Santy, as he was known, tortured Yamashitas driver, Major Kojima Kashii, until he gave up his secrets; the Japanese had buried unthinkable quantities of gold and vast hoards of ancient treasure in subterranean vaults across the Philippines. Best known as lyricist for some of the best known Jerry Garcia / Grateful Dead songs and his various collaborations with Bob Dylan. I was frustrated. Andrew Gough. Imelda Marcoss mother had been a big fan of the healer. There was more, but as I have signed a non-disclosure agreement, I will refrain from commenting further. Was that true, or simply a misdirection to conceal the fact that her husband may have embezzled billions from the Philippine people? 0000005640 00000 n In my mind I visualised a hole running straight through my body and out the other side. To come this close and not visit it would be such a shame, I thought. Crawling through twelve inches of water at the bottom of a tunnel complex after walking through rice paddies in the rain was not my idea of fun. Its old but healthy, and yet it is growing parallel to the ground due to the fact that it is chemically drawn to the gold. In 2010, Curtis Merworth, Ardean Charles, and Malcolm Meeks were three friends in Salt Lake City, Utah. Silliest of all is an old story promoted by a History Channel TV series called The Lost Gold of World War II, which asserts that the Japanese carved symbols on rock faces leading to the locations of all the treasure tunnels, in plain view for the general public to see. I had forgotten about the legend of Japanese treasure buried in the Philippines, save for the occasional outreach of Filipinos who had seen The Truth About Yamashitas Gold and were looking to secure funding for their own excavations, when I was contacted by a very curious woman from Los Angeles. It was 2001 and I was living in Istanbul and working for IBM. She reiterated that I was to be very involved in the whole Roxas affair. I sat on the bed trying to make sense of what had just happened, when the healer informed me that I needed to stop on my way to the airport and drink a cobras blood in order to complete my healing process. Fair enough. Could he have harnessed the legendary viral energy that I had read so much about? As I was banned from listening to the conventional historian do this thing, I became more convinced than ever that the director was orchestrating a hatchet job for the two-hour season premiere of the show. She was greeted by a well-dressed, professional looking man who gave her some medicine for Roger, as he had noticed how poorly he was looking and was concerned for his health. I was impressed and, dare I say, convinced. When we opened the tunnel, air hit the sand. Thirty years after the disappearance, David Paulides, a former police officer and researcher on missing people, filmed the video above and brought the case to the attention of the Colorado government. Why wouldnt they be, I thought to myself, after a moments reflection. When his body was finally discovered in 2012, it was 11 meters (35 ft) off the ground inside a crevasse on the edge of a cliff. For weeks, the government deliberately tried to keep that digging a secret. Even one, the political scientist Chalmers Johnson who was a China specialist and shared the Seagraves' distrust of Japan, could not get entirely on board with their quest. And over here we have a marker stone, Klaus added in his patented Austrian deadpan. His gun was found a few feet away as if tossed to the side. Roxas was shown a search warrant with Pios signature that mentioned something about illegal possession of firearms. Andrew Gough. He shared that he was required by what essentially amounted to local treasure-hunting health and safety customs to hire a dowser several times a week. Random encounter with treasure hunter. In 1908, two young men were searching for gold in Arizona. Hours later I arrived and was greeted by the caretaker. We followed a muddy path, not too far from a river that was roaring with monsoon-induced floods, and arrived at the site. The audacious treasure hunter would not stand a chance against the might of Ferdinand Marcos, he thought. 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. If they had happened, and I had known about them, I would have punished the wrongdoers severely. Klaus riding safely; shotgun in his chauffeured tricycle Non-indigenous artefacts discovered buried near Manila Their car was parked at the beginning of the popular trail. The Cultural Committee is investigating whether the search should continue. Bob Curtis. See Photos. I am sorry that you must die for me, I repeated, over and over. When he had finished his verbal dissertation, which, to be fair, included some impressive insights, the director asked him some leading questions about other aspects of the story. One of the five was Robert Curtis, who now heads the Las Vegas company, McDougald said. The relationship would end badly. Yet Hunter, who passed away on Monday evening at the age of 78, did . His treasure tunnels would be sure to dazzle viewers. International Precious Metals has a year-long permit to hunt for treasure, estimated to be as much as $200 billion in gold that the Japanese looted from the country. Dont get me wrong. When Marcos discovered that the photo had been widely published he made the CIA pressure Cheatham into signing an affidavit certifying that the golden buddha was not gold, or else face certain death in Vietnam. Out of fear that the maps would be stolen, or thrown out by the cleaning crew, Curtis photographed each one and burned the originals. He was never found.