rangler
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- Jul 12, 2004
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the Legend of Yamashi.ta's Gold in the Phillipines circa 1945
The facts of this story are documented from the days of World War Two, to the Philippine Courts of Justice,to Banks from Switzerland to Hong Kong to the good Old USA.The room for nay-saying this one is gone. It is a fact, the only thing that stands in your way of knowing that is your attitude and some time on google.We are passed the nay-saying. The only response nay sayer will get here,is some exercise for your fingers on your keyboard..First we want to have a post here, where people who are interested in treasure can read, post and ask questions. Please add to the knowledge that we are about to discover about this story, if you do any research please post your sources..urls or annotations, books ect. We will try to do the same.
Welcome all Citizens of the Philippines, Mabuhi Manong- Kumsusta, you are most welcome here..as this story takes place in your homeland..BUT please, this is not a board to look for financing or investors..We know your heart might be pure and your story true,,but we have seen all to many , try to take advantage so I ask you to join us as Treasure Hunters, looking only for the truth, the story, the facts, the goods.
I am currently helping two other Pinoy's with their symbols and codes..since they are based on the Jesuit/spanish codes you may ask and questions and post pictures here..just no obvious landmarks, was we don't want to comprise the security of your site..There are a few very savvy and experienced people here who may want to see your pics and help you decode what they can..You are welcome to do so.
If you are not comfortable posting your pics online just yet - you can message me on pm Salamat!
Yamashi.ta and his gang used Jesuit/Spanish Treasure Codes this I know for sure, I have seen it first hand.The research that I did, showed that in 1932 in Vienna the Japanese High Command send ambassadors to meet with Hitlers minions, one of the things discussed was solutions to the Treasure Codes that the Nazi's had obtained in their looting of Europe. This copy of the what I call the Jesuit Code Book,was used by the Japanese to recover treasures left by the Jesuits and Spanish on the Islands of the Philippines AND rebury that and other loot stolen from Asia during the Japanese reign of terror in South East Asia prior to WW2.
WE also know that the Japanese Military send as many as 100,000 soldiers and civilians to the PR (Republic of the Philippines) 20 years before Pearl Harbor attack. The recovered Jesuit treasure using the codes that the Germans gave them..Digging caves and tunnels in anticipation of the treasure they would loot from the China campaign.
One likely treasure hunter 30 years later, a pinoy living in Northern Luzon, our hero, 'Rog' Roxas is about to "go down the rabbit hole"..Rog happened upon a person who know of some buried Japanese treasure of the yamashi.ta group..well rather than tell the story from memory let me paste the information directly from the court documents..least we raise the ugly head of the dragon who breathes fire when any tiny item is forgotten or left out by mistake. The dragon will stay away as long as we include everything as it happened!
transcript:
Rog worked as a locksmith in Baguio City, the Philippines. He was also an amateur coin collector and treasure hunter. In 1961, Roxas met a man named Fuchugami in Baguio City, who claimed that his father had been in the Japanese army and had drawn a map identifying the location of the legendary "Yama.shita Treasure." The treasure purportedly consisted of booty, which had been plundered from various Southeast Asian countries, during World War II, by Japanese troops under the command of General Tomoyuki Yamashi.ta and which was allegedly buried in the Philippines during the final battle for the islands in order to keep it out of the hands of the Americans.
At around the same time, Rog Roxas met Eusebio Ocubo, who claimed to have served as General Yamashi.ta's interpreter during World War II. Ocubo advised Roxas that, during the war, he had been taken to some tunnels controlled by General Yamashi.ta, in order to retrieve silver to pay for food for the Japanese troops. There, he observed boxes of various sizes that contained gold and silver. Shortly thereafter, he also observed a golden buddha statue, which was kept at a convent near the tunnels.
Armed with Fuchugami's description of his father's maps and Ocubo's representations, Roxas organized a group of partners and laborers to search for the treasure and obtained a permit for the purpose from Judge Pio Marcos, a relative of Ferdinand. Judge Marcos informed Roxas that, in accordance with Philippine law, a thirty-percent share of any discovered treasure would have to be paid to the government.
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.(3) 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."
On April 1, 1971, Roxas showed the buddha to a third prospective buyer, Joe Oihara, who was accompanied by another individual, Romeo Amansec. Oihara told Roxas that he was staying at the home of Ferdinand's mother, Josefa Edralin Marcos. Oihara examined the buddha at length, performed another assay, and also closely scrutinized the designs on the statue. He indicated an interest in buying the buddha, promising to return in several days with a partial payment of one million pesos. Rendered suspicious by Oihara's long scrutiny of the buddha, Roxas undertook his own examination and discovered that the head was removable. Inside, he found "more than two handsful" of what he surmised to be uncut diamonds. He placed the diamonds in his closet near the buddha and replaced the head.
2. The raid on Roxas's house
On April 5, 1971, at 2:30 a.m., men purporting to be from the Criminal Investigation Service (CIS) and the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), two Philippine national security agencies, knocked on Roxas's door, claiming to have a search warrant. When Roxas failed to respond, the men broke two of Roxas's front windows and pointed the barrels of their rifles inside. They informed Roxas that if he did not open the door within three minutes he would be shot.
Roxas opened the door, and eight men wearing military uniforms entered the house, accompanied by Oihara. They briefly displayed a document that they claimed was a search warrant. Before they snatched it away, Roxas was able to determine that it contained language regarding a "violation of [a] Central Bank regulation and illegal possession of firearms" and that it was signed by Judge Marcos. The men beat Roxas's brother with their rifles and ordered Roxas's family and his two bodyguards to lie down on the floor. When they left, they took the buddha, the diamonds, the remaining seventeen bars of gold, the samurai swords, a piggy bank belonging to Roxas's children, and his wife's coin collection.
Roxas reported the raid to the media and the local police. Subsequently, he went to Judge Marcos's home. Roxas asked Judge Marcos why he had signed the search warrant. Judge Marcos responded that he had had no choice because "the principe" ("the prince") had ordered the confiscation. When Roxas asked who "the principe" was, Judge Marcos responded that it was Ferdinand. Judge Marcos also advised Roxas that it was Oihara's companion, Amansec, who had initially applied for the search warrant, claiming to have seen a gun in Roxas's house. Judge Marcos appeared angry that Roxas had reported the case to the police and the media and stated that, as a result, the CIS and the NBI would likely kill Roxas. Roxas interpreted Judge Marcos's remarks as a threat; nevertheless, on April 7, 1971, Roxas returned to the police station and signed a complaint.
Roxas and his family traveled to Cabantuan City to enlist the aid of Provincial Governor Joson, who provided Roxas with four bodyguards. Roxas then went into hiding in Cabantuan City. Soon thereafter, on April 19, 1971, the military deposited a buddha statue with the City Court in Baguio City.
While he was in Cabantuan City, Roxas was approached by Rosario Uy and Anita Igna. They offered Roxas three million pesos to publicly affirm that the buddha statue held by the court was the same one that he had found. They also told him that they represented Ferdinand's mother. Roxas refused the offer. Later, Uy reached him by telephone and renewed the offer, assuring Roxas that he need not be afraid to accept because Ferdinand would be the one paying him. Roxas again refused.
Roxas's story began to appear regularly in the newspapers, radio, and television and to attract the attention of opposition politicians. Roxas met with a number of politicians, as well as with Philippine Secretary of Justice Vicente Abad Santos. Roxas told the Secretary his story, and the Secretary promised to guarantee Roxas's safety for a trip to Baguio City to identify the buddha in the City Court.
On April 29, 1971, Roxas traveled to the courthouse in Baguio City, accompanied by his bodyguards, two prosecutors from the Justice Department, a lawyer whom Roxas had hired, and a number of reporters and cameramen. Upon examination of the statue, Roxas concluded that it was not the same buddha that he had discovered because: (1) its color was different; (2) it had different facial features; (3) the head was not detachable; and (4) there was no hole under the arm where the original buddha had been drilled. On camera, Roxas announced his conclusion to those present. Roxas then brought the group to his house, where he showed them the damage caused by the raiding party and the closet where he had stored the buddha. Roxas later received an invitation to testify before the Philippine senate about the events; he did so on May 4, 1971.
3. Arrest and torture
On May 18, 1971, Roxas was arrested in Cabantuan City by three men in civilian clothing. Roxas testified that the men told him "to go with them to make a negotiation with the President." They also reassured him, "Don't be afraid. We are under Malacanang[(4)] -- you know, we are under Malacanang agent. We can make a negotiation to the President, and nothing more." The men took him to the home of Colonel Ponciano Gonzales.
