Yamashita's Gold: The Hunt For Japan's Buried WW2 Treasure | Myth Hunters | War Stories

Master's

gold

is one of the greatest hoards of

treasure

ever known in today's currency. It represents more than 00 billion dollars in value according to

myth

. This incredible fortune was the product of ruthless Japanese plundering throughout Asia during World War II for an amateur

treasure

hunt

er to find the treasure. Gold became a lifelong obsession if he had to get on his knees and dig with his fingers until they bled. I see him being that kind of man, but I didn't know that he had a powerful rival, one of the most brutal dictators in the world. Marcos of the 20th century was undoubtedly a thug, he was a gangster just when this pitiful Filipino had Beyond his wildest dreams within reach his search became a nightmare, it put a target on his back this is the extraordinary story of Roger Roas who was willing to be David against Goliath Roger was a hero and the legend of your Master's

gold

In May 1970, amateur treasure

hunt

er Roger Roas was combing the jungles around his hometown of Bagio in the northern Philippines For over a decade he had spent every free moment searching for a horde of long-lost treasures, he had invested all his money in searching for it unless he found it, he faced ruin, and then, after weeks of backbreaking work, he finally Roger saw something if he had finally found what he had been searching for all his life if he had found yash's gold the legend of yam gold is one of the greatest war loot

stories

in history in 1942, the imperial

japan

ese army had invaded successfully throughout Southeast Asia as they advanced, they ruthlessly looted country after country and looted on a massive scale, reportedly unrivaled in military history.

Yamashita's gold is incredible wealth. People wouldn't believe how much $1 trillion is worth, so it's a mind-blowing amount. The mastermind leading this covert operation codenamed Golden Lily was said to be Prince Chichibu, the Emperor's brother. This guy is brilliant. Prince Chichibu was the perfect choice to head the Golden Lily because he was not just a military man, he was an Oxford scholar and brought an incredible amount of creativity and lateral thinking to how this complex process of looting the golden LLY takes place. . the operatives just took everything completely from all the countries, left them with nothing, invaded, took all their wealth and left them penniless, they were not just banks and financial institutions, they also had museums, temples, art galleries , rare books, anything worth money.

They knew where it was, how much it was worth and they understood it. The looting of the Golden Lily was so complete that they even targeted the Underworld, the gangster world, the black markets and completely depleted them of anything of value after having amassed Treasures of all shapes and sizes on the mission of the lily. gold was far from over, they needed to bring it back to Japan, first they melted the gold into easy to move ingots, but this smelting also served a more somber purpose when gold was made, stamped, and you can tell where. it came, but when it was remelted, you don't know where it came from, they wanted to stamp the little sign on the gold bars that the gold was actually made in Japan, so it would look like the gold was Japanese gold of Japanese origin.

This stolen gold was then taken to the Philippines, there it was invented and then sent to Japan by ship. The Philippines was chosen as the Golden Lily transportation hub because it was practically at the center of the vast Japanese empire during the first year of operations. The Golden L's transportation network ran like clockwork, but then the tide of the war turned in June 1942. Japanese and American forces met near the small island of Midway in the Pacific. In just 4 days, American forces sank five Japanese ships, destroyed 270 aircraft, and killed 3,500. men, the Japanese had lost control of the seas, it was now too risky for them to send the gold home, they needed a new plan, they turned to their best fighter, General Tomay Yuki Yamashta, he has an incredible track record, no one has the reputation that he has and if anyone can pull one out of the hat it would be him Yamashta became famous when he caused the greatest humiliation of the British Army in its history in December 1941 he invaded Mala laying waste to the peninsula in just a few weeks the Mastera then captured the It was thought that the British military stronghold from Singapore to Malaya and pinga Poore was completely impregnable, that the British were totally in charge of the army and he proved them wrong, he made the British capitulate and it was the biggest capitulation of the British army in the British army.

The story practically overnight Yamashta took nearly 100,000 Allied soldiers prisoner. His victory sent shockwaves around the world and earned Yamashta the fearsome nickname of him. The Malayan Tiger with the gold now trapped in the Philippines. Yamashta was asked to devise another miracle. The story goes that He was told to hide the gold until it was safe to move. He identified 175 suitable burial sites in the Philippines. They would keep the gold until the Japanese were again victorious and the Philippines turned out to be the ideal place to hide this treasure. They put it in very isolated parts in the Philippines covered mostly by very mountainous terrain and thick thick jungle.

