A rare photograph of Roxas in the Baguio tunnel system. Web. After her second NDE she began to have prophetic dreams, and claims to have been in regular contact with the spirit world. Wait a minute not so fast, I quipped. Neither of us now trusted the other. Santy, as he was known, tortured Yamashitas driver, Major Kojima Kashii, until he gave up his secrets; the Japanese had buried unthinkable quantities of gold and vast hoards of ancient treasure in subterranean vaults across the Philippines. I had forgotten about the legend of Japanese treasure buried in the Philippines, save for the occasional outreach of Filipinos who had seen The Truth About Yamashitas Gold and were looking to secure funding for their own excavations, when I was contacted by a very curious woman from Los Angeles. 2023 Skeptoid Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. The process was known as sanctifying, and via a series of chance encounters Marcos was led to the American metallurgist, Robert Curtis. Andrew Gough, Seashells with cement in them, black stones with gold dust, incense, and a heart, complete with artery He pressured Santy for information about the sites he had found and wanted him to turn over his bank accounts. Once the cameras stopped, Henry continued taking us through his files, highlighting important photos and newspaper clippings, including one very poignant photo of himself as a young man standing alongside his deceased father. Frustratingly, he was unable to recapture what she had so convincingly and spontaneously said previously, leading the director to believe we had made it all up. How to Extract Adrenochrome from Children, Why You Needn't Worry About the Missing 411. How to Claim a Treasure Hunter Bounty Alive in "Red Dead Redemption". "Searching for the lost treasure of Yamashita." The relationship would end badly. On the contrary, this young man was conspicuously well informed and appeared to possess some highly classified information. Wow, I mumbled under my breath. In the days following the extraction of the golden buddha, Roxas returned and blew up the entrance to the tunnel so that others could not follow in his footsteps. Honolulu: Supreme Court of Hawaii, 1988. They looted museums, banks, gold reserves, private art collections even the sacred graves of ancient tombs were pillaged. I approached the manager in charge and asked him what they were digging for. Curtis was an expert in changing the metallurgical fingerprints of gold to disguise its origins. As we walked between sites with the camera crew, Klaus pointed out the many Japanese treasure symbols in the landscape. I was told of bus loads of cancer patients who arrived with hope and left with their cancer extracted and physically placed in their hands. 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 never expected such a gruelling journey. He finished and I sat up, slightly dazed and in disbelief. I wondered if he was employed by the same people that had assassinated Roxas? McDougald, who has lived here for more than a decade and secured his doctorate in business from the University of the Philippines in 1983, is not the moving force behind the dig. Silliest of all is an old story promoted by a History Channel TV series called The Lost Gold of World War II, which asserts that the Japanese carved symbols on rock faces leading to the locations of all the treasure tunnels, in plain view for the general public to see. Olof Jonsson: a Las Vegas-based psychic employed by Marcos to help find Japanese treasure sites. The organisation was named Kin no yuri, meaning Golden Lily, the name of a poem written by the Emperor. Klaus interviewed him on camera, and afterwards we took turns examining the artefacts. I had to see the Baguio Hospital treasure site for myself. The guerrillas attacked the Japanese with grenades, sealing many workers inside. I had felt the same energy when I was dowsing with Klaus. I was intrigued and found myself engrossed in the mystery once more. I had been miles away. And there it was the Japanese bunker that John Ballinger had told Roxas to look for back in 1970. Torturing surrendered military leaders was a war crime, but those of minor rank were considered fair game. I was enthralled with Cathcart (then retired and in his eighties and suffering from Parkinsons disease), and surprised by what a stoic figure he was, despite his frailties. Nearby, in a man-made chamber measuring ten feet by thirty feet, Roxas found more gold, this time packed into hundreds of small wooden boxes. I left the cobras meat for the caretakers family to consume and headed for the airport. As he detailed the story of how he first became embroiled with Roxas, his manner and cadence reminded me of Jimmy Stewart, or Tom Hanks. Good for her., The treasure-hunting schoolteachers back garden Lansdale could not believe his luck and promptly informed US General Douglas MacArthur, who returned to the Philippines to inspect the extraordinary discovery for himself. Are the Philippines the wealthiest nation on earth? About us | Our programming | Become a supporter | Privacy. I sat on the bed trying to make sense of what had just happened, when the healer informed me that I needed to stop on my way to the airport and drink a cobras blood in order to complete my healing process. Still, I had but one thought on my mind. A love of China and its people ran deep in young Sterling's blood. 0000003280 00000 n I was to tone down my enthusiasm, and bias, for the benefit of the narrative. This included dismissing cyanide as a poison that can travel through the air, and numerous character attacks on Seagrave and Curtis. Get the day's top news with our Today's Headlines newsletter, sent every weekday morning. Rodger is also known as the father of Darrell Miklos, a TV personality and a treasure hunter too. In his estimation, the only thing that could have caused the electrocution was large quantities of gold, acting as an electrical conduit. There are five Americans from the company working at the Ft. Santiago site, McDougald said, along with about 30 Filipino laborers who are digging the 3-foot-by-7-foot tunnel through the forts long-buried catacombs. In yet another act of serendipity, Roxas was given a map of the tunnel system at Baguio Hospital by Ben Valmores, a Filipino, who as a young man had assisted Japanese Prince Tsuneyoshi Takeda in the construction of complex treasure sites in the Philippine Highlands. 