Thinking Sideways: Yamashita's Gold

lost treasure, which you've probably heard of. If you haven't heard about it, well you're in for kind of a treat. This one is called Yamashta's Gold. Also notice of the Masta treasure. You probably we know of it as Yamashita because that's how it spelled, but the actually pronounced Yamashta. Oh is it really? Yeah? Yeah, I didn't realize that.

I remember because the first time I heard about this is what it was like two years ago when we talked to Roy Baton and he mentioned this when we were talking to him after we had finished the recording, and he had mentioned it, and he'd call it Yamashida as well. So I just a lot of people. Yeah, I figured that was the correct pronunciation that you researched

this and not me. Yeah, yeah, you never know. I mean maybe his it's actually a name like a somebody's given names, So maybe maybe he pronoun he actually did

pronounce Yamashida. The Yamashta of yamash says Gold was General Tamayuki Yamashta, who was in command of Japanese forces in the Philippines from nineteen and as you know, what was going on back then, it's like oh war, Yeah, the second big one we had, the Second U. The Japanese had been special guests of the Philippine people for a while now, yeah, and then along about late nineteen four, a bunch of Americans with guns showed up and said something in the order we want it back. Um, yeah,

we gotta take this here back. Let's talk about the treasure. Though. The treasure came from all over the place. The Japanese invaded and occupied a lot of countries before and during World War Two, as you guys know, brutally. Yeah, yeah, it was there. They were kind of harsh. Uh. Those countries include China, Korea, Burma, Malaya, Dutch East Indies, Singapore and of course the Philippines, and of course besides me and kind of brutal, they also looted the places for

all they could find. Like they took a lot of gold, silver, platinum, precious gems and stuff like that I would do. Yeah, Yeah, it worked so hard for this. Yeah. According to some people, the most of the loot was shipped down to Singapore, whereas the reportedly was cataloged, and then it was shipped off to the Philippines, which is sort of on the way to Japan. From the Philippines, the booty was sent on to Japan, supposedly along with the valuables that they

stole from the Philippines. Also, uh, and nobody knows how much of this loot actually made it to Japan, if any of it. I'm sure a lot of it did. Yeah. And nineteen two, though, after the Battle of Midway, the American Navy began to dominate the Western Pacific and started sinking a lot of Japanese ships. So probably a few of these had loot on board. Also quite probably. Yeah, it's sitting down. They're waiting for you if you want

to go find it. Storal. Yeah, I know at this point that then the treasure was kind of stuck in the Philippines because it's kind of wasteful. It's sitting on a ship that's gonna get sunk, So what to do period? Yeah, that's an idea. Yeah. Yeah. The US invaded the Philippines in October ninety four. Msh A fought on for Aumust a year, eventually surrendered in September, and to keep himself occupied in the interim, he did the usual military stuff, but also started hiding all the loots so that it

wouldn't fall into Yankee hands. Makes sense, right, Yeah, and I do it. It has claimed that the treasure wound up being stashed in between a hundred seventy two and a hundred seventy five places, although I've heard other other stories where it just was stashed in one enormous cavern. That that is the one enormous cavern is kind of the fantastic version that I've come across. Yeah, that's always the first one that pops up on your searches. I don't know, it seems like it'd be easier to just

do one. Depends on how much stuff you goss to throw it all in that cave, put it under the dragon. That's all idea. You go, recruiter dragon. Indiana Jones didn't show up in your file. You're finding It's been always been my dream to find something like this, So would that be great anyway? Yeah. The method that they used was typically this. It would d to suit the hiding place, let's see a cave, and then a bunch of booty would be hauled in with soldiers or slave labor or both.

Engineers would rig up booby traps so anybody trying to get in there would get killed, and then the cave entrance would be sealed or blasted shut with everybody inside, so that way they wouldn't be able to tell anybody where the treasure was. That does sound a whole lot like Indiana Jones. Yeah. Yeah, I want my whip and everything.

We're going. We're going many Incidentally, Uh, the Monster's gold was featured and not even though it was not named, but it's in Neil Stevens Neil Stevenson's Cryptanomicon, which I know I plugged before. Yeah, don't you say you've mentioned this book before? Yeah, Boilers. One of the main characters in the book is is a Japanese guy who wands up getting conscripted in one of these into hiding some fabulous amount of stuff in this cave because he's a

clever guy. What they do is they seal it shut with him and a few other people inside, and then they flooded they haven't heard river, basically to flood the cavern. And but he's he's engineered, he's engineering himself a way out, so he actually escapes. Yeah, I know, I know, I should have probably spoilers. Yeah wait, wait, go back, we

can let edit it in you're ready. Spoilers. The legend of your Master's Gold has never gone away, and for decades people have been looking for this, a lot of people and they're still doing it today, and quite a few of them have gotten killed trying. Also, nobody has ever found the treasure, except for one guy named Rol Rojas, who will talk about a little bit later on. Maybe maybe maybe maybe if you're good, No, I'm sorry, I

meant maybe he found it. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's yeah, she's right, yeah yeah yeah, or found a part of it. We totally misinterpreted that. Yeah, well, let's talk about theories then, all right, let's that's a pretty our summation, So I guess we can talk about some of the theories. Yeah, there's a lot to go through here in theories a little bit. Yeah, there's several theories. One is that it's real and it's out there waiting

to be discovered. Still, so this is is it Are we doing kind of heading theories right that we sometimes with my stories will do theory one the gold is real, but sub theory one the gold is real, and this thing are we doing that sort of thing is about the construct here. If by subhead the gold is real, most theories and then subhead are heading to the gold

is not real. Alright, So if we assume the gold is real, the theories are the theories are that, well, they just did a really good job hiding it and it has yet to be found. But that's not you know, it's not really much to say about that one. So this is something that that struck me a little odd. If the job, if indeed the Japanese did gather all of this sub and they're looting everybody, why is it