There, an individual identified as Colonel Olivas punched Roxas in the stomach five times. When Roxas asked him why he was being beaten, Colonel Olivas responded, "You're mentioning the name of the President[.]" One of the men then said, "We must report to the President that Rogelio Roxas is in our custody." Colonel Olivas placed a telephone call, during which he appeared to Roxas to be speaking to Ferdinand, because he addressed the other party as "Mr. President."
Subsequently, Roxas was taken to the constabulary headquarters in San Fernando, Pampanga. Once there, a number of soldiers led him to a dark room, where he was shown a picture of his wife and children and told that he must cooperate if he wanted to see them again. The soldiers ordered Roxas to "pinpoint those senators, that they pay me to implicate the name of the president." Roxas refused to sign such a statement, and the soldiers responded by shocking him with wires attached to a large battery. The soldiers also interrogated Roxas about the location of the remaining treasure; however, he refused to divulge this information. The soldiers continued to shock him for several hours and, on one occasion, burned him with cigarettes.
Roxas was then taken to the residence of a judge, where he was directed to sign an affidavit. However, because of the torture he had endured, he was unable to clasp his hand around the pen, and, therefore, could not sign. The soldiers then transported Roxas to a hotel in Angeles City. There, he was questioned again about the location of the treasure. When he refused to respond, he was beaten with a rubber mallet until he passed out. After the beatings, he noticed a great deal of damage to his right eye and ear, neither of which ever fully healed.
Roxas was kept in a room at the hotel for two weeks, during which time he was repeatedly ordered to sign yet another affidavit. This affidavit averred that the raid in his house had been performed "in a peaceful manner" and that the members of the raiding party had possessed no automatic weapons as had been reported in the press. When Roxas finally signed the affidavit, he was brought back to the city court in Baguio City and ordered to point at the buddha statue while being photographed and to identify gold bars as those taken from his home.
That night, Roxas picked the lock on the window of his room and escaped. After finding refuge at his sister's home, Roxas contacted a senator and was again asked to testify before the senate, which he did on June 30, 1971. In his deposition in the instant case, Roxas testified that, during the June 30, 1971 hearing, he told the senators about being tortured.(5)
After the senate hearing, Roxas returned to Baguio City. Once there, he received a letter from Cesar Dumlao, a finance officer at the Malacanang, requesting a meeting on behalf of Ferdinand. Roxas met with Dumlao and was shown a letter, which indicated that Ferdinand was offering to pay him five million pesos.(6) Roxas was instructed to return the next day; however, he did not report back because he became frightened.
One week after his return to Baguio City, Roxas was arrested for failing to appear at a hearing on an illegal weapons charge that had been pending against him since January 28, 1971. He was brought before a judge, who ordered him incarcerated as a result of his default.
On August 21, 1971, Senator Osmena sent an attorney to bail Roxas out of jail. Roxas traveled with the attorney to Manila to meet with Senator Osmena. Senator Osmena asked Roxas to speak at a political rally that evening. Roxas agreed, but he was unable to speak because the rally was bombed before he could start. Roxas ran away and went into hiding for almost one year.
When Roxas finally returned to his Baguio City home in July 1972, he was immediately arrested by two men, who represented to him that they were from the CIS. These men took Roxas to a naval base in the province of Zambales, where he was confined in the stockade. While there, Roxas was questioned by Provincial Commander Rodolfo Patalinghod about his discovery of the golden buddha.
On September 21, 1972, Ferdinand declared martial law in the Philippines; the order remained in effect until 1983. After the declaration, General Fabian Ver visited Roxas in his cell. General Ver admitted that he had been among the raiding party at Roxas's house. He also told Roxas that there had been "an order to kill [Roxas] by the military," but that the order had been canceled when it was discovered that Roxas was a member of the Church of Christ. He advised Roxas to keep quiet about his case, in light of the fact that martial law had been declared.
In January 1973, Roxas was transferred to a prison camp in Baguio City and tried on the charges of possession of an illegal firearm and unlawfully firing a revolver into the air. He was convicted of both counts by the Third Branch of the City Court of Baguio and sentenced, in connection with the first charge, to an "indeterminate penalty of imprisonment ranging from One (1) year and One (1) day as minimum to Four (4) years as maximum" and, in connection with the second, to a fine. Judgment was entered on January 31, 1973. During his incarceration, Roxas was beaten and questioned about the location of the treasure on two occasions by a man known as Colonel Gemoto -- who identified himself as a member of the "Task Force Restoration" -- accompanied by representatives of the CIS.
4. Military excavations
Roxas was released from prison on November 19, 1974. When he arrived home the next day, he noticed soldiers standing outside tents near the Baguio General Hospital. Sometime in December 1974, some soldiers visited Roxas in his shop and told him that they were members of the Task Force Restoration, which was conducting excavations behind the hospital. They listed their address in Roxas's logbook (which was never produced at trial) as Malacanang Palace. The soldiers asked him to come with them to help with the excavation; he refused. Roxas passed by the site in 1976 and saw that the excavations were still ongoing. In October 1976, Roxas and his family moved to Visayan City, where they stayed for the next ten years without further incident relating to the Yama[prohibited word deleted]a treasure.
Juan Quijon (Juan) and his son, Romulo Quijon (Romulo), corroborated Roxas's testimony regarding the excavations. Juan had worked as a nursing attendant at Baguio General Hospital from 1945 to 1988. He noticed a number of soldiers involved in excavation behind the hospital between 1974 and 1975. Over a one-week period, Juan observed men carrying large wooden boxes out of a tunnel and placing them in trucks. Each box was carried by at least four -- and sometimes six -- men. The soldiers' uniforms bore the initials "PSC," and the trucks had the letters "PMA" painted on them. Juan also observed men removing some steel boxes with the aid of a winch. The soldiers left in August 1975.
Romulo testified that he worked as a cook for the soldiers performing excavations behind the hospital in 1974. Romulo testified that the "PSC" on the soldiers' uniforms stood for "Presidential Security Command," and the "PMA" painted on the trucks stood for "Philippine Military Academy." The soldiers employed civilians to perform most of the digging. Romulo saw these civilians pushing and pulling boxes out of a hole and loading them into trucks. The boxes appeared to be old and in poor condition. Some fell apart while being carried, and gold-colored bars fell out onto the ground. Romulo observed approximately ten boxes per day being loaded into trucks over a period of one year. He testified that the soldiers were "very strict" about keeping the public out of the area and that armed guards were posted at the trucks during the loading.
5. Laundering and sale of the gold
Robert Curtis, an American owner of a mining and refining business in Sparks, Nevada, testified that, in late 1974, he received a number of telephone calls from Norman Kirst, an associate of Ferdinand, inviting him to travel to the Philippines to meet the president. Kirst stated that Ferdinand wanted Curtis's company to resmelt some gold bars and change the "hallmarks."(7) Ferdinand also wanted Curtis to change the chemical composition of the gold while resmelting it so that its origin would not be identifiable. Curtis initially refused the invitation, but finally relented and traveled to the Philippines to meet with Ferdinand.
When he arrived, Curtis met with a number of Ferdinand's aides and generals, including General Ver. He also met with Colonel Lachica, who was "Imelda Marcos' personal security and went with her wherever she went." Colonel Lachica took part in the conversations about resmelting and "rehallmarking and purifying the gold[.]" Finally, after approximately ten days, he met with Ferdinand, Olof Jonsson (another American, see infra), General Ver, and Kirst.
Ferdinand told Curtis that he had recovered an enormous amount of gold from the Yamashi.ta treasure, which he had found at various sites, and that he needed help because the "International World Court had . . . passed a ruling that any . . . World War II treasures that were recovered would revert back to the countries from . . . whence they were taken." Ferdinand told him that he had so much gold that selling it could have a large effect on the world economy or even "start World War III."
Curtis also testified that General Ver had brought him to a basement room in the Marcoses' Miravelles summer palace, where the gold bars were kept. Curtis entered a room "about roughly 40 by 40," stacked to the ceiling with bars of gold. He estimated the ceiling to be ten feet high. Two or three four-foot wide aisles ran through the stacks of gold. The bars were in a standard seventy-five kilogram size. He noticed that the bars had oriental markings" on them. Later, Ferdinand showed Curtis a solid gold buddha statue with a removable head, which Curtis identified from the pictures taken at Roxas's house as the same buddha that Roxas had discovered.
On cross-examination, Curtis testified that his study of the Yamashi.ta treasure had suggested that the treasure contained eighteen buddhas and was distributed among 172 sites. He also testified that Ferdinand had told him that the gold that Curtis had seen had come from a site in the Luzon region. Moreover, in 1975, while Curtis was working with Ferdinand, another site was discovered in the town of Teresa, and more gold was retrieved.