Once these tunnels were built, it would be virtually impossible to see that there had been anything

buried

there because of the growth rate of the jungle, it said. Yamasa ordered detailed maps to be made of the exact location of each treasure vault and each map was carefully coded. These maps were made in an ancient Japanese dialect called Kji, a language that is between 1,500 and 2,000 years old, and there were no topographical references on them. They used the old characters to represent certain landmarks, unless you knew the complex code these maps were meaningless and there were even more layers of security bombs, grenades, decoy walls that would lead you to another trap.

El Lirio Dorado left nothing to chance and they had a great variety. booby trap system which consisted of poison gas explosives, complex use of the water table so if you don't know what you are doing you will drown in your quest to reach the treasures, but the maps that were drawn highlighted where everyone was. those traps were if you didn't have a map and you went into one of these treasure vaults, there was a good chance you wouldn't come out alive and to ensure that all the treasure vault locations remained top secret, the number of people who knew about it was Ruthlessly kept to a minimum, they use prisoners of war or local slave labor to build the royal treasure vaults and the people who are building them don't know why, but that's irrelevant.

They are RNG that die anyway, so they are usually shot dead. discover the past with exclusive military history documentaries and adree podcasts presented by world-renowned historians, all on History hit, watch on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device, download the app now to see everything from the exciting history of Band of. Brothers of Operation Barbarosa and D-Day, immerse yourself in the dramatic

stories

of this extraordinary time by registering through the link in the description, but despite all your Master's efforts, the gold was still not safe in October 1944 , the Americans landed in the Philippines.

The fighting that followed was the bloodiest of the Pacific War. The fighting in the Philippines at the end of the war was extremely brutal. Yamashita would fight to the last man for the empire, but not even a master tactician like Yamashta could stop the Americans. The Philippines has over 7,000 islands and is very, very difficult to defend against an invading Force. Yamashi, as a great general would have known that Yamashta was facing a crisis, knew that he could not hold the Philippines, all he could do was prolong the fighting for as long as possible. as possible and it seemed like there was a particular reason why Yamasa needed to buy time: he hadn't finished burying the gold yet and Lily was running out of time and was desperate, so they had these ships in port with the gold they they needed. to enter the tunnels they do not have time what do they sink and sink them April 1945 Yamasa had been forced to retreat to the mountains around the northern city of Bagio his systematic concealment of his National Treasure becomes less systematic and more terrified they need do it immediately because they are about to suffer a defeat 174 treasure vaults finished and dusted only one left and time is running out Yamasa ordered the chief engineers to seal the final treasure vault these engineers knew everything they knew how the maps were made they knew where they were The burial sites knew how Ruby was trapped.

What they didn't know was that Yamasa had one last move to protect the gold. The story goes that while the engineers carried out his orders Yamasa sealed the Vault himself, the engineers were still inside now they would be its Guardians for eternity 3 months later World War II ended General Yamasa was tried for war crimes At some point issued any order directing the murder of incompetent citizens? Absolutely nothing. The trial lasted alone. In 5 weeks the commission found him guilty, accused him and sentenced him to death by hanging. Yasa took the secrets of the gold to his grave.

There was only one other person who supposedly knew the whereabouts of the gold, Prince Chichibu, and in 1953 he died of tuberculosis. Anyone who knew anything about this treasure is now dead. It seemed that Yash's gold had been lost forever, but in the Philippines, after the horrors of war, the legend of the Master's gold lived on. There were many rumors that the Japanese had

buried

treasures all over the world. The Philippines is almost a national obsession, everyone across the country knows it and everyone seeks it out. Among those who grew up with stories about gold was a young Filipino locksmith, Roio Roas, better known as Roger, was born in 1943, just like Yash. the gold was being buried Roger's childhood was really difficult The Philippines is extremely impoverished his family is impoverished Roger was one of the millions of Philphinos who grew up in the shadow of World War II the war had devastated the Philippines Manila was absolutely on its knees at one point so no other city in the entire second world war apart from Warsaw was terrible hundreds of thousands of families murdered divided in desperate poverty no real economy functioning um it was in a really bad state so it was no surprise that the legend of the gold of Yamashta I just took Roger from memory at a very young age, someone so poor with the possibility of wealth beyond your wildest dreams, of course you're going to try.

Roger, the locksmith, lived in Bagio, the northern city near where Yamasa made his last Roger assumes that they must have hidden some of the treasures around their city, so he looks around their city from the beginning because he knows logically that that's probably one of the best places to start. Roger was a very diligent man in every free moment he was away. him there working seeing what he could find eliminating areas and continuing to move forward in a very logical progressive way to help you in your search for him. Roger scripton saved and bought himself a metal detector but all Roger had managed to find were some old coins and some Japanese ammunition but that didn't shake his faith one day he was sure he would find the treasure he had been with. dreaming since he was a child no matter how many disappointments a treasure hunter has they will always move on so in 1961 after years of gold hunting with youthful optimism Roger had what seemed to be a breakthrough he got the kind of clue he had been longing for a map of a tunnel complex there were many maps and sketches like this in treasure hunting circles in the This time Roger had seen many of them before, but they had all been fakes.