[4]. Andrew Gough. Like myself, Klaus had spent a lifetime in the corporate world, and once served as the Marketing Manager for the Vienna Tourism Board to Southeast Asia. I believe its here. Santy, who tortured General Yamashita Tomoyukis driver, Major Kojima. Emmanuel Soriano, Aquinos national security director, offered a note of realism. What did Roger say? After a raucous reception dinner we agreed a plan for the next several days. But at least I had aimed high. Understandably, they had become discouraged and had run out of funds. April 30, 2019 In 2015, IBM UK had their annual kick-off meeting in Los Angeles, and so I took the opportunity to visit Amelia. 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. I had felt the same energy when I was dowsing with Klaus. As I suspected, he was questing for Japanese treasure pillaged from Asia, but how he had got started was another story altogether. I was amazed. Fred C. Dobbs, the protagonist of B. Traven 's 1927 novel, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and the movie of the same name. Roxass brother, Danilo, attempted to resist the men and was badly beaten. It was a daily effort of divide and conquer; some manned the other sites, pumping the monsoon floods out of the tunnels, while most supported excavation efforts at the site that Klaus and his team were most focused on that week. Andrew Gough, Exhausted, after returning to the surface Since that day, the location has been known as Headless Creek in Deadmen Valley. Website designed by Artifice Design. 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. I had packed industrial-strength gloves and knee pads! He brushed off the incident as an attempt to stir up trouble by the opposition, the name given to citizens who are against Nicolas Maduro, the current president of Venezuela. He also learned the secret language of the Japanese Shinto priests, who left clues symbols in the landscape, and in the ground. Was the healer authentic? 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. If Amelia is correct, was this an orchestrated effort to reclaim the treasure? I, on the other hand, was experiencing a fair bit of disappointment. How could I tell if some of my soldiers misbehaved themselves? Cathcart recounted how, on 24 May 1993, he had spoken to Roxas and had informed him that he would be escorted on a flight from Manila to Honolulu the next day. Roxas was convinced there was treasure buried around the Baguio Hospital, but was unsure exactly where to look. They needed money to purchase the land and were offering a very comprehensive excavation plan. I had never been and was excited to take it all in. In 1949, a 70-year-old man named James Kidd was a professional treasure hunter from Phoenix, Arizona. Are the Philippines the wealthiest nation on earth? Many Japanese soldiers and engineers involved in the project were also sealed inside the tunnels in order to keep them from revealing the location. Beyond that is where the cyanide is hidden.. I was excited to hear what Jose had to say about Japanese treasure in the Philippines, but was informed by the director that my presence was not welcome in the interview room. Andrew Gough. They were buried alive. The massive collection of vaults was stacked top to bottom with row upon row of gold bars. Intriguingly, the alleged body of Marcos was later reburied in the Cemetery of Heroes in Metropolitan Manila in a ceremony shrouded in secrecy. Marcos soon learned that if he wanted to maximise the value of his finds, he needed to transform the ancient gold bars into a format that could be exchanged on modern gold markets, namely the London gold standard. startxref His shirt read Trust me, I do this all the time.. In fact, treasure hunters die each week in the Philippines, mostly due to the accidental release of cyanide capsules hidden along the tunnel walls. 32 0 obj <> endobj Anderson reported that Curtis group supplied the maps, which marked an estimated $100 billion in treasure, to Marcos, who used the group to track and recover about $14 billion. Andrew Gough. Roxas had been caught out. Andrew Gough. Thank you for your sacrifice, I mumbled awkwardly. Hunting for topaz was just a hobby for Dametz. 2019. He was there as the Imperial Japanese army ransacked much of China and southeast Asia, and he was there for the duration of World War II; and he grew up knowing little about the Japanese besides that they were the world's aggressors, and the brutal assailants of a peaceful people. Never-before-seen photos of authentic Black Eagle Trust bank statements, representing but a small portion of the wealth acquired from Japanese gold. Web. Evidently, she found what she was looking for., Ill be damned, I added. 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. As my interest in the mystery deepened, I reengaged with Sterling Seagrave, the almost singular voice of truth on the subject. 0000001318 00000 n My business proposal for additional funding to expedite Klauss work had been met with a polite not interested from Richard Bransons people, while Elon Musks people had been less gracious they blocked my IP address. Looking slightly perilous at the bottom of the tunnel system with Klaus I never made the trip to Carcassonne, and a few years later, when I had moved back to the United Kingdom, I lost Seagraves email. How could he not get discouraged? The men asserted that they had been blindfolded and taken to a warehouse, where they had been shown an enormous stash of gold bars. You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. Fuchigami recounted a time when his father had taken him to a treasure tunnel behind Baguio Hospital, and explained how the tunnel tracks and handrails had been used for transporting large quantities of gold. The video that Klaus took on my iPhone confirmed it. 