always the gold that everybody talks about. There would have been all kinds of precious stones and things like that. I imagine artwork would have been collected. But why is it we only ever talk about the gold. I don't understand what the I mean, I understand that people have an obscene lust for gold, but it's just funny to me that that's the only thing that ever gets brought up. Oh yeah, I just I just said that, you Masha's Gold sounds like a cooler title, and you know, your

master's treasure. Maybe that's why maybe ems salt stolen stuff. Yeah that doesn't sound so great. Yeah it's lout. Yeah, but obviously they did. They did gather up you know, jewelry and jam everything, plat and the silver, a lot of stuff besides gold. Yeah, they hoovered it all up. Yeah, well they kind of. I mean, yeah, they're not the only ones that we're doing that kind of stuff in that exact same time frame. I mean, that was kind

of a common practice. But it's still it's funny, is that in this particular story that it's so it's just the gold that everyone talks about. So the Philippines are still still do have enough kind of undeveloped lush areas that this is a feasible thing that it just hasn't been discovered yet. Yeah, it's yeah, I have no I I got to be honest, I have no kind of

scope of how saturated the population is on the Philippines. Um, you know, I think it's there's some I don't know much about the Philippines, to be honest with you, I know some islands have a fairly decent sized population and summer practically deserted. Sure. Yeah, because that would be my question about this is you know, is it even feasible that there would be a hundred and seventy caches of well,

it's a pretty big area. Yeah, And you know, most of those islands tend to have all of their majority of their population centered in one or two major cities reports so that leaves a lot of undeveloped rural areas. So I think that's why everybody's kind of saying, well, it's still got to be out there. Yeah, Okay, Yeah, I still don't know exactly how the number one seventy two hiding places where that exactly came up from? Some and some of those are not all on land either.

Some of them, like around forty or so, or are supposedly underwater somewhere like an underwater cave or Yeah. But he found a map that he was playing Tic Tac toe on and interpret in every ax is a location for Yeah. Yeah, well our next there is this, which is that your Monster's gold really was real, but the Americans got their hands on it. That's in this series of advanced in the book that's called Gold Warriors by Sterling and Peggy Seagrave. Did you read any of this

of the book? Yeah? No, I um. I went out to Amazon dot Com and I read the description, and then I went to the reviews, and the reviews were very useful. They save me from wasting my time with this. Well I read they They put out some like three or four page summation of their stuff, and I found that and I read through it, and they're really stretching in my opinion, And I know we're going to go into some of this, but I was really surprised at some of the correlations. And I'm using air quotes here

that they made. Yeah, they took they took a lot of liberties with the truth here. Well, let's let's happen. So they what what they say is an intelligence operative is probably from interrogating captured Japanese. They got onto the scent of the booty somehow, and then um, they really couldn't interrogate and torture Yamashta, so they grabbed this driver

and tortured him for a while until he confessed. And since he was too much, this driver, he was driving them all over all these locations, presumably so he was underwater and stuff. Yeah, exactly. Uh, and then they used all this lute that they found to fund black operations all around the world, including including bribing politicians, buying elections,

and all kinds of stuff. And their book is supposedly very well documented, but to find out the sources of their information you have to buy a bunch of CDs separately from the book. Oh yeah, I don't actually list their their references and sources like every other book I've ever read does. Well, I think that they do have. I think they do have citations in the book. But apparently if you want all their information then you have

to buy the CDs. Yeah and so, and that's a whole separate price in the books they found the gold Yeah, I know, obviously, Yeah, this is this is stuff. Yeah, I know. It's kind of like kind of like the gold Rush, you know, the guys who really made out like bandits were the guys that want and sold sold shovels and stuff like that to all the prospectors. You know,

prospectors all weren't broke, almost of them did. Anyway, My favorite, my my favorite of all the reviews on there was a one star review from a guy named Angus Waycott that it was written a book called a book called Sodo, Japan's Island in Exile and the Sea Graves in their book claim that more than a thousand Korean slave laborers vanished without a trace on Sodo Island, and they cite Angus Waycott's book to support this. But according to Waycott,

his book says no such things. That's a direct quote, right, Yeah, that was on the Amazon review. Yeah yeah, Elsie said. He said it was a deliberate misrepresentation and he also said it was shameful. And so you know, after reading that review, I just figured I was going to leave it at that. I think you guys can go read the reviews on Amazon and decide for yourselves. But I

think support for this theory is not really not really there. Well, and like I said, I I read some of their stuff and it is really thin and there is a lot of leaps of faith made in it. Yeah, a lot of a lot of the other critical reviews out there said the same thing. That's just poorly sourced. And one under one guy said, this would make a fine little thriller to reach it read at the beach when you're on vacation. Yeah, you shouldn't treat it as nonfiction. Nice,

So I will put that theory to bed, all right. Yeah. The next another theory is that under the Golden real thing is that maybe some Japanese soldiers who had knowledge of at least some of these places have have gone back in the decades since and actually found some of this stuff and spirited spirited out of the country. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I like it. Yeah that makes sense. Yeah yeah. What does not make sense to you? Well, I'm just I'm just thinking about the state of Japan after the war

and everything that's going on. Well, not like you'd have to wait, like somebody would have to wait at least a decade or two before they could even think to

do it. Oh yeah, I mean, now you'd have to you have to wait quite a while just for he just for emotions to die down in the Philippines, because let's face it, they didn't behave themselves perfectly when they were there, and so you probably want to wait a decade or two when you went back, unless it was you know, in remote areas of the Philippines and you just get a boat, I mean, oh, yeah, sneak on shore, or it's not on shore, it's underwater, and you just

just come back. Yeah, that's that's a possibility. Uh, this is a this is a fine theory, and it's entirely possible, but it's sure speculation and oh it's absolutely yeah, and I'm just throwing it into waste everybody's time. Thanks. So, yeah, possible, but based on the evidence, I've got to give it a fail. I guess you could, um, you know that kind of gold bribe some officials in the Philippines. Well that's that's true too. I mean you could you could go to them and just say, hey, look, I know