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In another (unrelated) incident, Ballingers unit had made their way to Baguio and witnessed the Japanese loading heavy boxes into a tunnel system near the hospital. 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. It was peculiar and appeared to be a topographical map. One of the five was Robert Curtis, who now heads the Las Vegas company, McDougald said. It was, and the Roxas brothers are said to have extracted three handfuls of assorted precious stones and diamonds, which they promptly hid before reattaching the golden buddhas head. The Seagraves seminal whistle-blowing book, Gold Warriors. Back on the surface the cameraman filmed various objects that Klaus had found in the tunnel backfill: symbols such as seashells, leaves, gold dust and other assorted items that should not exist at that depth in the earth, and certainly not with man-made cement and gold dust embedded in them. Thank you for your sacrifice, I mumbled awkwardly. Andrew Gough. For years, 35-year-old Jesse Capen was obsessed with the legend of the Lost Dutchman Gold Mine. (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP) Robert Hunter, the man behind the poetic and mystical words for many of the . Cathcart recounted how one afternoon a notice was sent to law offices across the country, detailing how a Filipino locksmith was suing his president, Ferdinand Marcos, for having stolen a golden buddha and assorted treasure that he had discovered in the Philippines. I made a note to myself; next time I visit I must avoid the monsoon season. Fortuitously, Cheatham took a photo of himself with the golden buddha. In 1949, a 70-year-old man named James Kidd was a professional treasure hunter from Phoenix, Arizona. We were all devastated, especially Klaus, as he wanted to open a treasure chamber in time for us to film it for the show. Andrew Gough, I informed the site manager that he was digging on the spot where Roger Roxas had made the most famous discovery in the history of Yamashitas gold, to which he curtly replied, Yes, I know. Podcast transcript | Subscribe. There are far more people attempting to find treasure than there are success stories. No autopsy was performed, despite Cathcarts request, and the official cause of death was ruled as tuberculosis. As a result, I was frequently contacted by Filipinos who believed they had located lost Japanese treasure hoards and were seeking both expertise and financial assistance in support of their proposed excavations. I stuffed a generous amount of notes into a contribution vase, said goodbye to Klaus and headed for the airport, via a cobra farm. The facts behind the urban legend that billions in Japanese gold lie buried in the Philippines. Roxas estimated the golden buddha to have weighed one metric tonne and thus, with considerable difficulty, he transported it to his home where he placed it in a spare bedroom and covered it with a blanket. During World War II, the Philippines briefly fell to the Japanese, being finally surrendered in April and May of 1942. We all like to imagine were going to knock a stone wall down and were going to find golden chests overflowing with emeralds and rubies and diamonds, all guarded by a big cobra snake, he said. 0000006813 00000 n He shared that he and his wife had their emails and phone calls monitored and had received repeated death threats. He said, until recent times a large metal stake had been secured by the Japanese in a nearby tree that pointed to the spot. Valmores knew where the gold in the region was buried, and although he never violated Prince Takedas trust for his own benefit, he emphatically supported Roxass mission and wanted to help. After a few days, his wife reported that he was missing. Whatever they did plunder had likely been well spent building the Imperial Navy well before the end of the war. Most of it, he said, is Curtis own money. In January 1973 he was sent to Baguio prison camp, where he was beaten repeatedly. Needless to say, she remains convinced that her husband was murdered. Cancel at any time: As my interest in the mystery deepened, I reengaged with Sterling Seagrave, the almost singular voice of truth on the subject. Imelda Marcoss mother had been a big fan of the healer. I arrived in Manila, where I was greeted by the fixer and transported to Klauss village. In fact, they told me it was a dreadful idea. It dried and fell out, leaving a cavity, and the dirt collapsed inside, causing the tunnel to cave in.. After a raucous reception dinner we agreed a plan for the next several days. To come this close and not visit it would be such a shame, I thought. This entire field was part of the Japanese military base, you see., The low-growing tree that points towards the gold At a depth of approximately two hundred and twenty-five feet the Japanese had created the largest and most valuable treasure vaults. After Marcos was deposed in 1986, Curtis and McDougald lobbied the new government of Corazn Aquino that allowing them to find the gold would be a great way to pay off the Philippines' debt. When I came across leaves in my tunnel complex I had only another ten feet or so left until I was in the chamber. I was fascinated, not only by the camaraderie between treasure hunters, and the fact that other Imperial treasures had been discovered, but also by the fact that Klaus was actually as close to the prize as he thought he was. 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