Curtis and others began the work of designing and building a refinery in the Philippines to fulfill Ferdinand's requests. However, on July 5, 1975, General Ver took him to a military cemetery at Fort Bonafacio, walked him to a freshly-dug hole, and put a gun to his head, saying "[W]e're good friends but[,] I'm sorry, I have to do this." Curtis was able to talk General Ver out of shooting him and then quickly left the Philippines. He did not return to the Philippines as long as Ferdinand remained in power.
Olof Jonsson also testified that he had seen stacks of gold bars. Jonsson testified that he had first traveled to the Philippines at the invitation of a colonel stationed at Clark Air Force Base. He was brought there to use his powers as a psychic to locate gold that the colonel believed to be buried there. Jonsson described his psychic powers as including telekinesis, clairvoyance, telepathy, and the power to dematerialize objects with his mind.
While he was in the Philippines, Jonsson was asked to meet Ferdinand. He was brought to Ferdinand's office in the Malacanang Palace. Ferdinand invited Jonsson to stay at a guest house on the palace grounds. After several weeks, Jonsson left the Philippines, but he returned in 1975 with Curtis when the latter had traveled to the Philippines in order to discuss resmelting gold with Ferdinand. On this occasion, Jonsson met again with Ferdinand and General Ver. General Ver showed him a basement room in the guest house outside Malacanang Palace and another room in the summer palace, both filled with gold. He was also shown a golden buddha in the summer palace that was too heavy for him to move. Jonsson described the basement room in the guest cottage as being approximately twenty feet wide, forty feet long, and twelve feet high. He estimated the room in the summer palace as measuring "probably 40 feet by 25 or something" and twelve feet in height. Both rooms were filled with two-foot-long bars of gold stacked to the ceiling. Jonsson testified that it was possible that the bars were four inches wide and four inches thick, but that he could not recall exactly.
A number of witnesses also testified regarding Ferdinand's alleged attempts to sell his gold surreptitiously. Two Australian citizens, Michael O'Brien and John Doel, testified that they were partners in an Australian real estate venture. In 1983, O'Brien and Doel were seeking capital to finance their project. The partners met a Malaysian, Andrew Tan Beng Chong (Tan), who asked the partners to serve as brokers for the sale of ten thousand metric tons of gold in exchange for commissions on the sale. When O'Brien asked Tan the identity of the owner of such a large amount of gold, Tan stated only that the gold was available and could not be sold by regular means because of the source. O'Brien and Doel agreed to assist and created a company, designated "Remington," to carry out the transactions. The partners found buyers for the gold, and Doel subsequently traveled to the Philippines on April 20, 1983 at Tan's instruction. Doel met with Colonel Eike Manois, who claimed to represent the principal seller in the transaction but refused to disclose the seller's identity. At a subsequent meeting, however, a man identified as "Doming" Clemente, an associate of the colonel's, told Doel that Ferdinand was the owner of the gold. Clemente also stated that Imelda was aware of the transaction, but that Ferdinand was handling the details.
During the time that Doel and O'Brien were working on completing the transaction, Clemente relayed an offer from Ferdinand to sell Doel a one-ton golden buddha that Ferdinand had obtained in Baguio City. Doel refused the offer. Clemente also told Doel that the gold bars, which were the object of their transaction, had been "war booty items" and had been "buried in tunnels behind the hospital at Baguio City."
O'Brien also traveled to the Philippines. At one point, when he expressed doubt as to the existence of so much gold, he was blindfolded and taken to a warehouse. Inside the warehouse was a stack of approximately three hundred to four hundred boxes, each the size of a six-pack of beer. O'Brien opened one and observed that it contained three crudely smelted gold bars, which he described as being pitted "like an orange peel." He tried to lift several other boxes and found them too heavy to move. The partners were successful in having the parties sign contracts for the sale of the gold, but, as of July 1983, only a portion of the contracts were executed to their knowledge.
Norman Dacus, a retired American police officer, testified that he lived in the Philippines between August 1983 and April 1985. Dacus had relocated there because he had been recruited by a friend, Joseph Zbin, to become his partner "in brokering gold for [President] Marcos[.]" Dacus met with O'Brien and Clemente with respect to arranging gold transactions. He also met with Ferdinand, General Ver, and other army officers. Dacus was involved in "educating" Ferdinand about "how gold has a fingerprint on it and how you can tell which gold comes from which country." Ferdinand advised him that the first increments of gold he planned to sell were in ten-kilogram ingots, bearing the stamp of the Central Bank. At a subsequent meeting, Ferdinand stated that some of the gold was in metric ton blocks. On one occasion, Dacus was shown what he estimated to be one hundred metric tons of gold, located in a vault at the Coconut Planter's Bank. Later, Dacus was flown to Ilocas Norte and taken to a shrine constructed for Ferdinand. Inside, he observed an approximately four-foot tall, gold-colored buddha statue and what he estimated to be three hundred to five hundred metric tons of gold comprised of twenty-five kilogram ingots.
Based on portions of the testimony of Robert Curtis, Olof Jonsson, Michael O'Brien, and Norman Dacus, Nelson Colton, a long-time gold trader and manager in the gold refining industry, rendered an opinion regarding the value of the gold that the witnesses had allegedly observed. Colton estimated the volume and value of the gold described by the various witnesses in terms of the price of gold on the world market on various dates, including the time of the alleged conversion and in 1980, when gold was at its highest world price subsequent to the alleged conversion.
6. Move to Hawai`i
On February 25, 1986, after they were removed from power by a popular revolution, the United States government transported Ferdinand and Imelda to Hawai`i. Soon thereafter, Roxas contacted a childhood friend, Felix Dacanay, who had become a Georgia resident, to help him press his claims against the Marcoses. On June 3, 1986, Roxas assigned all of his rights to the Yamashi.ta treasure to GBC, which Dacanay had incorporated in Georgia, in exchange for a minority holding of non-voting shares. Richard Hirschfield, an American attorney, testified that he met the Marcoses in Hawai`i in 1986 or 1987. Ferdinand hired him to arrange for an eighteen million dollar loan from Al-Fassi, a member of the Saudi royal family. Marcos offered to secure the loan with gold bullion, of which he claimed to possess tons. He told Hirschfield that he "had access to this Yamashi.ta Treasure from the General of the Japanese War." Hirschfield also testified that either Ferdinand or Imelda told him that they had taken a golden buddha from the person who discovered the treasure and replaced it with a brass buddha.
7. The Baguio City Court proceeding regarding the buddha
Roxas died on May 25, 1993. On April 20, 1995, his brother, Jose Roxas (Jose), commenced an action in Branch III of the Regional Trial Court of Baguio City, praying for release of the buddha statue being retained by the clerk of court and claiming that "I and our family desire to keep the said buddha as a m[e]mento of our late brother, ROGELIO D. ROXAS." Jose's petition was supported by two of Roxas's sons; however, Jose admitted to the court that Roxas had had a number of children out of wedlock whose names he did not know "because [Roxas] had several mistresses."
At the initial hearing on the petition, conducted on April 28, 1995, Jose testified that he had been present when the raiding party confiscated the buddha. The court directed Jose to inspect the buddha in the clerk's possession and testify whether it was the same one taken from Rogelio Roxas. The court noted from its own observation that it appears . . . that the color is gold but it is superficial, it is only the outer part because there are parts where the color was chipoff [sic] and what you see is silver or white[.]" Jose identified the buddha as the statue confiscated from Roxas's house.
More on this later..in the meantime do some research of your own.[/i]
sent in by a t-net member
In the closing months of World War II, in the Philippines, several of Japan's highest ranking imperial princes hid tons of looted gold bullion and other stolen treasure in caves and tunnels, to recover later. This was the wealth of 12 Asian countries, accumulated over thousands of years.
Expert teams accompanying Japan's armed forces had systematically emptied treasuries, banks, factories, private homes, pawn shops, art galleries, and stripped ordinary people, while Japan's top gangsters looted Asia's underworld and its black economy.
There were 175 ''imperial'' treasure sites hidden throughout the Philippines. When American tanks were close, the chief engineers of those vaults were given a farewell party 67 metres underground in Tunnel 8 in the mountains of Luzon, stacked with row after row of gold bars. As the evening progressed, they drank great quantities of sake, sang patriotic songs and shouted banzai (long life).
At midnight, General Yamashita Tomoyuki and the princes slipped out, and dynamite charges were set off in the access tunnels, entombing the engineers. Their vaults would remain secret. The princes escaped to Tokyo by submarine, and three months later General Yamashita surrendered to American troops. Japan had lost the war militarily, but the princes made certain Japan did not lose financially.