where there's a huge stash of gold. Yeah, let's let let's dig it up and you can have half. Or you don't even say that, or you just sneak in and if you get caught sneaking out, you say, here's some gold, have some gold. Well, yeah, and as long as somebody melt sit down. I'm assuming, of course, that it's in bar form and not in whatever original jewelry shape it was. If it's in bar form, they're in turn going to have to turn around and melt it

down themselves. Then whoever being bribe? Because what do they call it when they stamp gold? I think it's called hallmarks, okay, because it would definitely have that hallmark on it to indicate where it was from. And I would be a little and I guess if you're willing to take a bribe, you don't really care where it came from. But that could cause a lot of a lot of alarms to go off if you then turn around and try and

pass that off. Do you think that was something that was documented, Like do you think they have records in the places that they were stolen from that these specific gold bars were stolen they you know, it just depends. I mean if the records survived the war or not. A lot of buildings got destroyed. It seems like the sort of thing you would destroy if you were taking stuff. You might, yeah, but I mean if if if something is stamped, you know, such and such bank Shanghai, China,

now then that's that's kind of a giveaway. Yeah. Yeah, Actually, the hallmarks do do play a small part in our story here in the future. Yeah. Yeah, well, let's let's move on to our next theory. It's real and somebody has actually found some of it. That's the Yeah, that is the theory. Yeah, there is some evidence for this theory, unlike our our the series and which are all kind of like not really much evidence, not really any evidence. Yeah, this is Roelio Rojas and we're gonna tell his story

and it's kind of interesting. There's more information on this one because it was litigated in the nineteen eighties and nineties and so there's a fair amount of information available for this and people people testified in court and stuff like that, so there's a legal documentation. Yeah, yeah, there was, there was a lawsuit. Rohelio Rojas was a locksmith in Baggio City, the Philippines, which is on the island of Luzon, which you know, for all of you who know all

about the Philippines is where Middla also is. I think it's the most populous island in the Philippines. And again I was that was too busy research this to research stuff like that. He besides being a locksmith, was also a coin collector and a treasure hunter. In he met a man named Albert Futagami in Bagio City who was

a fellow treasure hunter and they became friends. Fuchigami was the son of a Filipino woman and a Japanese soldier and uh Eventually Fuchigami took Rhelio into his confidence and told him his father had drawn a map identifying the location of one of the treasure trows of your Monster's gold. Yeah. He also around the same time met this other guy who has an unpronounceable name who claimed to have served as General Yamashta's interpreter during World War two. Shibo Okuba Okubauba. Yeah,

that sounds about right. He told him that this interpreter said that during the war he had been taken to some tunnels controlled by General Yamashta in order to get some silver to pay for food for the troops. And he said he saw boxes of various sizes. It contained gold and silver, and also he saw a golden Buddhist statue which was at a convent very very close by. And uh, so, with the clusive he got from this

guy and the map, that he got from Puchigamy. He partnered up with Fuchigami and they hired some laborers to search for the treasure. They got a permit and everything for it. You're supposed to because it was on government lands, they're gonna be looking. Oh yeah, that would be important. Yeah, it kind of would be. Uh. In nineteen seventy, they began digging in up near the Baggio General Hospital in Bagio City, and after seven months of searching and digging,

they broke into a system of tunnels underground. You know, that's a good thing, would be exciting. Yeah, And inside that the tunnel they found wiring and radio's band at swords, rifles, and a human skeleton wearing a Japanese army uniform. Yeah. Not to be fair enough that that was so uncommon for Japanese soldiers to have tunnels, right, yeah, not really fairly common. Yeah yeah, so mean, yeah for hiding in that kind of natural cave systems are great for that. Yeah.

I don't know if this was a natural cave system or what. Okay, I presumed it was a natural cave, even unnatural, I mean that was that was a pretty solid part of their warfare. Strategy wasn't it was tunnels, I think. I think a lot of armies do that. Yeah, so it's not yeah yeah, just because the tunnel excess doesn't mean treasure. It doesn't mean it was there for treasure. But they spent about a month in this tunnel though actually it was a whole series of tunnels, and they

explored and they didn't find any find anything. And then Rojas got himself a metal detector and went around and got himself a strong signal. In one place, they dug a little bit and they hit concrete and they hammered through the concrete. I'm not sure how long it take to break through, but we probably, yeah, could. They found a room below below the tunnel, and inside this room they found a gold buddha, a solid gold buddha, yeah, which according to Rojas, about three feet in height. It was.

It was really heavy. It took ten men to get it to the surface. That you had to use a chain block, hoist and ropes, and then they rolled it on logs through the tunnels apparently, and rouse guests was probably about a metric ton and he told his men to take it to his house and put it in the closet. Wait a second, I know, Wait a second. It takes ten guys to haul this out of the cave. And he's like, oh, yeah, then take it to my house and put it in the closet. Yeah, how do

you get the rolling lodge through your house? This is unspecified. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, this whole part, this part of this, the of his story mystifies me. Well, there's there's other parts that mystify you and then mystify me too. But okay, he did manage to persuade the persuaded jury to believe his story. I know. But yeah, I gotta be honest with you. The thing that mystifies me is that he was a treasure hunter who somehow didn't have a metal detector, Like he had to go out and say, oh, I'm

gonna go get a metal detector. Yeah, but in my mind, like treasure hunters, the staple of treasure hunting is metal detector. Indiana Jones never had a metal detector on. He wasn't a treasure hunter. Yeah, he was, he kind of was. He was an adventurer, he was an archaeologist. He was an archaeologist. He had better reason to have the metal detector and he didn't yeh. He had an interesting style when it came to archaeology. Yeah, just go and steal

some stuff. Poked the walls. Yeah, sorry, we just we just got way off on the side there. Yeah. Yeah. Back at the back to Rojas Helio, about fifty ft from where Buddha was, it was a big stack of boxes. There were stacked five or six high, open area over an area six ft wide and thirty ft long roughly. And he came back the next day and opened one of the boxes and it contained twenty four bars of gold, and he didn't open any of the other boxes. I

got this weird. Well, yeah, and I got this from he gave He actually died before this whole thing went to trial, but he gave a deposition before and so this is from the courts documents. So this is this is from the mouth of Jelio. Yeah. Yeah, if that seems a bit odd, I mean I would be if I saw a pile of boxes, I would open them right up. Maybe there would be snakes in one though,

that's a good point, so I wouldn't open run. You opened one and it was like the right door, right, it was show the right door so you just stay, you don't open all the rest of that makes total sense. I know. That's why I am the one of us that keeps finding all the treasure and don't one gets a bit by snakes. Yeah, I screaming like a little girl.

