China,"
Taiwan being a Japanese colony at the time with still secure sea lanes
between the island and Thailand and Burma. "There are big-scale diggings and
there are some small-scale diggings. People just have a hunch that this
place holds the treasure," Jose said.

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