This grisly event has remained unknown until now, and the hidden treasure was brushed off as a fanciful legend of ''Yamashita's Gold''. But an eyewitness to the entombment has taken us there and given us his personal account. During the war, Ben Valmores was the young Filipino valet of a senior prince, who was in charge of closing all imperial treasure sites in the Philippines. A sometimes sentimental man, the prince spared Ben's life and led him out of Tunnel 8 just before the dynamite was detonated.
Japan's looting of Asia was overseen by [then-emperor] Hirohito's brother Prince Chichibu. His organisation was codenamed kin no yuri (Golden Lily), the title of one of the emperor's poems. Other princes headed different parts of Golden Lily across the conquered territories. Eventually, Japanese sources told us that Ben's wartime master was prince Takeda Tsuneyoshi, first cousin of Hirohito and grandson of emperor Meiji.
In 1998, we tested Ben with 1930s photographs of many princes, all the names removed, and he instantly identified prince Takeda, Hirohito's brother prince Chichibu and other princes.
Ben said he had spent time with each of them, bringing them food, tea and cigarettes while they inventoried each treasure site. When he saw our photo of Prince Takeda, Ben froze, then began softly crooning the Japanese folk song Sakura, Sakura (Cherry Blossoms), which he said Takeda often sang to himself.
In the final stages of work on a biography of Japan's imperial family titled The Yamato Dynasty, we were told that in October 1945, American intelligence agents learned where some of the Japanese loot was hidden in the Philippines, and quietly recovered billions of dollars worth of gold bullion, platinum, and loose diamonds. This information, if true, revealed the existence of an extraordinary state secret, something the United States Government kept from its own citizens for more than half a century. There was no time to include this in the biography. It had to be investigated separately. Here is some of what we have since learned:
After surrendering on September 2, 1945, General Yamashita was charged with war crimes over gruesome atrocities committed in Manila under the order of an admiral, while Yamashita had ordered withdrawing troops to leave the city unharmed. During his trial, there was no mention of plundered treasure, or of looting during the war.
But we now know there was a hidden agenda. Because it was not possible to torture General Yamashita physically without this becoming evident to his lawyers, members of his staff were tortured. His driver, Major Kojima Kashii, was given special attention. In charge of the torture of Major Kojima was a Filipino-American intelligence officer named Severino Garcia Santa Romana, whose friends called him Santy. He wanted the major to reveal each place where he had taken Yamashita, where bullion and other treasure was hidden for recovery after the war. Supervising Santy during the torture was Captain Edward Lansdale, later one of America's best known ''Cold Warriors''.
Early that October, Kojima broke and led Lansdale and Santy to more than a dozen Golden Lily treasure vaults in the rugged country north of Manila. What they found astounded everyone from General Douglas MacArthur all the way up to the White House. After discussions with his cabinet, President Harry Truman decided to keep the recovery a state secret.
Santy's ensuing recoveries greatly altered America's leverage during the Cold War. According to senior US government officials and high-ranking US Army officers, the Truman administration set this treasure aside along with Axis loot recovered in Europe, as a secret political action fund to fight communism in the Cold War.
Crudely put, it would be used to bribe statesmen and military officers, and to buy elections for anti-communist political parties. The idea for a global political action fund based on war loot had originated with US secretary of war, Henry Stimson. During the war, Stimson had a brain-trust thinking hard about recovered Axis plunder, and how it should be handled after the war. Their solution was to set up what is informally called the ''Black Eagle Trust'', after the black eagle emblem of Hitler's Reichsbank in Berlin.
The Black Eagle Trust was first discussed in secret during July 1944, when 44 nations met at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to plan the post-war economy. This was confirmed to us by a number of high-level sources, including former CIA deputy director Ray Cline, who knew about Santy's recoveries in 1945, and continued to be involved in attempts in the 1980s and 1990s to hide blocks of Japanese war loot still said to be in the vaults of banks in New York.
In November 1945, General MacArthur strolled down row after row of gold bars stacked two metres tall during a tour of vaults opened by Santy. >From what was seen in these vaults alone, it was evident that over a period of years Japan had looted billions of dollars in treasure from all over Asia.Much of this plunder had reached Japan overland earlier, from China through Korea, but the rest was hidden in the Philippines, unable to be shipped to Japan by sea because of the successful US submarine blockade.
According to Ray Cline and others, between 1945 and 1947 the gold bullion recovered by Santy and Lansdale was moved discreetly to 172 accounts at banks in 42 countries.
There were important reasons for all this secrecy. If the recovery of this huge mass of stolen gold was known only to a trusted few, the countries and individuals that had been plundered could not lay claim to it. Truman recognised that the very existence of so much black gold, if it became public knowledge, would cause the metal's fixed price to collapse. But as long as the gold was kept hidden, prices could be maintained and currencies pegged to gold would be stable. Meanwhile, the black gold would serve as a reserve asset, bolstering the prime banks in each country, and strengthening the anti-communist governments of those nations.
To hide the existence of all this treasure, Washington had to tell a number of lies. Especially lies about Japan, which had stolen most of the gold. America wanted Japan to become its anti-communist bastion in Asia, where the mainland was being overrun by communists. If American conservatives and Japanese conservatives were to ally effectively against communism, they had to begin by enlarging their financial resources for the Cold War.
Above all, the source of much of this hidden wealth must never be acknowledged. Washington had to insist, starting in 1945, that Japan never stole anything, and was flat broke and bankrupt when the war ended. Here was the beginning of many terrible secrets.
Because they remained ''off the books'', these enormous political action funds got into the wrong hands, where they remain to this day. We can reveal that in 1960, then vice-president Richard Nixon ''gave'' one of the biggest of these political action funds, the US$35-billion (about HK$272 billion) M-Fund, to leading members of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). In return, he is believed to have sought their support for his presidential campaign that year.
The M-Fund, now said to be worth more than US$500 billion, is still controlled by members of the LDP.
Officially, we are told that Japan's wartime elite the imperial family, the zaibatsu (large industrial business conglomerates), the yakuza (Japanese mafia) and the ''good'' bureaucrats ended the war as impoverished victims of a handful of ''bad'' military zealots. We are told that Japan was badly damaged and impoverished, barely able to feed itself at war's end.
In fact, Japan emerged from the war far richer than before, and with remarkably little damage, except to the homes of millions of ordinary Japanese who did not count, at least in the view of their overlords.
Evidence of Golden Lily loot comes also from straightforward legal actions in America. Such simple things as the probating of the will of Santa Romana (Santy), verification of his tax records, and legal evidence of his fortune deposited in the US, Switzerland, Hong Kong and elsewhere, provide hard proof that the world is awash with clandestine bank accounts growing out of Golden Lily.
Other lawsuits in the US prove that Golden Lily war loot was indeed hidden in the Philippines. Rogelio Roxas, a Filipino locksmith, found a one-tonne solid-gold Buddha and thousands of gold bars hidden in a cave near Baguio only to have it stolen from him by President Ferdinand Marcos. Roxas was subsequently tortured and died in suspicious circumstances. Some believe he was murdered. In 1996, a US Federal Court awarded his heirs a judgment of US$22 billion against the Marcos estate.
As the 1951 Peace Treaty was skewed by secret deals, thousands of Japan's victims have been deprived of any compensation for their suffering. According to Article 14 of the Treaty: ''It is recognised that Japan should pay reparations to the Allied Powers for the damage and suffering caused by it during the war. Nevertheless it is also recognised that the resources of Japan are not presently sufficient.'' To reinforce the claim that Japan was broke, Article 14 noted that ''the Allied Powers waive all reparations claims of the Allied Powers and their nationals arising out of any actions taken by Japan...'' By signing the Treaty, Allied countries concurred that Japan's plunder had vanished down a rabbit hole, and all Japan's victims were out of luck. In return for going along with the Treaty, the Allies received portions of the gold bullion recovered by Santy.
We have evidence from former CIA deputy director Cline that the gold bullion Santy and Lansdale recovered was secretly moved to national treasuries and prime banks in more than 42 countries, including Great Britain. We also have evidence from British archives confirming this.
More than half a century later, the last battle of the Pacific War is being waged in courts in the US and Japan where surviving prisoners of war, slave labourers, comfort women and civilian victims of Japan have filed billion-dollar lawsuits to win compensation so mysteriously denied them after the war. In 1995, it was estimated that there were 700,000 victims of the war who had still received no compensation.
Today, their numbers are dwindling rapidly because of age and illness. Backing them is an extraordinary coalition, including international law firms with years of experience, fighting for compensation from German industries and Swiss banks, for crimes committed and money looted during the Nazi Holocaust.