Yeah about him several weeks later, and they don't specify exactly in the court documents, he returned because he wanted to seal the tunnel closed, and so he was going to use dynamite to plastic closed for safe keeping of the treasure. Right, he returned to shut it. He took the twenty four bars of gold then, and also some sam restaurats and bayonets and other souvenirs. And some weeks went by after that. This is, by the way, they

found the Buddha and the gold on January. So this is about this is in February when he's blasting his shut western the whole shut. And some time went by and he sold seven of the gold bars, and he was looking for a buyer for the golden Buddha, and his plan was to raise funds to go back and get the rest of the gold bars, which you know, okay, that's a strategy. Yeah, I guess sell sell a small amount of treasure to fund getting the rest. Yeah, I got it. Could they'd be heavy, you would need a

lot of Yeah. In April sevente she he had showed the Buddha to two other people, and then he showed it to a third buyer, a guy named Joe Oyahara, who said he was interested, and he said he would come back in several days with the million pacos as a down payment. After he left, Roehus got curious about the Buddha. He took a closer look at and he found out that the head was removable, So he got the head off of it, and he looked inside and there was a compartment and said inside the Buddha that

was filled with stones which looked like uncut diamonds. So he scooped me out. He said, they're about two handfuls of uncut diamonds inside the buddha. If you put the head back on, put the diamonds I guess in a bag and put them in the closet next to the buddha. Yeah. Yeah, Yeah, this guy's got a great safe system. Yeah, I know. I don't know if it took ten dudes to carry the bood out. It's not exactly gonna walk up, but the bag of diamonds, the bag of diamonds I would

have taken out in my backyard and buried or something. Yeah, I think. So, you know, we've searched in your I mean, we helped, we were digging for treasure. It's it's booby trapped by the way, so don't go near and don't go near it. Yeah. So four days after Joe Oihara came over to look at the Buddha, at two thirty in the morning, eight men from the Criminal Investigation Service and the National Bureau of Investigation came pounding on the door and demanded to be let in, and they said

they had a search warrant. So after Roejus opened the door, these eight guys come inside. They are wearing military uniforms and they've got Joe Oihara with them, uh, And they showed him a document that they said was a search warrant. And the soldiers were beat on Rohaus's brother with their rifles and made the whole family get on the floor.

And then when they left, they took the buddha, also the diamonds, the remaining seventeen bars of gold, the samurai swords, a piggy bank belonging to the kids and and his wife's coin collection, so that they they cleaned pretty much cleaned him out. Yeah, so Roehus reported it to the media and also the local police. He also went to this judge who he knew was just name was Peo Marcos and he apparently was related to Ferdinand Marcos. I guess at one point Rojaus used to work for him

and that's how they knew each other. And also Marcos judge Marcos was the guy that he wants to to get the permit to dig on stay lands. I forget to mention that, uh, he had noticed Marcus his signature and the search warrant that the police had showed him, and he asked why he had signed his search warrant, and Marcos said they had no choice because Ferdinand Marcos had ordered it and said he had ordered the confiscation.

The whole pretext for them coming into the house is Joe Oi Harris companion had claimed he was seen the illegal gun in the house, so he he filed the complaint. But this guy apparently had connections to Marcos also, So anyway we'd have gotten back to Marcos that there was gold and a Buddha and all this stuff. We all know who Ferdinand Marcos is, but I don't know that all of our listeners do. She might want to want to let some people know who we're alluding to. Yeah,

good point. Ferdinand Marcos was president of the Philippine I believe from nineteen sixty nineteen eighty six. I know he was definitely he was deposed in x Yeah. He he eventually became, you know, supreme dictator and all that stuff. Lots of human rights abuses. Eventually there's a revolution in nine six and he was ousted and he and his wife Emelda of the eight hundred shoe collection Marcos. So, yeah, they want to political asylum in America and they wind

up living in Hawaii. And that's how we've got all of this because the lawsuit that you're referencing for this material is was filed in Hawaii. Yeah, it was. Judge Marcus also appeared angry, according to Roja, said he had reported the case of the police and the media and said as a result, he would likely be killed. Yeah,

so Rojas interpreted that as a threat. So he went into hiding for a little while, and then, uh, not too long after that April ninetee, the military deposited a buddha's statue with the city court in Baggio City, apparently the same one this stance. So what did they do? They put it out front or they took it they

turned it in that I don't know. I guess that the court doesn't really say why, but they basically took it in there and said, here's just here's his Buddha back because in response to all the unwanted attention that he'd been calling this Buddha. So, yeah, we confiscated it, but here it is back returns. Yeah, we thought it

might be a dangerous exactly smiling Buddha. Yeah. Ten days after that, Rojas went to the courthouse in Baggia City where the Buddha was and it was accompanied by a couple of bodyguards and a lawyer and miscellaneous reporters, and he examined the buddha and he said it was not the same Buddha that was in it that was taken from his house. He claimed its color was different, he said it had different facial features. Claimed the head was

also not detachable. And so I'm not so sure about this because I've seen pictures of his brother took pictures of him with the gold Buddha. Two pictures of their kind of low resolution, but you can see the Buddha pretty clearly. I don't know if you guys ever saw those pictures, And there are also there's also one from from the trial we'll lead up to the trial of a Nel de Marcos looking at a Buddha. It looks