This one was different. This map had come from a Japanese soldier. He is convinced that this is the real one. The problem was that the map was in Golden Lily's fiendishly complex code. It's a spire and a Hast stack and you don't even know where the Hast stack is because the map has no topographical features, but Roger also knew that this Japanese soldier had been in bagio with a group of engineers while they were burying gold during the last days of the Retreat of Y. map supposedly related to one of those treasure vaults, it was getting closer, I could feel it.

Roger never gives up and the reason is that he knows the treasure is there and he knows that year after year, at least, he is eliminating where he is not yet. all his high hopes Roger simply couldn't crack the code on the map and so even after searching for several more years he was still no closer to finding the yam gold, but at least the map confirmed to Roger that His first instincts were right: there had to be a treasure somewhere. around bagio he knows it's there this is not a

myth

this is a historical fact then Roger met a man who seemed to offer him his next breakthrough usabo okubo akubo told Roger that he had served under the Japanese As an interpreter during their occupation of the Philippines there were many Filipinos who claimed to know where he was buried the Japanese treasure, mainly because many Filipinos had been forced to work with the Japanese, not necessarily what we would call collaborators, but simply because the Japanese needed Cook's drivers, interpreters, all that sort of thing when Roger met Akubo he would have had mixed feelings here is someone who colluded with the enemy aubo confessed that he had served none other than General Yamashta while working for him Akubo had witnessed Yamasa bringing a large amount of gold to Bagio towards the end of the war and then Akubo revealed that The crucial information that Roger had after this gold was in wooden boxes hidden in a tunnel not far from Bagio General Hospital, so this was the final link that allowed him to tie the bow and have the perfect package, now he knows where . to go, he knows where to dig, he was elated because now it showed him the area to look at, but Roger didn't know that.

He had a rival, the most powerful man in the Philippines, President Ferdinand Marcos in 1965. Marcos had been democratically elected, but He quickly became a pathologically greedy dictator. Money was extremely important to Ferdinand Marcos. He loved it like nothing else and there was only one person who could do it. matches Marcos' greed with his shopaholic wife Emelda Marcos Woody Melder is said to be taking her to the vault under his bank and simply showing her huge wads of 100 dollar bills, whether this is true or not I don't know, but it's extremely likely um and I should think he almost certainly would have convinced her that she was onto something good, but Amala's lavish lifestyle wasn't the only reason Marcos needed money.

The richer you were, the more powerful you were. It's that easy. It's a very simple equation and nothing. could make Marcos more powerful than finding your Master's gold, it's not at all surprising that Marcos was interested in Yash's Gold because he was basically a bully and the mere thought of the promise of gold would have hit him like a shot in comparison. with Roger Marcos he had a huge advantage in Yash's quest for golden power. It was incredibly easy for Marcos to use his power to find the target. He has entire armies at his disposal. Armies, ships expert in maps and deciphering all kinds of clues despite all these resources.

Frames. he had found nothing and so he devised a cunning strategy he was a brilliant politician but he was also brilliantly corrupt on the surface he seemed to be a rational person who was guided by the law but in person he was quite ruthless Marcos spent a The law requires that

hunters

of treasurers apply for a permit detailing where they were going to start digging. He comes up with the permit system because this way he has all the enthusiastic treasure

hunters

from all over the country working for him because now they have told him where I think the treasure is that he is just waiting to see if someone finds it and then he can move because he has the resources to do so and you know he is very smart.

Meanwhile, in Bagio in 1970, Roger married and had a new wife and a son along the way. He needed the yam gold now more than ever, so Roger diligently applied for one of Marcos' permits. Roger did everything the right way and thought that if he followed the rules set by the government, he could search. to find, excavate and recover and it would all be done with the blessings of the government in Roger's city. The person who manages the application is none other than Marcos' uncle in May 1970 armed with his permission, his map and Auo's information. Roger decided to risk everything.

