Sign And Symbol Of Yamashita Treasure

[Gualberto Estrada]

MacArthur was rendered speechless after walking down countless rows of gold bars stacked over two metres high, and promptly notified United States President Harry S Truman of the discovery, who immediately deemed it a state secret. The United States had stumbled upon the greatest treasure hoards in history, including more gold bullion than was known to be in existence, and would use this unfathomable wealth to influence world affairs, win the Cold War, launch a space programme, and create a new world order.

Roger Roxas was a former Filipino soldier turned locksmith, and president of the Treasure Hunters Association of the Philippines, who lived in Baguio, a mountainous resort town about 130 miles north of Manila. The town had been occupied and governed by General Yamashita in the early 1940s. Over the years Roxas became convinced that Yamashita had buried a great treasure in Baguio, and his stature as president of the Philippine Treasure Hunters Association attracted many acquaintances who would confirm his hunch.

One such individual was Eusebio Okubo, who as a young man had served as an interpreter for General Yamashita while he was stationed in Baguio. Okubo recounted to Roxas how General Yamashita had transferred large quantities of gold and silver from Manila and stored them in wooden boxes deep underground, accessible by a tunnel complex near Baguio Hospital. Okubo also confided that the General had in his possession a solid gold buddha, which he kept in the convent where he stayed, across from the hospital, before depositing it in a vault beneath the hospital grounds. Roxas was convinced there was treasure buried around the Baguio Hospital, but was unsure exactly where to look.

Roxas was more convinced than ever that a great treasure was buried near Baguio Hospital, and who could blame him? His conviction was supported by four first-hand accounts and multiple treasure maps given to him by eyewitnesses. In the Philippines treasure reclamation requires a permit that entitles the government to 30% of the findings. Unlike most treasure hunters, Roxas followed the official protocol, but was unlucky in that his permit was granted by Judge Pio Marcos, the uncle of President Ferdinand Marcos. In hindsight, Roxas had been aware of the implications of this clandestine relationship, but had had no choice in the matter. The hospital was on public grounds and was highly visible; covert excavation was simply not an option. Finally, in the spring of 1970 Roxas and his team identified the tunnel area entrance and began an arduous seven-month excavation.

Eventually, Roxas and his team identified the entrance and discovered various artefacts, such as Japanese bayonets, rifles, and even a human skeleton in a Japanese uniform. Before long they gained access to the tunnel system, including tracks, rails and side tunnels. The smell of decomposed bodies was palpable and they halted work while the disconcerting gasses subsided. They soon discovered a ten-feet-thick concrete slab beneath a layer of dirt. They dug through and then, almost a year to the date when they had first plunged a shovel into the ground, they discovered a golden buddha, along with twenty-four small gold bars, each one inch wide, two inches long, and half an inch thick. Nearby, in a man-made chamber measuring ten feet by thirty feet, Roxas found more gold, this time packed into hundreds of small wooden boxes.

The buddha was decidedly Burmese in style: 22 carat gold and of a type produced in Asia prior to 1940. Roxas was determined to get it out of the chamber as fast as he could, but even with a group of strong young men they struggled to extract it, until finally applying a technique involving rolling logs and rope. Roxas estimated the golden buddha to have weighed one metric tonne and thus, with considerable difficulty, he transported it to his home where he placed it in a spare bedroom and covered it with a blanket. So far so good.

In the days following the extraction of the golden buddha, Roxas returned and blew up the entrance to the tunnel so that others could not follow in his footsteps. He was quietly confident that there was more gold to be discovered. He believed that what he had discovered was the tip of the iceberg; the proverbial teaser that the Japanese placed a short distance above the real prize; a treasure that most seekers would be thrilled with, believing they had found it all, when in fact the real treasures were hidden further below, deep underground.

For a short time Roxas went into hiding near Manila and was provided with bodyguards and a place to live. One day he was approached by two men representing Josefa Edralin Marcos, who offered to return a replica of the golden buddha and pay Marcos three million pesos if he publicly acknowledged that their buddha was the one that had been confiscated. In a now infamous moment of stubborn, albeit courageous, resolve Roxas returned to Baguio, and in the presence of lawyers and the media, defiantly proclaimed the golden buddha to be a fake. His honour had spurred him to forsake the money and safety he so desperately needed.

