Our conversation prompted me to reach out to Roxass wife and daughter. Klaus and I continued our daily Skype calls and I could sense he was making real progress. After a long morning of work, Bob and Billy decided to take an afternoon nap. Finally, in the spring of 1970 Roxas and his team identified the tunnel area entrance and began an arduous seven-month excavation. Do you know about Yamashitas gold?. In the Philippines treasure reclamation requires a permit that entitles the government to 30% of the findings. Andrew Gough. This was but the precursor to the sobering conditions I would encounter when I explored Klauss first tunnel-system site. He explained how a team had successfully excavated a large portion of the site before a typhoon and resulting mud slide had buried years of excavation work. Few would persevere and dig that deep, especially after finding so many valuables at the intermediate level. I could hardly move. On my last night, after dinner, Klaus brought out a perfectly shaped cement heart complete with a flawlessly carved artery. Thats incredible, but tell me more. It seems Henry returned to the site as an adult, many years later, in the late 1980s, and dynamited the entrance shut once more, in order to protect what he believes to be even more gold bullion buried beneath Marcoss excavation. Curiously, his death was not announced publicly until ninety days later. I recalled thinking at the time. The point being, Klaus was now very close. Klauss team said that every so often Japanese treasure hunters come to the village enquiring if anyone knows where that landmark is. Posing in front of the replica gold bars that Roger Roxas discovered Andrew Gough. Roxas reported the incident to the police, who predictably ignored his pleas. 0000010608 00000 n As a result, I was frequently contacted by Filipinos who believed they had located lost Japanese treasure hoards and were seeking both expertise and financial assistance in support of their proposed excavations. I tried not to get carried away with the possibility. Needless to say, Klaus was buoyant with the news. Although Roxas presented no evidence whatsoever other than personal testimony from many of his associates all of whom had banded together as the "Golden Buddha Corporation" which existed only to pursue this lawsuit they somehow managed to win the case, and were awarded over 40 billion dollars. It felt like a flamethrower had pierced my stomach and opened me up below my navel. The massive and disproportionately large cemetery under construction in Klauss humble village In 2015, IBM UK had their annual kick-off meeting in Los Angeles, and so I took the opportunity to visit Amelia. 30 Apr 2019. They investigated and validated first-hand testimony that corroborated the existence of the golden buddha and the gold bullion. I had contributed to the first five series of Forbidden History and was excited to have the opportunity to return to the Philippines for the sixth. The sheriffs department brought in a search-and-rescue team with dogs. It was 2001 and I was living in Istanbul and working for IBM. In another (unrelated) incident, Ballingers unit had made their way to Baguio and witnessed the Japanese loading heavy boxes into a tunnel system near the hospital. 0000005640 00000 n There are five Americans from the company working at the Ft. Santiago site, McDougald said, along with about 30 Filipino laborers who are digging the 3-foot-by-7-foot tunnel through the forts long-buried catacombs. Most of it, he said, is Curtis own money. 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. Even Imelda Marcos confessed that her husbands wealth had come from Yamashitas gold. I believe its here. Work was frantic and I soon lost touch with the Seagraves. Curtis got plugged in and unexpectedly became far more than a mere key cog in the gold-hunting wheel, overseeing not only the retrieval and sanctifying process, but the site discovery process as well. Together they wrote a number of books on Asian histories which purported to be nonfiction, most of which portrayed either the CIA or Japanese figures as the villain, and all of which expressed a deep suspicion of all things Western and Japanese. I have to! Klaus retorted. I knew what it was, but I could not believe my eyes. It was bucketing down. He remembered being perturbed, and as he swivelled his chair to take a seat at his desk, he noticed the GBC flyer was still in the rubbish bin. It stopped moving at all. It was impossible for any man in my position to control every action of his subordinate commanders, let alone the deeds of individual soldiers. In 2013 I was contacted by Peggy Seagrave, who invited me to present for a television documentary entitled The Truth About Yamashitas Gold. Those who tired or died in the process were quickly replaced. Given the lack of any findings and the shaky nature of the most prominent support for there being any truth to the legend of Yamashita's Gold, we can summarize a few points about the Yamashita's Gold story: If that gold does exist anywhere, it exists in a superposition: it was plundered and spent long ago by the