To find Yash's gold, he spent all his life savings hiring a team of workers and together they began to make their way through the thick jungle vegetation near Bagio General Hospital, which Roger found very difficult. find the tunnel near the hospital because it was 25 years ago. which was destroyed and every year, in the rainy season, these jungles, you know, changed their appearance dramatically and then after 2 weeks of almost non-stop searching, Roger saw the mouth of a cave, could this be the entrance to the Akubo treasure vault? He told him that about 100m into the tunnel, a collapse meant that Roger could go no further, but for Roger this was a good sign: he knew that the Japanese had used dynamite to close their treasure vaults, so Roger and his team began the arduous task of clearing the way the conditions for Roger and the team to dig the tunnel would have been horrible it was hot there were insects there were snakes it was very hard work digging the tunnel it was very very dangerous and Roger knew that if this really It was a tunnel that the Japanese had built, there may be booby traps, but Roger was willing to risk his life to get to his Master's gold once he gets that Gold Rush, he is insatiable, he just can't satiate that appetite, he I was obsessing, one more shovel, one more rock.

I will get it, this will be the treasure of my life and everyone will say yes, you finally found it, after four long months of digging, they did it and that's when they made a grim discovery: skeletons dressed in rags, but these were not They are not Whatever rags, they were Japanese military uniforms, surely these were the remains of the engineers who had hidden the yam gold only to be buried alive by Yamasa himself. He believes that he is there and now knows that he has all the pieces of the puzzle. Literally on the threshold of the recovery of gold that he has searched for 10 years it is there it is at his fingertips stretching beyond the skeletons was a vast network of tunnels Roger and his team spent weeks exploring them day after day and the next day they were gone.

They found nothing he was out there, ready to go again, he knew it was there, he believed in his heart that that gold was there, he was going to go after it no matter what, but 6 months after finding the entrance to the tunnel , Roger still hadn't found any treasure. Roger had spent all the money he had raised to start the excavation and no one was going to give him more money. No money meant no crew. It seemed like the hunt was over. Roger had wasted his life. He made a big mistake just before Roger decided to give up once and for all.

He made one last attempt with his metal detector and then heard a telltale Buzz. This Buzz that Roger got from his metal detector must have been the best sound he had ever heard. I heard in his life that Roger was stunned, hidden behind the wall was a golden statue of Buddha, this was that moment in life when you would look back and say yes, I have achieved my goal throughout my life, this is All in all, this find is the most significant find of anything anyone had discovered in the Philippines, the Buddha was in the Burmese style according to legend, the Japanese had looted religious artifacts from temporary temples throughout Burma, there really must be found one of the 175 yam treasure vaults and that wasn't the entire area around the Buddha it was full of wooden boxes, payday finally came, the gold that Roger just discovered is worth a fortune, each one of those ingots It's worth $11,000 and he estimated there were over a thousand boxes of gold bars, so "We're talking about an incredible amount of money, more treasure than he ever dreamed he'd find.

I mean, this has exceeded his wildest expectations." Roger returned home with the Buddha planning to return for the gold with trucks and men, but the more he looked at the Statue the more curious Roger became there was something about it that wasn't quite right the Buddha was full of diamonds the value had just gone out. From the Roger chart, I mean, he's getting richer and richer every time he has a thousand boxes of gold bars. He has a gold Buddha and now he has a handful of diamonds that night Roger documented the discovery that changed his life.

News of Roger's miraculous discovery soon spread to the Presidential Palace. I can imagine him going crazy when he found out Marcus was going to do something. to get that Buddha away from Rojas and would eventually sit in Marco's Palace, unfortunately because Roger Marcus' main tactic was Brute Force On April 5, 1971, he said a group of mysterious men appeared at Roger's house. You have to ask yourself how you would feel if suddenly at 2:30 in the morning there was loud knocking and banging on the door, I think you would panic and I'm sure they told you that you have 3 minutes to open the door.

We're going to shoot right here, they took everything from him. Can you imagine the feeling of violation all his life, he looked for this, he found it and now they took it from him, but Marcos thought he could? Intimidating Roger and his family was wrong Roger had risked everything to find this gold and was not going to let it go so easily Roger reported the theft to the police at the time President Marcos had considerable control over the police and the military in particular , but Marcos did not yet control the media. A few days later the press found out about Roger's story.

It was a big scandal. You know there's stolen loot. It's World War II. They are the Japanese. Marcus is involved. The newspaper was full of articles that were not short at all. from calling Marcos a common thief, the hostile press coverage came at a critical time for Marcos, he was widely known for fixing his second term, the elections that were ridiculously corrupt, I mean, he supposedly won by two million votes, it was It just couldn't be that he was widely lampooned everywhere for corruption and um, he was starting to feel pretty insecure. Marcos needed to silence this treasure hunter.