Marcos became the mastermind of a covert gold retrieval operation and acted in partnership with both the Japanese and the United States Central Intelligence Agency. He is even said to have approached the Japanese about entering into a partnership to extract the gold together, to which he was coldly informed not to bother, for it would take a hundred years to unearth what they had deposited in the Philippines. Clearly, the Japanese had returned enough of their war booty to Japan to be satisfied and were not overly concerned about the breadcrumbs they had left behind.

Each time Curtis was requested by Marcos to select a new site to excavate, Valmores was dispatched to provide the treasure map. Eventually, Valmores tired of making the journey and brought all but three of the one hundred and seventy-five treasure maps to Curtis. Out of fear that the maps would be stolen, or thrown out by the cleaning crew, Curtis photographed each one and burned the originals. This way, he could use them as ransom against Marcos, who owed him money for the gold they had already retrieved and sold.

My interest in the story had been rejuvenated, albeit under the most peculiar of circumstances. In 2015, IBM UK had their annual kick-off meeting in Los Angeles, and so I took the opportunity to visit Amelia. I met her at Soho House and found her to be a gracious and grateful lady, albeit quite fixated on the messages that the alleged spirit of Roxas had been sharing with her. She reiterated that I was to be very involved in the whole Roxas affair.

While in Los Angeles I also met with Dan Cathcart, the lawyer who had famously represented Roxas in the Supreme Court and had heroically won the case over Ferdinand Marcos. It was a very difficult meeting to secure and I was essentially vetted before being granted an audience. I sat down with Cathcart and his wife in their affluent Beverly Hills home, and was joined by their live-in carer, who sat nearby, listening intently to our every word. He struck me as a good guy, claiming to know very little about the Roxas story and wanting to learn what the fuss was all about.

Cathcart recounted how one afternoon a notice was sent to law offices across the country, detailing how a Filipino locksmith was suing his president, Ferdinand Marcos, for having stolen a golden buddha and assorted treasure that he had discovered in the Philippines. Roxas may have been a beaten man, both literally and figuratively, but he was no fool. In order to protect himself from further abuse, he formed the Golden Buddha Corporation (GBC) with Felix Dacaney, a childhood friend who was living near Atlanta, and assigned his interest in the case to the GBC.

Luis Mendoza: a Filipino goldsmith who had examined the golden buddha on behalf of Roxas and drilled holes in its neck to obtain the powder necessary to confirm that the statue was, in fact, 22 carat gold.

Two Australian brokers: who testified that in the early 1980s they had negotiated nine contracts with Marcos to sell what amounted to $1.63 trillion-worth of gold bullion. The men asserted that they had been blindfolded and taken to a warehouse, where they had been shown an enormous stash of gold bars.

Subsequent lawsuits were filed on the back of Roxas v Marcos. In one 1999 case hundreds of men signed an affidavit attesting to the fact that they had worked on a so-called restoration project that had covertly performed massive digging operations to recover thousands of metric tonnes of gold, not to mention precious gemstones. The first-hand accounts corroborated those of Robert Curtis, who has so often been unjustly discredited in the story.

I returned to England and became engulfed by life and my time-consuming corporate job. It was January 2016, and my interest in the story had waned once more. My spare time was spent editing the Heretic Magazine with my friends Mark Foster and Beth Johnson. Not much time was left to pursue the constant enquiries from the Philippines for funding and assistance in various treasure-site excavations around the archipelago.

Serendipitously, later that year I reached out to Klaus Dona, the respected ancient-history authority, to ask if he would write an article for the magazine. I had met Klaus in 2010, when we had both presented at an alternative-history conference called Megalithomania, in Glastonbury, England. We had adjoining rooms in the hotel and shared a laugh. I thought he was a fascinating guy, and I was pleased to have made his acquaintance.

We added each other on Skype and began a custom of speaking most days. Klaus confided that he was working on four different sites and shared the many clues and symbols that he had discovered in each. I was intrigued and found myself engrossed in the mystery once more. I was particularly intrigued with a photo Klaus shared of a cement doorway that he had arrived at in one of his tunnel complexes, and was anxious to inspect it in person.

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