The facts of this story are documented from the days of World War Two, to the Philippine Courts of Justice,to Banks from Switzerland to Hong Kong to the good Old USA.The room for nay-saying this one is gone. It is a fact, the only thing that stands in your way of knowing that is your attitude and some time on google.We are passed the nay-saying. The only response nay sayer will get here,is some exercise for your fingers on your keyboard..First we want to have a post here, where people who are interested in treasure can read, post and ask questions. Please add to the knowledge that we are about to discover about this story, if you do any research please post your sources..urls or annotations, books ect. We will try to do the same.
Welcome all Citizens of the Philippines, Mabuhi Manong- Kumsusta, you are most welcome here..as this story takes place in your homeland..BUT please, this is not a board to look for financing or investors..We know your heart might be pure and your story true,,but we have seen all to many , try to take advantage so I ask you to join us as Treasure Hunters, looking only for the truth, the story, the facts, the goods.
I am currently helping two other Pinoy's with their symbols and codes..since they are based on the Jesuit/spanish codes you may ask and questions and post pictures here..just no obvious landmarks, was we don't want to comprise the security of your site..There are a few very savvy and experienced people here who may want to see your pics and help you decode what they can..You are welcome to do so.
If you are not comfortable posting your pics online just yet - you can message me on pm Salamat!
Yamashi.ta and his gang used Jesuit/Spanish Treasure Codes this I know for sure, I have seen it first hand.The research that I did, showed that in 1932 in Vienna the Japanese High Command send ambassadors to meet with Hitlers minions, one of the things discussed was solutions to the Treasure Codes that the Nazi's had obtained in their looting of Europe. This copy of the what I call the Jesuit Code Book,was used by the Japanese to recover treasures left by the Jesuits and Spanish on the Islands of the Philippines AND rebury that and other loot stolen from Asia during the Japanese reign of terror in South East Asia prior to WW2.
WE also know that the Japanese Military send as many as 100,000 soldiers and civilians to the PR (Republic of the Philippines) 20 years before Pearl Harbor attack. The recovered Jesuit treasure using the codes that the Germans gave them..Digging caves and tunnels in anticipation of the treasure they would loot from the China campaign.
One likely treasure hunter 30 years later, a pinoy living in Northern Luzon, our hero, 'Rog' Roxas is about to "go down the rabbit hole"..Rog happened upon a person who know of some buried Japanese treasure of the yamashi.ta group..well rather than tell the story from memory let me paste the information directly from the court documents..least we raise the ugly head of the dragon who breathes fire when any tiny item is forgotten or left out by mistake. The dragon will stay away as long as we include everything as it happened!
transcript:
Rog worked as a locksmith in Baguio City, the Philippines. He was also an amateur coin collector and treasure hunter. In 1961, Roxas met a man named Fuchugami in Baguio City, who claimed that his father had been in the Japanese army and had drawn a map identifying the location of the legendary "Yama.shita Treasure." The treasure purportedly consisted of booty, which had been plundered from various Southeast Asian countries, during World War II, by Japanese troops under the command of General Tomoyuki Yamashi.ta and which was allegedly buried in the Philippines during the final battle for the islands in order to keep it out of the hands of the Americans.
At around the same time, Rog Roxas met Eusebio Ocubo, who claimed to have served as General Yamashi.ta's interpreter during World War II. Ocubo advised Roxas that, during the war, he had been taken to some tunnels controlled by General Yamashi.ta, in order to retrieve silver to pay for food for the Japanese troops. There, he observed boxes of various sizes that contained gold and silver. Shortly thereafter, he also observed a golden buddha statue, which was kept at a convent near the tunnels.
Armed with Fuchugami's description of his father's maps and Ocubo's representations, Roxas organized a group of partners and laborers to search for the treasure and obtained a permit for the purpose from Judge Pio Marcos, a relative of Ferdinand. Judge Marcos informed Roxas that, in accordance with Philippine law, a thirty-percent share of any discovered treasure would have to be paid to the government.
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.(3) 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."
On April 1, 1971, Roxas showed the buddha to a third prospective buyer, Joe Oihara, who was accompanied by another individual, Romeo Amansec. Oihara told Roxas that he was staying at the home of Ferdinand's mother, Josefa Edralin Marcos. Oihara examined the buddha at length, performed another assay, and also closely scrutinized the designs on the statue. He indicated an interest in buying the buddha, promising to return in several days with a partial payment of one million pesos. Rendered suspicious by Oihara's long scrutiny of the buddha, Roxas undertook his own examination and discovered that the head was removable. Inside, he found "more than two handsful" of what he surmised to be uncut diamonds. He placed the diamonds in his closet near the buddha and replaced the head.
2. The raid on Roxas's house
On April 5, 1971, at 2:30 a.m., men purporting to be from the Criminal Investigation Service (CIS) and the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), two Philippine national security agencies, knocked on Roxas's door, claiming to have a search warrant. When Roxas failed to respond, the men broke two of Roxas's front windows and pointed the barrels of their rifles inside. They informed Roxas that if he did not open the door within three minutes he would be shot.
Roxas opened the door, and eight men wearing military uniforms entered the house, accompanied by Oihara. They briefly displayed a document that they claimed was a search warrant. Before they snatched it away, Roxas was able to determine that it contained language regarding a "violation of [a] Central Bank regulation and illegal possession of firearms" and that it was signed by Judge Marcos. The men beat Roxas's brother with their rifles and ordered Roxas's family and his two bodyguards to lie down on the floor. When they left, they took the buddha, the diamonds, the remaining seventeen bars of gold, the samurai swords, a piggy bank belonging to Roxas's children, and his wife's coin collection.
Roxas reported the raid to the media and the local police. Subsequently, he went to Judge Marcos's home. Roxas asked Judge Marcos why he had signed the search warrant. Judge Marcos responded that he had had no choice because "the principe" ("the prince") had ordered the confiscation. When Roxas asked who "the principe" was, Judge Marcos responded that it was Ferdinand. Judge Marcos also advised Roxas that it was Oihara's companion, Amansec, who had initially applied for the search warrant, claiming to have seen a gun in Roxas's house. Judge Marcos appeared angry that Roxas had reported the case to the police and the media and stated that, as a result, the CIS and the NBI would likely kill Roxas. Roxas interpreted Judge Marcos's remarks as a threat; nevertheless, on April 7, 1971, Roxas returned to the police station and signed a complaint.
Roxas and his family traveled to Cabantuan City to enlist the aid of Provincial Governor Joson, who provided Roxas with four bodyguards. Roxas then went into hiding in Cabantuan City. Soon thereafter, on April 19, 1971, the military deposited a buddha statue with the City Court in Baguio City.
While he was in Cabantuan City, Roxas was approached by Rosario Uy and Anita Igna. They offered Roxas three million pesos to publicly affirm that the buddha statue held by the court was the same one that he had found. They also told him that they represented Ferdinand's mother. Roxas refused the offer. Later, Uy reached him by telephone and renewed the offer, assuring Roxas that he need not be afraid to accept because Ferdinand would be the one paying him. Roxas again refused.
Roxas's story began to appear regularly in the newspapers, radio, and television and to attract the attention of opposition politicians. Roxas met with a number of politicians, as well as with Philippine Secretary of Justice Vicente Abad Santos. Roxas told the Secretary his story, and the Secretary promised to guarantee Roxas's safety for a trip to Baguio City to identify the buddha in the City Court.
On April 29, 1971, Roxas traveled to the courthouse in Baguio City, accompanied by his bodyguards, two prosecutors from the Justice Department, a lawyer whom Roxas had hired, and a number of reporters and cameramen. Upon examination of the statue, Roxas concluded that it was not the same buddha that he had discovered because: (1) its color was different; (2) it had different facial features; (3) the head was not detachable; and (4) there was no hole under the arm where the original buddha had been drilled. On camera, Roxas announced his conclusion to those present. Roxas then brought the group to his house, where he showed them the damage caused by the raiding party and the closet where he had stored the buddha. Roxas later received an invitation to testify before the Philippine senate about the events; he did so on May 4, 1971.
3. Arrest and torture
On May 18, 1971, Roxas was arrested in Cabantuan City by three men in civilian clothing. Roxas testified that the men told him "to go with them to make a negotiation with the President." They also reassured him, "Don't be afraid. We are under Malacanang[(4)] -- you know, we are under Malacanang agent. We can make a negotiation to the President, and nothing more." The men took him to the home of Colonel Ponciano Gonzales.