like the exact same Buddha to me. He claims that the facial features are different, so it looks like the exact same. But do you know that the one that Amel de Marcos is in front of isn't the one they were trying to return to him? That is that? Yeah, so that's the one that they were trying to return he claimed was not the same as his original one. Right, But I I've seen the pictures from before the Buddha was confiscated and then after, and they looked exactly the

same to me. Yeah, well, I mean he did, you know, he made some claims about markings on it from tests that were running stuff, and I know that that got refuted and there's some there's some controversy around that itself. But but the fact that the head doesn't come off if he said the head comes off, that's kind of an important thing. Now, that would be kind of an important thing. But the thing about it is is, um he could have been faking that too, because he had

a hard time getting the head offer. He originally didn't didn't know for quite a long time that the head came off. Yeah. Yeah, and guys are hauling it around. I've got a guess they knocked it over at least once by accident. You would think the head would have popped off. Maybe I took him he had to whack the head with a piece of with the like a two by four. Yeah, okay, yeah, so he could have said, yeah, it comes off really easy, and then oh, it didn't

come off. Okay, okay. I thought initially that the head was just loose. No, no, no, it actually it was hard to get off. But the I mean, the pictures do show that the head was off in one black and white pictures. Yeah, so that at least we know it did actually come off. It did actually come off on the original Buddha. And and again the one, the one that they left at the courthouse, appeared to me to be the same. Yeah, I mean, they look pretty similar.

It's hard to tell with resolution, you know photo resolution of the time. If the color is actually different and it's a different angle and there's like rope around the one in the black and white pictures versus the one in the court, there's not the rope, so it's hard to tell. You know, lines that your eyes make without the rope, they might not make. It's hard to tell.

I don't know. I personally think the one with the rope that you can still see enough features, like, look at the same they're not No, I'm can at it right now. Um, if you look at the one that he has, it's got you know, the line on your face that runs from the corner of your nose, the nasal labial fold. Yes, that one. I don't know how the hell you know that. But I I actually, as as I've looked at the photos and I had to pull them up real quick just to double check, I

kind of think that they look different. I mean, I, as we were saying, I see differences in in the face. It's hard to tell for me just because it's I I think the the they hit me as two different images, right, But I can't say we'll see in this image it's this and this issue is that because the resolution is solo in the original two, and they're from a different angle than any of the other way and the style at the time there were there very stylistically similar. They're

from the same era. Yeah, they're very very similar, but there's I see differences in the face. So I I, personally, I don't through the same one just based on what I've seen in the photos. I don't know what His brother, Jose who was there at the house when the police showed up and took the took it away. He's he testified years later. Of course he he looked at it and stantestified that it was the same Buddha. That's what his brother said. So yeah, yeah, so I confused. Well

they do. They look very very similar. Yeah. Anyway, back to Rohelio at this point, he wants to a kind of a difficult three year period. He was arrested, beating, tortured with electric shocks. They wanted to know, They wanted to sign papers first of all, saying that the two Buddhas were the same, and they also wanted to know where he'd found it because obviously and the gold bars. Yeah, and he refused to talk. They let him go, but then he was re arrested. He managed to escape. He

wanted to hiding for a while, eventually was caught again. Uh. In nineteen seventy three, he was convicted of possession of an illegal gun and unlockfably firing a revolver into the air. I don't know if that was true or not. I think that the government had it in for him at this point in time, and so it might have been entirely bogus. But he went to jail for about a year and a half and said that he would continue

to be beaten and interrogated in prison. When he arrived home from prison in November in nineteen seventy four, back to Bagio City, he went by the treasure site and he noticed soldiers were standing outside tents near the near the hospital, right at the treasure site where they had done their excavation. Yeah, that's where they found the tunnels. Yeah.

Rohilo at this point kind of figured they probably had found his treasure and and so he gave up on pressing his claims and didn't do anything more about it until after Marcos was deposed in Then he filed suit in March in Hawaii against against both of the Marcus is for theft and also for human rights abuses. A lot of the information I'm gonna show you he comes from that comes from the trials. As far as him seeing soldiers at the dig site, the treasure site, there

were two witnesses that backed that up. They both worked at the hospital and they both said that they saw a lot of soldiers and laborers digging and around back there, and they said they saw them carrying out boxes and crates that appeared to be extremely heavy. It would be like take like four to six guys to carry one of these boxes. Uh. And and one of them said, actually one time that he saw a box get dropped in a broke open and a bunch of yellow bars came out of it. So that kind of that's that

kind of backs up Julio story. Another guy named Robert Curtis on a mining and refining business, and he said he was brought over to the Philippines at the behest of Marcos because because he wanted him to melt down a bunch of gold bars to get rid of the hold the hallmarks and cast new bars out of them. So he actually did some work for them and building and building a smelter. I don't know why they had to call it get him. There had to be somebody

in the Philippines was capable of doing this. I'm wondering if it was the scale. Yeah, yeah, because apparently, Yeah, he saw he saw a room in the presidential Palace that was like forty by forty ft that was stacked to the ceiling with gold bars. He claims, that's a pretty big scam. That's a nice lot. That's nice. A little bit of gold there. Yeah. Although you know, if anybody that knows about the gold market, that much gold would flatten the economy globally, you couldn't. You couldn't just

dump it on the market all at once. You have to dribble it out a little bit of a time. No, I mean, we've assigned this this random figure or value to gold. There is nothing special about gold. It's just this thing we all covered so it we give it this value, and when you flood the market with it, it's not worth anything anymore. So you're not gonna be you know, I'm gonna sell the gold and become super rich. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can. You're just gonna have to dribble it out

a little of the time. It's probably a good way to attract less attention to Oh yeah. There were several other people who testified at the trial that they had also been shown rooms full of gold bars at both palaces.

