I have to! Klaus retorted. 0000017483 00000 n The leaves of the bogtalay tree were placed in the cement backfill of the treasure tunnels by Japanese Shinto priests Ill explain, but were not at the bottom yet. 0000000016 00000 n This is the basic theme of the urban legend known today as Yamashita's Gold. This time I was prepared. Andrew Gough. Billy and Bob were prepared to camp for several days near the Norris ranch while they looked for gold. Andrew Gough. From what? Roxas had been caught out. 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. The men asserted that they had been blindfolded and taken to a warehouse, where they had been shown an enormous stash of gold bars. I wondered. However, the legal fees and the cost of the trials ate up so much cash that only $175,000 remained. Bassist Phil Lesh remembers tasting the LSD as . Andrew Gough. I returned to England and became engulfed by life and my time-consuming corporate job. The sudden, tragic death of Roxas overshadowed the trial, but did not negatively impact the outcome. Andrew Gough. It simply stood tall and proud and stared at me, gently nodding its head as though it had understood and had accepted its fate. Was the healer authentic? In 1942 Prince Chichibu is said to have examined potential treasure-vault sites around greater Manila, and further afield. Curtis, who is now in the Philippines but insists that McDougald act as his spokesman, says that he and 10 other Americans successfully conducted a similar treasure hunt under the regime of Ferdinand E. Marcos in 1975 but fled for their lives after locating a huge buried Japanese vault on the outskirts of Manila that McDougald said contained $8 billion in bullion. His team went and searched and dug but never found anything. Bruce and I had been discussing the subject for years and wanted to feature Klaus and his quest. A Filipino man named Rogelio Roxas filed a lawsuit against Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, then exiled in Hawaii, suing them for the value of the treasure. The three men went out hiking, but there is no evidence that they ever made it out of the mountains. startxref I knew we were essentially talking to the taxman about poetry. She recounted that she ran for cover when she feared she had been spotted. Yamashita is removed from the courtroom by military police immediately after hearing the verdict of death by hanging. 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. The only way to recover his body was via helicopter. It is that machine, he said, that has made his group so certain of the amount of buried treasure that lies beneath Ft. Santiago. 0 Still, this was easier than hiking through the thick underbrush. The bogtalay tree is regarded as sacred in the East. Tunnels filled with a foot of water But there was more. After a few days, his wife reported that he was missing. Bizarrely, the non-believer of a director was not interested in trying to speak to the old woman, who was only over yonder. The bad news was that nobody on the production team believed that the Japanese had buried treasure in the Philippines, let alone that Klaus was about to discover some of it. Hunting for topaz was just a hobby for Dametz. We followed a muddy path, not too far from a river that was roaring with monsoon-induced floods, and arrived at the site. I wondered. It is currently on Klauss list, and he is the only one with a permit for the region. As it turns out, Klaus had also been in contact with Sterling Seagrave. Roxas was assassinated. I inspected it closely and from all angles. The cobra settles down in its mesh cage 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. 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 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. A month later American intelligence officers would learn of the existence of the vast treasure hoards but not before a gruesome fate awaited the men who had overseen the treasures safe deposit deep in the earth. While this preceded the Japanese gold heists, each was confiscated as war booty and never returned to its owners. His friend preferred to stay anonymous, but lets call him Bob for the sake of the story. They used the same water from the streams as everyone else and unwittingly infected many of the other men. Not bad for a sixty-nine-year-old. I nodded and reflected on how pathetically difficult I found traversing the tunnel to be. I was disappointed when I reached the bottom and learned that I had to crawl on my hands and knees for about fifty feet until I reached the next descending shaft. None of the prospecting equipment had been taken. The year was 1976. Unfortunately, some people never come back. Regarding Operation Golden Lily, although evidence fails to show such a program existed with that name, the basic idea makes sense. During World War II, the Philippines briefly fell to the Japanese, being finally surrendered in April and May of 1942. To this day, the gold miners have not been found.[6]. Obviously, this challenge made it into the press. Its a heart a symbol placed in the tunnel by the Shinto priests, he replied proudly. 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. I had delivered Discovered Science a sensational story, one that would feature Klauss network premier. That fact doesnt stop thousands of people from trying to beat the odds. Andrew Gough. I was tempted and left with a belief that their site was an authentic Japanese treasure site. Thank you for giving me your life. Presenting on The Truth about Yamashitas Gold. Looking slightly perilous at the bottom of the tunnel system with Klaus 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. Amelia did as the dream-induced spirit encounter with Roxas instructed. Evidently, she found what she was looking for., Ill be damned, I added. She gave the pills to her husband, who took them and swiftly died. After a raucous reception dinner we agreed a plan for the next several days. The old woman was sensational and described how she and her family had hidden in the hills as the Japanese processed by with an ox pulling a cart that contained what appeared to be a heavy box. 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. Inspecting the Baguio Hospital artefacts in the Roger Roxas Museum What convinced you to take this seemingly ludicrous case? I enquired. As a result, experienced treasure hunters do not use explosives or, for that matter, motorised devices. The more cameras the better, he chuckled. Sadly, the worst scenario materialised. In subsequent days, the princes escaped to Japan by submarine, and three months later, on 2 September 1945, General Yamashita surrendered to American troops. Roxass life was not his own. The facts behind the urban legend that billions in Japanese gold lie buried in the Philippines. The treasure still has not been found. Could these mysterious deaths have been murder, or as some believe, could something supernatural have been afoot? Their families believe that the men were all killed by a gang who decided to take the gold mine for themselves. I laid back down and thought to myself, What the hell had I just got myself into. Theyre sand traps. There was no doubt in my mind that Henry was every bit the fortune hunter his father had been. Roger ROXAS and The Golden Budha Corporation, a foreign corporation, Plaintiffs-Appellees/Cross-Appellants, v. Ferdinand E. MARCOS and Imelda Marcos, Defendants-Appellants/Cross-Appellees. By the time I arrived at the next bamboo ladder my knees were cut and bleeding. We exchanged emails, became friends, and made plans to meet at his home outside Carcassonne, France. After some time she purchased a new home for her parents and one for herself. It is not a pleasant journey to the bottom of the tunnel complex: three descents down makeshift ladders and three separate crawls on ones hands and knees. Enjoy it as fiction in the many such works where it figures into fanciful plot lines but don't confuse this particular fiction with reality. When his sister learned of his tantrum she became enraged, for she understood that the map was designed to be read with the reflection of a mirror, a detail she would have shared with her brother had she known he was actively seeking the treasure. I was horrified to learn that I had to select which cobra would be sacrificed. So why have so many devoted so much to this tale? This was the result Marcos had been waiting for. He quickly succeeded, for he was saying something about cyanide. No sooner than I was reflecting on the creepiness of being there, Klaus screamed. I knew what it was, but I could not believe my eyes. I detected decades of guilt and sadness that had become imprinted on her face. Read about more bizarre, untimely deaths on 10 Creepily Ironic Historical Deaths and 10 Unusual Ways to Die Through the Ages. After numerous failed attempts they found him. 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. New York: Verso, 2003. San Francisco: Bookmark, 1993. Those rumors clearly didnt stop some people from continuing the search for gold. Andrew Gough. During Fridays Senate hearing, several senators indicated that they plan to pursue criminal charges against the treasure hunters for violating an old law against desecrating national shrines, of which Ft. 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