There, an individual identified as Colonel Olivas punched Roxas in the stomach five times. When Roxas asked him why he was being beaten, Colonel Olivas responded, "You're mentioning the name of the President[.]" One of the men then said, "We must report to the President that Rogelio Roxas is in our custody." Colonel Olivas placed a telephone call, during which he appeared to Roxas to be speaking to Ferdinand, because he addressed the other party as "Mr. President."
Subsequently, Roxas was taken to the constabulary headquarters in San Fernando, Pampanga. Once there, a number of soldiers led him to a dark room, where he was shown a picture of his wife and children and told that he must cooperate if he wanted to see them again. The soldiers ordered Roxas to "pinpoint those senators, that they pay me to implicate the name of the president." Roxas refused to sign such a statement, and the soldiers responded by shocking him with wires attached to a large battery. The soldiers also interrogated Roxas about the location of the remaining treasure; however, he refused to divulge this information. The soldiers continued to shock him for several hours and, on one occasion, burned him with cigarettes.
Roxas was then taken to the residence of a judge, where he was directed to sign an affidavit. However, because of the torture he had endured, he was unable to clasp his hand around the pen, and, therefore, could not sign. The soldiers then transported Roxas to a hotel in Angeles City. There, he was questioned again about the location of the treasure. When he refused to respond, he was beaten with a rubber mallet until he passed out. After the beatings, he noticed a great deal of damage to his right eye and ear, neither of which ever fully healed.
Roxas was kept in a room at the hotel for two weeks, during which time he was repeatedly ordered to sign yet another affidavit. This affidavit averred that the raid in his house had been performed "in a peaceful manner" and that the members of the raiding party had possessed no automatic weapons as had been reported in the press. When Roxas finally signed the affidavit, he was brought back to the city court in Baguio City and ordered to point at the buddha statue while being photographed and to identify gold bars as those taken from his home.
That night, Roxas picked the lock on the window of his room and escaped. After finding refuge at his sister's home, Roxas contacted a senator and was again asked to testify before the senate, which he did on June 30, 1971. In his deposition in the instant case, Roxas testified that, during the June 30, 1971 hearing, he told the senators about being tortured.(5)
After the senate hearing, Roxas returned to Baguio City. Once there, he received a letter from Cesar Dumlao, a finance officer at the Malacanang, requesting a meeting on behalf of Ferdinand. Roxas met with Dumlao and was shown a letter, which indicated that Ferdinand was offering to pay him five million pesos.(6) Roxas was instructed to return the next day; however, he did not report back because he became frightened.
One week after his return to Baguio City, Roxas was arrested for failing to appear at a hearing on an illegal weapons charge that had been pending against him since January 28, 1971. He was brought before a judge, who ordered him incarcerated as a result of his default.
On August 21, 1971, Senator Osmena sent an attorney to bail Roxas out of jail. Roxas traveled with the attorney to Manila to meet with Senator Osmena. Senator Osmena asked Roxas to speak at a political rally that evening. Roxas agreed, but he was unable to speak because the rally was bombed before he could start. Roxas ran away and went into hiding for almost one year.
When Roxas finally returned to his Baguio City home in July 1972, he was immediately arrested by two men, who represented to him that they were from the CIS. These men took Roxas to a naval base in the province of Zambales, where he was confined in the stockade. While there, Roxas was questioned by Provincial Commander Rodolfo Patalinghod about his discovery of the golden buddha.
On September 21, 1972, Ferdinand declared martial law in the Philippines; the order remained in effect until 1983. After the declaration, General Fabian Ver visited Roxas in his cell. General Ver admitted that he had been among the raiding party at Roxas's house. He also told Roxas that there had been "an order to kill [Roxas] by the military," but that the order had been canceled when it was discovered that Roxas was a member of the Church of Christ. He advised Roxas to keep quiet about his case, in light of the fact that martial law had been declared.
In January 1973, Roxas was transferred to a prison camp in Baguio City and tried on the charges of possession of an illegal firearm and unlawfully firing a revolver into the air. He was convicted of both counts by the Third Branch of the City Court of Baguio and sentenced, in connection with the first charge, to an "indeterminate penalty of imprisonment ranging from One (1) year and One (1) day as minimum to Four (4) years as maximum" and, in connection with the second, to a fine. Judgment was entered on January 31, 1973. During his incarceration, Roxas was beaten and questioned about the location of the treasure on two occasions by a man known as Colonel Gemoto -- who identified himself as a member of the "Task Force Restoration" -- accompanied by representatives of the CIS.
4. Military excavations
Roxas was released from prison on November 19, 1974. When he arrived home the next day, he noticed soldiers standing outside tents near the Baguio General Hospital. Sometime in December 1974, some soldiers visited Roxas in his shop and told him that they were members of the Task Force Restoration, which was conducting excavations behind the hospital. They listed their address in Roxas's logbook (which was never produced at trial) as Malacanang Palace. The soldiers asked him to come with them to help with the excavation; he refused. Roxas passed by the site in 1976 and saw that the excavations were still ongoing. In October 1976, Roxas and his family moved to Visayan City, where they stayed for the next ten years without further incident relating to the Yama[prohibited word deleted]a treasure.
Juan Quijon (Juan) and his son, Romulo Quijon (Romulo), corroborated Roxas's testimony regarding the excavations. Juan had worked as a nursing attendant at Baguio General Hospital from 1945 to 1988. He noticed a number of soldiers involved in excavation behind the hospital between 1974 and 1975. Over a one-week period, Juan observed men carrying large wooden boxes out of a tunnel and placing them in trucks. Each box was carried by at least four -- and sometimes six -- men. The soldiers' uniforms bore the initials "PSC," and the trucks had the letters "PMA" painted on them. Juan also observed men removing some steel boxes with the aid of a winch. The soldiers left in August 1975.
Romulo testified that he worked as a cook for the soldiers performing excavations behind the hospital in 1974. Romulo testified that the "PSC" on the soldiers' uniforms stood for "Presidential Security Command," and the "PMA" painted on the trucks stood for "Philippine Military Academy." The soldiers employed civilians to perform most of the digging. Romulo saw these civilians pushing and pulling boxes out of a hole and loading them into trucks. The boxes appeared to be old and in poor condition. Some fell apart while being carried, and gold-colored bars fell out onto the ground. Romulo observed approximately ten boxes per day being loaded into trucks over a period of one year. He testified that the soldiers were "very strict" about keeping the public out of the area and that armed guards were posted at the trucks during the loading.
5. Laundering and sale of the gold
Robert Curtis, an American owner of a mining and refining business in Sparks, Nevada, testified that, in late 1974, he received a number of telephone calls from Norman Kirst, an associate of Ferdinand, inviting him to travel to the Philippines to meet the president. Kirst stated that Ferdinand wanted Curtis's company to resmelt some gold bars and change the "hallmarks."(7) Ferdinand also wanted Curtis to change the chemical composition of the gold while resmelting it so that its origin would not be identifiable. Curtis initially refused the invitation, but finally relented and traveled to the Philippines to meet with Ferdinand.
When he arrived, Curtis met with a number of Ferdinand's aides and generals, including General Ver. He also met with Colonel Lachica, who was "Imelda Marcos' personal security and went with her wherever she went." Colonel Lachica took part in the conversations about resmelting and "rehallmarking and purifying the gold[.]" Finally, after approximately ten days, he met with Ferdinand, Olof Jonsson (another American, see infra), General Ver, and Kirst.
Ferdinand told Curtis that he had recovered an enormous amount of gold from the Yamashi.ta treasure, which he had found at various sites, and that he needed help because the "International World Court had . . . passed a ruling that any . . . World War II treasures that were recovered would revert back to the countries from . . . whence they were taken." Ferdinand told him that he had so much gold that selling it could have a large effect on the world economy or even "start World War III."
Curtis also testified that General Ver had brought him to a basement room in the Marcoses' Miravelles summer palace, where the gold bars were kept. Curtis entered a room "about roughly 40 by 40," stacked to the ceiling with bars of gold. He estimated the ceiling to be ten feet high. Two or three four-foot wide aisles ran through the stacks of gold. The bars were in a standard seventy-five kilogram size. He noticed that the bars had oriental markings" on them. Later, Ferdinand showed Curtis a solid gold buddha statue with a removable head, which Curtis identified from the pictures taken at Roxas's house as the same buddha that Roxas had discovered.
On cross-examination, Curtis testified that his study of the Yamashi.ta treasure had suggested that the treasure contained eighteen buddhas and was distributed among 172 sites. He also testified that Ferdinand had told him that the gold that Curtis had seen had come from a site in the Luzon region. Moreover, in 1975, while Curtis was working with Ferdinand, another site was discovered in the town of Teresa, and more gold was retrieved.