They had a summer palace in a regular palace, and of course, yeah, one guy said he still see this had been taken blindfolded and taken to a warehouse and then because he had questioned the existence of all the gold and so they he saw this huge stack of crates and and then they opened one up and it they was pulled to gold bars. Although he said that they were rather crudely made, so these might have been some of the resmelted ones, and he said they were

they had finished like an orange peel. Yeah yeah, that's not normal. Yeah yeah, I know. So between all these between all these people testifying at the trial, that wasn't not to convince the jury that Rohelio roe House was telling the truth. And they certainly believed all the human rights and stuff too, so they awarded there was plenty of evidence of that. Yeah, oh yeah, I know, they awarded the Royal House of State and the Golden Buddha Corporation.

I forgot to mention the bullet and the Golden Buddha Corporation. He got a friend in the US to incorporate, uh, and then he signed his interest in the treasure over to the Golden Buddha Corporation, and Rohelio was a shareholder in the corporation. Yeah, and so and so maybe that maybe that's easier to sue an American court if it's an American corporation versus a Filipino guy. Yeah, it sounds possible.

In nineteen six, the jury awarded the Royal House of State and Golden Buddha twenty two billion dollars plus interest plus interest. Yeah, what the interest? It came to over forty billion dollars. Largest judgment of history. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. Unfortunately, the Hawaiian Supreme Court reverses a couple of years later. On the ground set. Even though there was a stack of boxes, nobody actually knows what was in them. It's it's a reasonable assumption to assume that they were all

full of goals, since one was. But actually, but like I said, it could have been snakes. It could have been snakes, It could have been dirt, It could have been food that had long since rotted away. It could have been could have been, it could have been stacks of unicorn horns. Those are actually worth more than gold, though, So this that would have been. This stood. That's good,

that's a good point. Uh. So the Supreme Court ordered a new hearing to value just the golden Buddha and the seventeen bars of gold, and also a few other things like the coin collection, keep a piggy bank and

stuff like that. Uh and so like And by the way, I read the course, I've read the whole opinion, and it's pretty obvious they think the claim of the solid gold Buddha as purebs Yeah, yeah, yeah, Like when they talk about the Buddha, they they call it the gold Buddha in it, you know, and quotes the gold Buddha. So it's it's yeah, they obviously are unconvinced. But the jury it doesn't really matter. The jury was convinced, I guess, so from a legal standpoint, that's all that really matters.

In the next go around, they were awarded thirteen million in change for the Buddha and the gold bars and and all the other stuff, and the Rohsa state was awarded six million dollars for the human rights abuses because because at this point Rhalio was dead. Yeah, I forgot to mention he died in Yeah, unfortunately that kind of really well, he there was some stress that happened, I know. Yeah, two years after he died. This is this would have

been his brother. Jose commenced an action at the Regional Truck Court in Baggies City asking for release of the buddha since they still had it in their custody all these years later and they wanted it to have it back as a memento to Rohelio. And are they going to use it as like a headstone? Yeah, yeah, I don't know. I just put it in the yard and the headstone would be kind of cool. Yeah, nobody will

ever get rid of that memo. Yeah. At the initial hearing, he testified that he had been present when the rating party took the buddha out of his out of the house, and the court told him to take a look at the Buddha that they had there and say is this

the same one? And he said it was. And then at a second hearing, Jose said he test untestified under oath that the Buddha that had been at Rohelio's house was made of lead or copper, but reporters had added that the Buddhas made of gold, so it might have been the press actually puffed this up a little bit. Yeah.

He also said that Rohelio Rojas knew it was made out of lead or something and not gold, but he said that wrote Rojas had claimed it was gold because he had been bribed by opposition politicians to do to do this. Yexplained that to me, the opposition politician bid yea in the Philippines. Yeah, they've been bribed by politicians to say this, to pump the story up. Oh, to then throw dirt at Marcos essentially, okay, okay, got it. Didn't didn't make that connection right away. So that's sort

of sort of some of his other claims, I guess. Oh. And by the way, as a counterpoint to that, that's the same trial record also had a letter to the judge sent by Daniel Kaskar, who was the attorney for Golden Buddha and the Rojasa State, and his letter said that Emelda had met with Jose Rojas and offered him money to petition the court for the brass Buddha and then false identify it as the same one as have been taken from Roelio. I know it's yeah, and that's

that's I guess that's possible. Uh So the buddha that was in the court custody had been brass all along, brass or lead or something. It wasn't to me like it's painted. And if it really weighed as much as they as they said it, dude, then I'm thinking lead. Yeah. Yeah, But so that that was the case, right, it wasn't the one that wasn't it was in court custody, wasn't in fact full gold. It wasn't gold. Did Rojas find imatched his gold or at least some of it? He

might have unsolved mysteries. Did an episode about this before he died, and he was He had a lot of FaceTime on camera and he seemed sincere and believable. But I still have a few problems with this story, such as he spots a huge pile of boxes near the buddha, but he didn't bother opening a single one until the next day. Well, that's a lot of work to get

the boot out. Yeah, that's true, I guess. I mean, you know, the buddha could have been blocking the way to the boxes, right, They had to move it before he get to the boxes, and by the time they got it out, he was like, coming back tomorrow, could be Yeah again, I would be. I would be hugely curious about what was I would too, but you know, I would step over the three foot tall bood. I

would think that's just me. Yeah. He left the box of gold bars four gold bars sitting in the tunnels for several weeks, so we're talking like three or four weeks before he came back and retrieved them and then blasted the tunnel ship. Would you do that? No, you either continue to pull stuff out or you shut it up right away exactly. But he might not have He might not have known what he was going to do.

He may have thought, I can continue to pull this stuff out, suddenly realized he was out of money and selling the gold he had wasn't going as quickly as he expected. I mean, people do this stuff in business all the time. Oh, don't worry about it. We'll have this totally take care of in like two days, No big deal. Three weeks later they still have nothing done. It happens, Well, yeah, I don't know. It's just I still feel like it would have it would have driven

me crazy. I mean, I found if I found this tunnel and I know that there's at least twenty four gold bars sitting there, and that anybody could just one of the people that I that one of the laborers that I had hired, for example, knows where it's at, he could go back there with his buddies and steal all that gold. But he never opened the boxes in front of those people. But maybe that's why he didn't

open the boxes. Maybe you wanted to. That's that's possibility. Um. But still, if those people saw the pile of boxes, then I wouldn't you wouldn't you? I mean, you're not really here. They are one of the labors. You see the pile of boxes, aren't you going to go and probably want to open yourself? Yeah? You know most people would. Yeah.