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. For the most part the program was the story of Roger Roxas, the Filipino locksmith who discovered a golden buddha and, allegedly, an enormous chamber full of gold bullion (both of which were later stolen by Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos), only to have the US Supreme court demand that Roxas be awarded what amounted to the largest civil settlement in history: US$22 billion. In his estimation, the only thing that could have caused the electrocution was large quantities of gold, acting as an electrical conduit. I will always appreciate your sacrifice. Yamashita is removed from the courtroom by military police immediately after hearing the verdict of death by hanging. There are far more people attempting to find treasure than there are success stories. What is worse, it triggered a political backlash. We learned that he had found marker artefacts at a shallow depth in the ground at various sites nearby. In addition to Klaus filming on my iPhone, I took the opportunity to set up my GoPro as well and affixed it to a tripod and placed it on a nearby table. Whats more, during 1974 and 1975 he excavated the tunnel behind the hospital in Baguio and personally witnessed gold bars falling from wooden crates as they were removed from the site. Back on the surface the cameraman filmed various objects that Klaus had found in the tunnel backfill: symbols such as seashells, leaves, gold dust and other assorted items that should not exist at that depth in the earth, and certainly not with man-made cement and gold dust embedded in them. This time I was prepared. 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. In hindsight, Roxas had been aware of the implications of this clandestine relationship, but had had no choice in the matter. I had met Klaus in 2010, when we had both presented at an alternative-history conference called Megalithomania, in Glastonbury, England. Roxas informed her that Marcoss air-conditioned burial crypt in the Philippines, at the Ferdinand E Marcos Presidential Center in Batac, Ilocos Norte (which was secured twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week by arm guards), contained a fake corpse full of precious stones and diamonds. We embarked on the long drive back to Klauss village and our last night as a team. This guy is a celebrated rock star in the Philippines, and there were posters of him all over campus. 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? Why would three months pass before the public was informed? Andrew Gough. The treasure locations are spread all across the land of Red Dead Redemption. Had he been part of the Golden Lily conspiracy? Andrew Gough. A notoriously horrific acid trip that Robert Hunter endured in June 1969, thanks to apple juice dosed with "probably a full gram of crystal LSD worth perhaps $50,000," was the lyrical impetus for "Black Peter.". His remains were not found until seven months later.[5]. Cheatham later testified in the Supreme Court trial. Klaus confided that he was working on four different sites and shared the many clues and symbols that he had discovered in each. I go deep underground in an effort to try and find out The hospital was on public grounds and was highly visible; covert excavation was simply not an option. Posing in front of the replica gold bars that Roger Roxas discovered Roxas testified, returned to hiding, was discovered by Marcoss men and tortured. 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. I didn't wana lose the map so I quickly hogtied the npc and stole the map. Or we all die. Their families believe that the men were all killed by a gang who decided to take the gold mine for themselves. The moss-covered marker stone that could be a topographical map of the treasure sites in the region Prospective buyers took their turn examining the buddha, including Joe Oihara, a Japanese man who, on 1 April 1971, visited Roxas and shared the worrying detail that he was staying at the home of Ferdinand Marcoss mother, Josefa Edralin Marcos. Honolulu: Supreme Court of Hawaii, 1988. Imelda Marcos now claims her husbands wealth came from Yamashitas gold. Then it occurred to me. As the film crew selected a suitable location, I took the opportunity to explore the Cloud 9 antiquities museum, which contained a large number of artefacts discovered buried in the ground near Manila that were not indigenous to the region. Japanese armies did indeed seize valuables and plunder national treasuries of southeast Asian countries. The following day we departed for the mountainous, northern resort town of Baguio to meet with Roger Roxass son, Henry, and to examine his museum, which is dedicated to his father. He was never seen again. Twenty percent of the men who moved to California during the Gold Rush died from diseases like cholera within six months of their arrival. His honour had spurred him to forsake the money and safety he so desperately needed. She was clearly in her 90s, and yet it was a long shot, but lo and behold we hit the jackpot. I need your help.. Dametz was in poor health, so he needed help from McSherry to get to his digging spot, a small sandy pit in the middle of the forest. COVID origins? His friend preferred to stay anonymous, but lets call him Bob for the sake of the story. The caretaker had lost fingers and toes from chemicals released in the treasure site Andrew Gough. Their 2000 book The Yamato Dynasty: The Secret History of Japan's Imperial Family included their story of how Japan went about accumulating this staggering wealth from all the Asian nations they looted, via a secret initiative called Operation Golden Lily. Andrew Gough. This was going to happen. 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. The first-hand accounts corroborated those of Robert Curtis, who has so often been unjustly discredited in the story. Andrew Gough. He left clues in a poem about the location of this hidden treasure and challenged the public to find it. 20 Nov. 2003, Volume 25, Number 22: 3-6. Should continue keep that digging a secret clues symbols in the ground Trust me I! That true, or simply a misdirection to conceal the fact that her husband may have embezzled billions the. 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