Curtis and others began the work of designing and building a refinery in the Philippines to fulfill Ferdinand's requests. However, on July 5, 1975, General Ver took him to a military cemetery at Fort Bonafacio, walked him to a freshly-dug hole, and put a gun to his head, saying "[W]e're good friends but[,] I'm sorry, I have to do this." Curtis was able to talk General Ver out of shooting him and then quickly left the Philippines. He did not return to the Philippines as long as Ferdinand remained in power.
Olof Jonsson also testified that he had seen stacks of gold bars. Jonsson testified that he had first traveled to the Philippines at the invitation of a colonel stationed at Clark Air Force Base. He was brought there to use his powers as a psychic to locate gold that the colonel believed to be buried there. Jonsson described his psychic powers as including telekinesis, clairvoyance, telepathy, and the power to dematerialize objects with his mind.
While he was in the Philippines, Jonsson was asked to meet Ferdinand. He was brought to Ferdinand's office in the Malacanang Palace. Ferdinand invited Jonsson to stay at a guest house on the palace grounds. After several weeks, Jonsson left the Philippines, but he returned in 1975 with Curtis when the latter had traveled to the Philippines in order to discuss resmelting gold with Ferdinand. On this occasion, Jonsson met again with Ferdinand and General Ver. General Ver showed him a basement room in the guest house outside Malacanang Palace and another room in the summer palace, both filled with gold. He was also shown a golden buddha in the summer palace that was too heavy for him to move. Jonsson described the basement room in the guest cottage as being approximately twenty feet wide, forty feet long, and twelve feet high. He estimated the room in the summer palace as measuring "probably 40 feet by 25 or something" and twelve feet in height. Both rooms were filled with two-foot-long bars of gold stacked to the ceiling. Jonsson testified that it was possible that the bars were four inches wide and four inches thick, but that he could not recall exactly.
A number of witnesses also testified regarding Ferdinand's alleged attempts to sell his gold surreptitiously. Two Australian citizens, Michael O'Brien and John Doel, testified that they were partners in an Australian real estate venture. In 1983, O'Brien and Doel were seeking capital to finance their project. The partners met a Malaysian, Andrew Tan Beng Chong (Tan), who asked the partners to serve as brokers for the sale of ten thousand metric tons of gold in exchange for commissions on the sale. When O'Brien asked Tan the identity of the owner of such a large amount of gold, Tan stated only that the gold was available and could not be sold by regular means because of the source. O'Brien and Doel agreed to assist and created a company, designated "Remington," to carry out the transactions. The partners found buyers for the gold, and Doel subsequently traveled to the Philippines on April 20, 1983 at Tan's instruction. Doel met with Colonel Eike Manois, who claimed to represent the principal seller in the transaction but refused to disclose the seller's identity. At a subsequent meeting, however, a man identified as "Doming" Clemente, an associate of the colonel's, told Doel that Ferdinand was the owner of the gold. Clemente also stated that Imelda was aware of the transaction, but that Ferdinand was handling the details.
During the time that Doel and O'Brien were working on completing the transaction, Clemente relayed an offer from Ferdinand to sell Doel a one-ton golden buddha that Ferdinand had obtained in Baguio City. Doel refused the offer. Clemente also told Doel that the gold bars, which were the object of their transaction, had been "war booty items" and had been "buried in tunnels behind the hospital at Baguio City."
O'Brien also traveled to the Philippines. At one point, when he expressed doubt as to the existence of so much gold, he was blindfolded and taken to a warehouse. Inside the warehouse was a stack of approximately three hundred to four hundred boxes, each the size of a six-pack of beer. O'Brien opened one and observed that it contained three crudely smelted gold bars, which he described as being pitted "like an orange peel." He tried to lift several other boxes and found them too heavy to move. The partners were successful in having the parties sign contracts for the sale of the gold, but, as of July 1983, only a portion of the contracts were executed to their knowledge.
Norman Dacus, a retired American police officer, testified that he lived in the Philippines between August 1983 and April 1985. Dacus had relocated there because he had been recruited by a friend, Joseph Zbin, to become his partner "in brokering gold for [President] Marcos[.]" Dacus met with O'Brien and Clemente with respect to arranging gold transactions. He also met with Ferdinand, General Ver, and other army officers. Dacus was involved in "educating" Ferdinand about "how gold has a fingerprint on it and how you can tell which gold comes from which country." Ferdinand advised him that the first increments of gold he planned to sell were in ten-kilogram ingots, bearing the stamp of the Central Bank. At a subsequent meeting, Ferdinand stated that some of the gold was in metric ton blocks. On one occasion, Dacus was shown what he estimated to be one hundred metric tons of gold, located in a vault at the Coconut Planter's Bank. Later, Dacus was flown to Ilocas Norte and taken to a shrine constructed for Ferdinand. Inside, he observed an approximately four-foot tall, gold-colored buddha statue and what he estimated to be three hundred to five hundred metric tons of gold comprised of twenty-five kilogram ingots.
Based on portions of the testimony of Robert Curtis, Olof Jonsson, Michael O'Brien, and Norman Dacus, Nelson Colton, a long-time gold trader and manager in the gold refining industry, rendered an opinion regarding the value of the gold that the witnesses had allegedly observed. Colton estimated the volume and value of the gold described by the various witnesses in terms of the price of gold on the world market on various dates, including the time of the alleged conversion and in 1980, when gold was at its highest world price subsequent to the alleged conversion.
6. Move to Hawai`i
On February 25, 1986, after they were removed from power by a popular revolution, the United States government transported Ferdinand and Imelda to Hawai`i. Soon thereafter, Roxas contacted a childhood friend, Felix Dacanay, who had become a Georgia resident, to help him press his claims against the Marcoses. On June 3, 1986, Roxas assigned all of his rights to the Yamashi.ta treasure to GBC, which Dacanay had incorporated in Georgia, in exchange for a minority holding of non-voting shares. Richard Hirschfield, an American attorney, testified that he met the Marcoses in Hawai`i in 1986 or 1987. Ferdinand hired him to arrange for an eighteen million dollar loan from Al-Fassi, a member of the Saudi royal family. Marcos offered to secure the loan with gold bullion, of which he claimed to possess tons. He told Hirschfield that he "had access to this Yamashi.ta Treasure from the General of the Japanese War." Hirschfield also testified that either Ferdinand or Imelda told him that they had taken a golden buddha from the person who discovered the treasure and replaced it with a brass buddha.
7. The Baguio City Court proceeding regarding the buddha
Roxas died on May 25, 1993. On April 20, 1995, his brother, Jose Roxas (Jose), commenced an action in Branch III of the Regional Trial Court of Baguio City, praying for release of the buddha statue being retained by the clerk of court and claiming that "I and our family desire to keep the said buddha as a m[e]mento of our late brother, ROGELIO D. ROXAS." Jose's petition was supported by two of Roxas's sons; however, Jose admitted to the court that Roxas had had a number of children out of wedlock whose names he did not know "because [Roxas] had several mistresses."
At the initial hearing on the petition, conducted on April 28, 1995, Jose testified that he had been present when the raiding party confiscated the buddha. The court directed Jose to inspect the buddha in the clerk's possession and testify whether it was the same one taken from Rogelio Roxas. The court noted from its own observation that it appears . . . that the color is gold but it is superficial, it is only the outer part because there are parts where the color was chipoff [sic] and what you see is silver or white[.]" Jose identified the buddha as the statue confiscated from Roxas's house.
More on this later..in the meantime do some research of your own.[/i]
sent in by a t-net member
In the closing months of World War II, in the Philippines, several of Japan's highest ranking imperial princes hid tons of looted gold bullion and other stolen treasure in caves and tunnels, to recover later. This was the wealth of 12 Asian countries, accumulated over thousands of years.
Expert teams accompanying Japan's armed forces had systematically emptied treasuries, banks, factories, private homes, pawn shops, art galleries, and stripped ordinary people, while Japan's top gangsters looted Asia's underworld and its black economy.
There were 175 ''imperial'' treasure sites hidden throughout the Philippines. When American tanks were close, the chief engineers of those vaults were given a farewell party 67 metres underground in Tunnel 8 in the mountains of Luzon, stacked with row after row of gold bars. As the evening progressed, they drank great quantities of sake, sang patriotic songs and shouted banzai (long life).
At midnight, General Yamashita Tomoyuki and the princes slipped out, and dynamite charges were set off in the access tunnels, entombing the engineers. Their vaults would remain secret. The princes escaped to Tokyo by submarine, and three months later General Yamashita surrendered to American troops. Japan had lost the war militarily, but the princes made certain Japan did not lose financially.