So I'm just saying this is from if I were Hlio, I would not be able to sleep knowing that this tunnel was open and that the people that have had seen the pile of boxes could go back at any time and take or knowing that some random do could just come along discover the opening and go in there and discover and take all this stuff. I wouldn't be able to sleep, and yet he wants several weeks just

leaving all the gold in there. I okay, So I think, as we've done in the past, we're presuming that the crew is with him and in there working the entire time, and therefore intimately familiar with everything that's going on, when in fact, they were hunting around at a bunch of

freaking caves for weeks on end. And it is possible that once he found the concrete bit that he had to break through, that he was like, oh, well, I don't want to pay anybody else to do it, I'll just swing a sledgehammer for a day and broke through it himself and then said, you know, hired these how were ten men or whatever it took, said hey, I

have this thing in this tunnel. I want you to pull out, and they just completely different than the other crew, maybe unawares walk in, Oh yeah, this thing is heavy and all it out and have no idea what they're walking into. Well, you know that's true enough, but still there's still the possibility of some random dude could discover

the cave right there. I'm just saying that it may not have been a situation where the workers knew what was going on to then get the idea of, well, I'm going to go back on my own and see what it really is. Yeah. Maybe not, I don't know, but I still I still would not have left that pile of gold sitting there. No, I mean I don't think anybody would. He'd have to be crazy to do that. Yeah,

pretty much, I think so. Yeah. Next, he was trying to sell the Buddha to raise funds to finance the removal of the boxes of gold bars in the tunnel. But he sold seven gold bars. That was that should have dedit him a big punch of money. Yeah, unless he got swindled. Well, it didn't know the value of the gold he was getting, or it wasn't high quality goals. I mean, there's there's a bunch of oars here. Well I'm sure, yeah, I'm sure he had to sell it

at a discounted price. I'm sure he didn't get full gold value for it. But it may not have been twenty two or twenty four carrot gold. It could have been low quality gold, which therefore is worth less money. Yeah, but still it would have been worth quite a bit. It would have been worth charge. But then you if if you say it's low quality, and then you're selling it at a cut rate, and then you don't really

know what that cut rate should be. So your gold buyer, who's kind of a swindly little guy, knocked you down even more. You could be getting you know, ten or twenty percent of what the value of what you're selling is. I mean, it still should have been enough to fund some more some more hauling out of stuff. Actually, since you know, my question is is like why not just do a couple of bars a day? You just walk over to your okay, right, I mean the impression I

have is it was close to his home. You just walk over there and throw a couple in a box and you know, put it over your shoulder and walk home and that, Like what's the finance need? I mean I have to do it in one fall swoop. Of course you need the financing. But yeah, you know what I would do is what I would have done is I would have just hired, you know, hired some laborers, people that were trustworthy, didn't know we were't going to kill me for the gold or anything. And they say, look,

you help me with this. I'll give you each a couple of bars of gold. Yeah that works. Yeah, that's what I would have done. But hey, the one thing that I I like the idea of just going and packing out a couple of bars a day, except that gold bars, even when they're little ones, they're freaking heavy. Yeah, I think, and I'm I don't know the exact number, but I'm gonna ballpark it between fifty two seventy pounds is what I want to say. A bar of gold wayspack.

But that means you can carry one or two, maybe three, not three in a backpack. A very physically fit person could pack three a day. But you pack that for five ten miles, that's a that's a workout and a half. Yeah, So that that would be better shut in daunting task while you're gaining money for you're not you know, it's like the best gym workout, except for free. I mean, actually you're getting paid a lot of money for it.

Because that was the other thing, right, is that the cost of gold per ounce was like almost nine hundred bucks at that point, right something. It was more than it had climbed up away. So there I think it might have been. It might have been more like five or six hundred even back. But even then, if you if we're saying it's fifty or seventy pounds, right, we're saying it's like four hundred ish ounces you're getting. I mean, if you're if you're getting even five hundred dollars per ounce,

that's incredible. And even if you're only making of that, you should be able to easily finance with one bar getting the rest of that stuff out of it, especially since labor of the Philippines is really pretty cheap. Yeah, and then you just say you know, or again you just they here's a bar. Yeah, everybody way. Yeah. The next thing I want to know is who do you sell the bars too? He sold seven bars, supposedly, his

lawyers never asked him. They've never asked him because, after all, that guy would have been a great witness, because it would have established that that Rohalio did indeed have some gold bars in his possession. Also, they couldn't find somebody to lie about it, even if not much of a lawyer. Uh yeah, So evidence regarding the gold bars, it's really

pretty thin when you come down to it. Another thing that I was I really kind of scratched my head over is that his partner and friend, al Albert Fusugami was never heard from. They didn't track him down, They didn't track down any of the hired laborers. Perhaps that helped out in their little dig and had them testify. Well, it may have been that they didn't know who the labors were. Well, possibly because they're just guys he hires,

and maybe Albert's dead by now. I don't know. Still, I'm kind of I'm kind of surprised that they were not to find any of those people and that they would have been That would have been something that they would have been able to just do, like a deposition in the Philippines for right. I mean, the trials are happening in Hawaii. It's not cheap to fly people places. It's not not everybody wants to fly places, So that

would have been right. That's what we're saying is we could have just gone, could have gone in the Philippine and just done some positions. Okay, I want to be clear statement on the record, So long story short, I am I really don't think Rohlio found anything other than a lead Buddha because the people, the people who actually saw the boxes, and we don't know how many people other than saw the boxes, But any of those people that saw it were never never part of this whole thing.

