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. This treasure has been the subject of a long running American lawsuit between an alleged treasure hunter and the estate of former Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

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, Rogelio Roxas filed a lawsuit in the State of Hawaii against former Philippine dictator, Ferdinand Marcos and his wife Imelda Marcos. Roxas claimed that he was a treasure hunter who in 1971 was searching for Yamashita's gold. The evidence and testimony submitted by Roxas alleged the following:

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…. 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 seeking damages for the human rights violations associated with Roxas’ arrest and torture was asserted by Roxas’ estate, while the claim for the seized treasure was asserted by The Golden Budha [sic] Corporation, a company formed for the purpose of asserting Roxas' rights to the treasure. In 1996, a jury in Honolulu awarded Roxas $6 million for the human rights claim and awarded the Golden Budha Corp. $22 billion in compensatory damages for the seized treasure that with interest increased to over $40 billion. Also in 1996, A Swiss court decided that a golden buddha statue filled with diamonds in Japanese war booty was most likely illegally seized by Marcos from Roxas. The Zurich Legal Office would order Marcos' widow, Imelda, to pay $460 million to compensate Roxas' family.

On November 17, 1998, the Hawaii Supreme Court reversed the $41 billion damage award against Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos. The court found that: "...there was insufficient evidence to support an award of damages for such gold bullion as may have been contained in the unopened boxes allegedly found by Roxas, inasmuch as the record was speculative regarding the gold’s quantity and purity..." However, the Court sustained the portion of the jury verdict finding that Roxas had “found” the treasure and that Marcos had converted (unlawfully taken) the golden buddha and 17 bars of gold from Roxas. The case was remanded to the trial court for a new trial on the value of the converted golden statue and 17 gold bars.

On February 28, 2000, the trial court conducted a hearing to determine the value of the golden buddha and the 17 bars of gold and awarded approximately $13 million. After many years on appeal, Felix Dacanay, as the personal representative of Roxas' estate, finally secured a judgment against Imelda Marcos in her personal capacity to the extent of her interest in the Estate of Ferdinand E. Marcos in the principal amount of $6 million for the human rights claims concerning Roxas' arrest and torture, and the Golden Budha Corp. secured 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 on the claim of the converted treasure. That judgment was ordered affirmed by the Hawaii Supreme Court on November 25, 2005. In a related legal proceeding in 2006, the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal summarized the findings of the Roxas v. Marcos litigation as follows: "The Yamashita Treasure was discovered by Roxas and stolen from Roxas by Marcos’s men."

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.