This grisly event has remained unknown until now, and the hidden treasure was brushed off as a fanciful legend of ''Yamashita's Gold''. But an eyewitness to the entombment has taken us there and given us his personal account. During the war, Ben Valmores was the young Filipino valet of a senior prince, who was in charge of closing all imperial treasure sites in the Philippines. A sometimes sentimental man, the prince spared Ben's life and led him out of Tunnel 8 just before the dynamite was detonated.
Japan's looting of Asia was overseen by [then-emperor] Hirohito's brother Prince Chichibu. His organisation was codenamed kin no yuri (Golden Lily), the title of one of the emperor's poems. Other princes headed different parts of Golden Lily across the conquered territories. Eventually, Japanese sources told us that Ben's wartime master was prince Takeda Tsuneyoshi, first cousin of Hirohito and grandson of emperor Meiji.
In 1998, we tested Ben with 1930s photographs of many princes, all the names removed, and he instantly identified prince Takeda, Hirohito's brother prince Chichibu and other princes.
Ben said he had spent time with each of them, bringing them food, tea and cigarettes while they inventoried each treasure site. When he saw our photo of Prince Takeda, Ben froze, then began softly crooning the Japanese folk song Sakura, Sakura (Cherry Blossoms), which he said Takeda often sang to himself.
In the final stages of work on a biography of Japan's imperial family titled The Yamato Dynasty, we were told that in October 1945, American intelligence agents learned where some of the Japanese loot was hidden in the Philippines, and quietly recovered billions of dollars worth of gold bullion, platinum, and loose diamonds. This information, if true, revealed the existence of an extraordinary state secret, something the United States Government kept from its own citizens for more than half a century. There was no time to include this in the biography. It had to be investigated separately. Here is some of what we have since learned:
After surrendering on September 2, 1945, General Yamashita was charged with war crimes over gruesome atrocities committed in Manila under the order of an admiral, while Yamashita had ordered withdrawing troops to leave the city unharmed. During his trial, there was no mention of plundered treasure, or of looting during the war.
But we now know there was a hidden agenda. Because it was not possible to torture General Yamashita physically without this becoming evident to his lawyers, members of his staff were tortured. His driver, Major Kojima Kashii, was given special attention. In charge of the torture of Major Kojima was a Filipino-American intelligence officer named Severino Garcia Santa Romana, whose friends called him Santy. He wanted the major to reveal each place where he had taken Yamashita, where bullion and other treasure was hidden for recovery after the war. Supervising Santy during the torture was Captain Edward Lansdale, later one of America's best known ''Cold Warriors''.
Early that October, Kojima broke and led Lansdale and Santy to more than a dozen Golden Lily treasure vaults in the rugged country north of Manila. What they found astounded everyone from General Douglas MacArthur all the way up to the White House. After discussions with his cabinet, President Harry Truman decided to keep the recovery a state secret.
Santy's ensuing recoveries greatly altered America's leverage during the Cold War. According to senior US government officials and high-ranking US Army officers, the Truman administration set this treasure aside along with Axis loot recovered in Europe, as a secret political action fund to fight communism in the Cold War.
Crudely put, it would be used to bribe statesmen and military officers, and to buy elections for anti-communist political parties. The idea for a global political action fund based on war loot had originated with US secretary of war, Henry Stimson. During the war, Stimson had a brain-trust thinking hard about recovered Axis plunder, and how it should be handled after the war. Their solution was to set up what is informally called the ''Black Eagle Trust'', after the black eagle emblem of Hitler's Reichsbank in Berlin.
The Black Eagle Trust was first discussed in secret during July 1944, when 44 nations met at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to plan the post-war economy. This was confirmed to us by a number of high-level sources, including former CIA deputy director Ray Cline, who knew about Santy's recoveries in 1945, and continued to be involved in attempts in the 1980s and 1990s to hide blocks of Japanese war loot still said to be in the vaults of banks in New York.
In November 1945, General MacArthur strolled down row after row of gold bars stacked two metres tall during a tour of vaults opened by Santy. >From what was seen in these vaults alone, it was evident that over a period of years Japan had looted billions of dollars in treasure from all over Asia.Much of this plunder had reached Japan overland earlier, from China through Korea, but the rest was hidden in the Philippines, unable to be shipped to Japan by sea because of the successful US submarine blockade.
According to Ray Cline and others, between 1945 and 1947 the gold bullion recovered by Santy and Lansdale was moved discreetly to 172 accounts at banks in 42 countries.
There were important reasons for all this secrecy. If the recovery of this huge mass of stolen gold was known only to a trusted few, the countries and individuals that had been plundered could not lay claim to it. Truman recognised that the very existence of so much black gold, if it became public knowledge, would cause the metal's fixed price to collapse. But as long as the gold was kept hidden, prices could be maintained and currencies pegged to gold would be stable. Meanwhile, the black gold would serve as a reserve asset, bolstering the prime banks in each country, and strengthening the anti-communist governments of those nations.
To hide the existence of all this treasure, Washington had to tell a number of lies. Especially lies about Japan, which had stolen most of the gold. America wanted Japan to become its anti-communist bastion in Asia, where the mainland was being overrun by communists. If American conservatives and Japanese conservatives were to ally effectively against communism, they had to begin by enlarging their financial resources for the Cold War.
Above all, the source of much of this hidden wealth must never be acknowledged. Washington had to insist, starting in 1945, that Japan never stole anything, and was flat broke and bankrupt when the war ended. Here was the beginning of many terrible secrets.
Because they remained ''off the books'', these enormous political action funds got into the wrong hands, where they remain to this day. We can reveal that in 1960, then vice-president Richard Nixon ''gave'' one of the biggest of these political action funds, the US$35-billion (about HK$272 billion) M-Fund, to leading members of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). In return, he is believed to have sought their support for his presidential campaign that year.
The M-Fund, now said to be worth more than US$500 billion, is still controlled by members of the LDP.
Officially, we are told that Japan's wartime elite the imperial family, the zaibatsu (large industrial business conglomerates), the yakuza (Japanese mafia) and the ''good'' bureaucrats ended the war as impoverished victims of a handful of ''bad'' military zealots. We are told that Japan was badly damaged and impoverished, barely able to feed itself at war's end.
In fact, Japan emerged from the war far richer than before, and with remarkably little damage, except to the homes of millions of ordinary Japanese who did not count, at least in the view of their overlords.
Evidence of Golden Lily loot comes also from straightforward legal actions in America. Such simple things as the probating of the will of Santa Romana (Santy), verification of his tax records, and legal evidence of his fortune deposited in the US, Switzerland, Hong Kong and elsewhere, provide hard proof that the world is awash with clandestine bank accounts growing out of Golden Lily.
Other lawsuits in the US prove that Golden Lily war loot was indeed hidden in the Philippines. Rogelio Roxas, a Filipino locksmith, found a one-tonne solid-gold Buddha and thousands of gold bars hidden in a cave near Baguio only to have it stolen from him by President Ferdinand Marcos. Roxas was subsequently tortured and died in suspicious circumstances. Some believe he was murdered. In 1996, a US Federal Court awarded his heirs a judgment of US$22 billion against the Marcos estate.
As the 1951 Peace Treaty was skewed by secret deals, thousands of Japan's victims have been deprived of any compensation for their suffering. According to Article 14 of the Treaty: ''It is recognised that Japan should pay reparations to the Allied Powers for the damage and suffering caused by it during the war. Nevertheless it is also recognised that the resources of Japan are not presently sufficient.'' To reinforce the claim that Japan was broke, Article 14 noted that ''the Allied Powers waive all reparations claims of the Allied Powers and their nationals arising out of any actions taken by Japan...'' By signing the Treaty, Allied countries concurred that Japan's plunder had vanished down a rabbit hole, and all Japan's victims were out of luck. In return for going along with the Treaty, the Allies received portions of the gold bullion recovered by Santy.
We have evidence from former CIA deputy director Cline that the gold bullion Santy and Lansdale recovered was secretly moved to national treasuries and prime banks in more than 42 countries, including Great Britain. We also have evidence from British archives confirming this.
More than half a century later, the last battle of the Pacific War is being waged in courts in the US and Japan where surviving prisoners of war, slave labourers, comfort women and civilian victims of Japan have filed billion-dollar lawsuits to win compensation so mysteriously denied them after the war. In 1995, it was estimated that there were 700,000 victims of the war who had still received no compensation.
Today, their numbers are dwindling rapidly because of age and illness. Backing them is an extraordinary coalition, including international law firms with years of experience, fighting for compensation from German industries and Swiss banks, for crimes committed and money looted during the Nazi Holocaust.