They never testified, So we only have Rohelio's word that there were this there was a huge pile of boxes, and so I'm kind of thinking maybe he only found the lead Buddha and nothing else. Well, and furthermore, there were there were a lot of people who testified that they saw the boxes, but at Marcos's palaces, right, Yeah, some people said they saw boxes, not necessarily also saw just stacks and stacks, right, So there's really no evidence to suggest that Marcos stole that stuff, right that at

the hospital, yeah, yeah, which seems to be supported. Yeah, But also in fairness, if you just kind of figured out that this guy who's been claiming all this stuff, that's where he claimed to have been digging, it might warrant a dig just to see even if it was a lie, you know, you wouldn't know. You just say, oh, yeah, this guy said he found a bunch of gold here, so we'll go dig there. Yeah, right, what's the harm you have a lot of military Yeah, send those guys. Well,

I mean, there were other other people involved. Two besides Roelio so somebody else might have might have squealed. Yeah, yeah, that's why you didn't hear from them. Yeah, I could be. Let's move on to our last series. So then, do you guys have anything more to say about Rohelio? Do you think you found it? Do you think he do you think he didn't find it? No? But I can't believe this is our last theory. You've left one out.

Oh oh, Mr Gold, Yeah, I can talk about Mr Gold. Well, we'll talk to Mr We'll talk about Mr Gold after this, because Mr Gold is mostly just for fun. Yeah, yeah, exactly, back there last day, Mster's Gold is just an urban legend. In favor of this, I have to say a lot of people have been looking for the treasure for decades now and you haven't found a trace of it, and so you would think somebody would have found something by now. It does seem suspicious. And also, why would the Japanese

send everything to the Philippines. It would have made it more really, it would really would have made more sense to ship at overland, say that Shanghai or Korea, which are much closer to Japan, and go from there. Um. And if it did wind up and it was too, if it was too risky to take to Japan on ships from the Philippines, assuming it had wound up in

the Philippines, and why not just use submarines. Well, the other the other thing that I wonder is if if they're putting everything on a boat and they're taking it somewhere, why wouldn't they take it to the main land, Because they controlled huge chunks of the mainland at that time, they could have taken it to Korea, which is kind

of in a straight line. It's one of the shortest water distances to Japan from the mainland, and then you make the run from there, because that's that's your narrow one that that's what I'm saying, that would have been more sense. Okay, yeah, uh yeah. Shanghai is actually it's it's probably it's it's a little further away, but still it's a lot hell of a lot closer than than the Philippines. Yeah, so I don't I don't really see why they would ship all that stuff to the Philippines

to begin with. It also seems to me that if it did wind up in the Philippines, getting on that loop back to Japan would have been a very high priority. Don't you think that would have been a and said they would have found a way to do at submarines whatever, you know, it would have been something. Yeah. Against this seria is it's been proven that the existence sub urban legends is itself an urban legend. Really, people don't just make stuff up. No, No, they never happened. Never happened.

So you guys have any favorites. What's what's your favorite theory to talk about. We're gonna talk about Mr Gold for a second because I came across this one and when I when I saw your notes, I was laughing that you had intentionally left out Mr Gold because he loves gold. Because his name is Mr Gold, which is a pseudonym, would assume him be the right word. It's yeah, because we don't know who this guy is. He's the American Free Press dot net I believe it is, has

been putting out his story. They put it out over the course of like six months or a year. Some guy who is an American citizen says he went down there and he found all the gold, and he hired a company to to excavate it and pack it out,

and that company never showed. Years later, he gets some of it, and then suddenly the FED show up at his door because his name is on record with this other company, the one that never showed up, which, by the way, the name of the company is B I AM Incorporated, which the B I M is in capital letters, but if you look at it and you flip it around, because I do word jumbles all the time, it's M I B as in men and black men and black incorporated.

And uh so, now he's been detained by the US government because he's got, you know, a hundred trillion dollars worth of gold and he's on these trumped up mail fraud charges. Is why he's still in jail. And it's in it's a it's a fun tale, and I'll leave it at that. Is it's just it's a really fun tale. But nothing of its even smells remotely of truth. No, not even slightly. Yeah, work of fiction is what I

would say on that one. But it's it's it's one of the things that you find, it's one of the initial things you find when you start ching for this story. So that's why. Yeah, yeah, it does kind of out, but yeah, it's obviously nonsense. So yeah, what do you guys think how many favorite theories. I don't think it actually exists. Yeah, I mean either, I don't think they

would have taken the time. If they're looting jewelry and everything from everyone and it's full of precious gems, that's a lot of work to separate everything and then melted down and then pack that out instead of just chucking it in a box and packing it all out. I also think that, um, if soldiers are looting, they're probably gonna keep that stuff, a fair amount of it. Maybe

not all right, They're they're gonna keep a cat. I think that supposedly this whole thing was was organized from the highest levels and so so it was like they did a fairly decent job supposedly. But again, you know, Steve's point is is totally right. You you just have jewelry, right, If you jewelry, you just toss it in a box or you know whatever, and it's it's even it's harder

to trace at that point. I mean, you know, the number of super unique pieces of jewelry out there is because you don't you don't want to, you don't want to spend the time and effort It takes too for your people who you're employing to sit down and separate all of this. I mean, the Germans did this when they looted everybody, but they use slave labor to do that separation process. The Japanese didn't have a whole huge swath of that available, so that's a lot of effort

on their part. Well, also, it just doesn't I mean, it just doesn't make sense that you would do that in the middle of a war. You Yeah, well, especially when you're in these small areas. Yeah, they did, and they would have. They would have probably actually not all of it would have been melted down into gold bars, but they would would have come across gold bars and banks and like that. Yeah. But yeah, I just can't see it. I'm shipping into the Philippines. It makes no sense,

I agree. Yeah, alright, sorry everybody. I guess it doesn't exist. Well that's about it for this week, unless you guys have anything more you want to say about your Muson's gold. Yeah all right. Well, if you guys, if you have any thoughts about it out there, listener person, you can call person. You know. I like that designation. They are

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this one done. All Right's see you next week folks. Later, guys. Bye, guys,