Q there was an obvious solution: Marcus's regime was famous for extrajudicial executions, you would have to squads basically kill people who were he was considered very critical of the regime, but this time Marcos needed a different approach. I think at the time he must have thought that the story had enough public exposure that he couldn't risk making Roger disappear like many of his opponents. 3 weeks later, Roger finally received good news. They told him that his Buddha was waiting to be picked up at the Bagio court. When he got there, he was surprised when Roger saw the Buddha.

He knew immediately that this was not the Buddha that he had discovered that it was a different color, different shape, facial expression, the head did not come off. Marcus expects Roger to say yes, that's the Buddha, thanks, but he didn't know that Roos roas was determined not to let that boot and this was a big mistake for Marcos because he had misread Roos' personality. Roger declared that the Buddha was fake. I think that was completely reckless on his part because at that point he would have already known that he was a Marked Man and to have caused that kind of uproar by actually addressing Marcos himself on a personal level would have been absolutely ridiculous and very stupid in my opinion, without However he did it.

He clearly he was a very stubborn man. He is now giving them two fingers publicly. Really, this marks the beginning of the end for Roger. 2 weeks later, more mysterious men came for Roger and it seems it wasn't long before the interrogation turned into torture for several days. Roger said he was repeatedly burned with cigarettes, beaten and electrocuted. Finally, Roger claimed that he signed an affidavit stating that Marcos had nothing to do. to do with the Buddha's theft from him and revealed the location of the thousands of gold ingots. Roger was a very broken man when he signed David's statement.

I mean, there he was fighting publicly, but now admitting that no, there was no crime, it must have been completely The demoralized Marcos had Roger imprisoned and wasted no time helping find the rest of Rogers, but eventually Marcos Megamania would be His downfall in 1986, a popular revolution forced Marcos and Elda to flee the country. The Filipino people stormed the Marcos Presidential Palace and what they found inside. It was incredible, they were surprised with what they found. They found treasures of statues and art and thousands of pairs of shoes. This is just what they left behind. Marcos was, by far, the richest man in the world.

They were so rich that they really didn't know what. As for his money, one of the questions for the Filipino people was where Marcos' enormous wealth had come from. For most, there was an obvious answer: Marcos's wealth came mainly from theft, embezzlement and corruption, and can be looked back, I think, on his joint reign as being simply a self-enrichment plot and the administration of The Philippines became a secondary element, they were basically using public tracery as their piggy bank. Years later, while they were tried for fraud and embezzlement, Elda Marcus's defense stated that her fortune was not looted from the Philippine treasury, but it actually came from finding goldby yash.

I think Elda claimed that their joint wealth came mainly from finding yash's target because she was a very good blind, no one could prove otherwise, yash's target was simply a wonderful alibi, but to Roger Roas none of this mattered. his life was in ruins Roger never fully recovered from his torture and the damage is so great that he cannot see with his right eye for the rest of his life after this he lost his money he lost his self-esteem he lost his wife Roger has lost everything despite all this Roger still had a bit of the spirit that had helped him find the gold is a treasure The hunter's mentality they must reach the end of the story they must get the treasure anyway Roger had lost so much that he had nothing to lose to Marcos in exile in Hawaii Roger filed a lawsuit against him even when Marcos died a year later in September 1989, the case continued, you could say that the Marcos really got their way, he got out, he lived out his exile in Hawaii and died. due to natural causes, one could well say that they did quite well, it would be seven more years before Roger was finally vindicated.

In 1996, the jury concluded that Marcos had stolen Roger's find. $43 billion in damages were awarded when the court ruled that Roger's Favor is a significant moment in legal history. 43 billion is awarded to Roger, which is the largest award in a civil suit in history. Sadly, Roger never saw justice served on the eve of his day in court. He died. He was only 49 years old and then, in 1998, a huge compensation was annulled and no court has challenged the verdict that Marcos stole Roger's treasure. Lawyers are still discussing how to determine its value. It's hard not to look at Roger and feel empathy for this man.

His determination was limitless and I. I think at least Roger was a hero and I think that's how he'll be remembered. He was willing to be David against Goliath. I was willing to risk his life and therefore I take my hat off to him. Roger's tragic story begs the question: Was what he found unique or, as legend has it, are there 174 other treasure vaults still waiting to be discovered? Since the war, treasure hunters from all over the world have scoured the Philippines in search of their gold. Master, but none of them have found anything; However, people are still willing to risk their lives, searching for yash gold is a very dangerous activity even to this day.

I think it was in the year 2000, two men were buried alive looking for treasure, what motivates them, is it certain that the yam gold still exists? The legend of yash gold in the Philippines is enormous and has not died, it endures because it is real because it exists. there really are burial places there really are gold ingots gold gold plates gold Treasures that can still be found on the islands of the Philippines