corrupt Marcos regime; it was plundered and spent long ago by the CIA; it was taken back to Japan and distributed among the organized crime community; and it somehow still exists in tunnels waiting for History Channel camera crews. All I remember is, there I was, possibly a short distance away from some of the greatest lost relics in history, and all I wanted to do was leave. Author Forrest Fenn is a former art dealer who hid millions of dollars in treasure in the wilderness of New Mexico when he was 80 years old. I suppose alls well that ends well. COVID origins? Back in Tokyo, the healer worked on the Princes daughter, who was suffering with a brain tumour. Years after his disappearance, he was assumed to be dead. So McDougald has dropped his previous secrecy and found the spare time to schedule daily press conferences on the lawn outside the torture chamber--at least until he hits pay dirt. I went for a walk around campus and when I returned the production manager politely asked me to join them, as they were about to begin, and so I did. They decided it would be fun to go on a road trip to look for the Lost Dutchman Gold Mine. The 49-year-old American treasure hunter has cordoned off this rectangular swath of Indian Ocean in the Seychelles, and now he's somewhere 25 feet below, chiseling off chunks of granite and. Literally, out from the shadows, another treasure hunter emerged and interrupted, asking, Did I hear you say that you have found leaves in the tunnel? That fact doesnt stop thousands of people from trying to beat the odds. As the 25 May 1993 golden buddha Supreme Court trial approached, Roxas had been instructed to keep a low profile. This time he remained hidden for a year, before being arrested after he returned to Baguio in July 1972. Despite numerous eyewitnesses and various first-hand accounts, most historians doubted the existence of the Black Eagle Trust, let alone the buried treasure hoards, and so I travelled to the Philippines to investigate the story for myself. Their car was parked at the beginning of the popular trail. After a few days, his wife reported that he was missing. Robert Hunter, who died on Sept. 23 at age 78, matched words to Jerry Garcia's melodies and served as the public conscience for the Grateful Dead, whom he joined as a non-performing member in 1969. One year later, after an extensive search-and-rescue effort, all three bodies were finally recovered. Watch the two-hour special of The Curse of Yamashitas Gold on Forbidden History, Series 6, on Discovery Science and other international channels from April 2020. Marcos was ruthless. In another hundred and seventy-five feet, by the looks of it, you may change your mind.. Andrew Gough. 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. 0000017241 00000 n In addition, he is a co-founder of Gemini Marine Exploration, the company that specializes in recovery of historical shipwrecks. Andrew Gough. In an interview, he claimed that he wanted to start this treasure hunt to encourage people to get outside and explore nature. 24 Aug. 2005, Newspaper. We said goodbye to Henry and headed out for lunch. Im betting its here.. Once European settlers started showing up to hunt for gold, the Naha mysteriously disappeared. Once again, the best conversation was off camera. Most were situated on Japanese military bases, while others were located near landmarks that would be remembered in coming years, such as hospitals, schools, churches, mountains and waterfalls. Hours later, on the plane back to London, my brain was in overdrive. 26 Apr. He failed #673 Bob Curtis. I had come across some real charlatans in my time, but nevertheless I was listening politely and was relieved to discover that Klaus agreed with my bias. In January 1973 he was sent to Baguio prison camp, where he was beaten repeatedly. Yes, thats correct, Klaus replied pensively. Everybody was shattered by that point, but none more than me. Regarding the Black Eagle Trust Fund, evidence also fails to show that any such program existed with that name but I'm not pointing a finger at anyone for making it up out of nothing. An image of what appears to be a cement-filled tunnel or door, deep underground Throughout his career in mainstream journalism, Seagrave descended deeper and deeper into conspiracy mongering. Curiously, my GoPro showed only the opening and concluding moments of the procedure and nothing in between; a physical impossibility. The organisation was named Kin no yuri, meaning Golden Lily, the name of a poem written by the Emperor. In hindsight, Roxas had been aware of the implications of this clandestine relationship, but had had no choice in the matter. After her second NDE she began to have prophetic dreams, and claims to have been in regular contact with the spirit world. From what? They chose to go on a day when it was 46 degrees Celsius (115 F), but they didnt bring their cell phones with them. We arrived at the site to discover that the tunnel was too flooded to enter, and so we filmed what we could and moved on to the next one. Imagine countless fabulous tunnels bored through the green mountains of the Philippines, all filled with mind-boggling stacks of gold bullion and other riches, all waiting there even today for some lucky adventurer to discover them. Lives in La Mirada, California. Keep going. Roxas with the detached head of the golden buddha (from the Roger Roxas Museum in Baguio) I had felt the same energy when I was dowsing with Klaus. Why are we still having these debates? And yet, the man does not charge for his services. So why have so many devoted so much to this tale? 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. In 1949, a 70-year-old man named James Kidd was a professional treasure hunter from Phoenix, Arizona. Privacy Policy. The Japanese had muscled control of the Philippines away from the United States, and were transferring their war booty from Singapore to Japan, when they were forced to come ashore and secure their treasures. I had been miles away. The day before they were due to depart, she walked downstairs from their hotel room and entered the bakery at street level. Typically, they had left a marker, such as a small buddha, around ten to fifteen feet underground. Andrew Gough. The president of International Precious Metals Inc., a private, limited-liability company, is Nevada businessman Robert H. Curtis, a man whose name has been synonymous with the hunt for buried Philippine treasure for more than a decade. Even when I held the dowsing rods, they were charged. Fred C. Dobbs, the protagonist of B. Traven 's 1927 novel, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and the movie of the same name. The United States could not risk the truth about the gold and treasures that the Japanese had buried in the Philippines coming to light, especially as a large portion of it was now theirs. The implausibilities pile higher and higher. Ballinger had photographed the Japanese ship, Huzi Maru, which was masquerading as a hospital ship, unloading boxes northwest of Manila, in Subic Bay. Since that day, the location has been known as Headless Creek in Deadmen Valley. We all like to imagine were going to knock a stone wall down and were going to find golden chests overflowing with emeralds and rubies and diamonds, all guarded by a big cobra snake, he said. Seagrave, S., Seagrave, P. Gold Warriors: America's Secret Recovery of Yamashita's Gold. 0000001447 00000 n At two hundred and fifteen feet Klaus was literally on the doorstep of a discovery. He stared back defiantly. I returned to England and became engulfed by life and my time-consuming corporate job. Curtis fled back to the US in the late '70s, claiming he had destroyed his maps and escaped the Philippines ahead of Marcos's assassins. It is that machine, he said, that has made his group so certain of the amount of buried treasure that lies beneath Ft. Santiago. I had packed industrial-strength gloves and knee pads! Klaus dismissed his dowser, who he felt was taking advantage, and began performing the task himself. It simply stood tall and proud and stared at me, gently nodding its head as though it had understood and had accepted its fate. 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. What did you uncover? I asked inquisitively. Reassuringly, he informed me that I was fine and that he had simply performed a tune up a bit of preventative maintenance. He said they were building an extension to the hospital. Later that day I drove to Klauss village. Remarkably, Roxas never revealed the location of his treasure site, for he knew that doing so would result in his death sentence. 2019. What I am really being charged with is losing the war. You must be about two hundred and ten to fifteen feet deep. Andrew Gough. His efforts proved fruitless, however, and Fuchigami became despondent about the fact that he could not locate the tunnel system that his father had shown him as a child, even with a map. 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. The guerrillas attacked the Japanese with grenades, sealing many workers inside. Klaus has been shut down for several months as he awaits his permit from the Mining Department of the Philippine Government, but he is optimistic and believes he is tantalisingly close to unearthing the greatest treasure hoard of this century. This was a game changer. Anyway, it keeps me fit, he added with bravado. His bizarre and frightening experience lasted mere seconds. 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. Much to his surprise, and with no background or training in the discipline, Klaus achieved instant success. My first Philippine adventure was nearly over, but there was one thing left to investigate: the natural healer who had brought Klauss friend to the Philippines in the first place. Andrew Gough. I was enthralled with Cathcart (then retired and in his eighties and suffering from Parkinsons disease), and surprised by what a stoic figure he was, despite his frailties. Cheatham later testified in the Supreme Court trial. Olof testified that he too had been to President Marcoss summer palace and had examined the golden buddha, and confirmed that it was the one in Cheathams photo. 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