Yamashita's gold

Tomoyuki Yamashita, 1945

Prince Yasuhito Chichibu

Template:Totally-disputed Yamashita's gold, also referred to as the Yamashita treasure, is the name given to the alleged loot stolen in Southeast Asia by Japanese forces during World War II and hidden in caves, tunnels and underground complexes in the Philippines. The theory has been particularly popularised by Sterling Seagrave but is disputed by other historians.

The looting and the alleged cover-up

Prominent among those arguing for the existence of Yamashita's gold are Sterling Seagrave and Peggy Seagrave, who have written two books relating to the subject: The Yamato Dynasty: the Secret History of Japan's Imperial Family (2000) and Gold Warriors: America's Secret Recovery of Yamashita's Gold (2003). They have supported their claims with CD-ROMs containing 900 megabytes of documents, maps and photographs, available with the initial edition of Gold Warriors.

The Seagraves contend that looting was organized on a massive scale, by both yakuza gangsters such as Yoshio Kodama, and the highest levels of Japanese society, including Emperor Hirohito. The Japanese government intended that loot from Southeast Asia would finance Japan's war effort. The Seagraves allege that Hirohito appointed his brother, Prince Yasuhito Chichibu, to head a secret organization called Kin no yuri ("Golden Lily"), for this purpose. Many of those who knew the locations of the loot were killed during the war, or later tried by the Allies for war crimes and executed or incarcerated. Yamashita himself was executed for war crimes on February 23 1946.

The stolen property reportedly included many different kinds of valuables looted from banks, depositories, temples, churches, other commercial premises, mosques, museums and private homes. It takes its name from General Tomoyuki Yamashita, who assumed command of Japanese forces in the Philippines in 1944.

According to various accounts, the loot was initially concentrated in Singapore, from where it was later relayed to the Philippines. The Japanese hoped to ship the treasure from the Philippines to the Japanese home islands after the war ended. As the Pacific War progressed, Allied submarines and aircraft inflicted increasingly heavy losses on Japanese merchant shipping. Some ships carrying loot back to Japan were sunk.

The Seagraves and a few others have claimed that United States military intelligence operatives located much of the loot; colluded with Hirohito and other senior Japanese figures to conceal its existence, and; used it to finance US covert intelligence operations around the world during the Cold War, though there is little evidence and no significant mainstream support for this.

Many individuals and consortia, both Filipino and foreign, continue to search for treasure sites. A number of accidental deaths, injuries and financial losses incurred by treasure hunters have been reported.

Treasure skeptics

University of the Philippines professor Rico Jose has questioned the theory that treasure from mainland South East Asia was transported to the Philippines: "By 1943 the Japanese were no longer in control of the seas... It doesn't make sense to bring in something that valuable here when you know it's going to be lost to the Americans anyway. The more rational thing would have been to send it to Taiwan or China."

Philippines National Historical Institute chairman and historian Ambeth Ocampo commented: “Two of the wealth myths I usually encounter are the Yamashita treasure and gossip that the Cojuangco fortune was founded on a bag of money…” Ocampo also said: "For the past 50 years many people, both Filipinos and foreigners, have spent their time, money and energy in search of Yamashita's elusive treasure.” Professor Ocampo noted “What makes me wonder is that for the past 50 years, despite all the treasure hunters, their maps, oral testimony and sophisticated metal detectors, nobody has found a thing.”

Related legal action

In March 1988, a US lawsuit was filed by Rogelio Roxas against former Philippine dictator, Ferdinand Marcos. Roxas alleged that Marcos had confiscated crates of gold bullion and a one-tonne gold Buddha he had found in 1971, while searching for the Yamashita treasure, north of Manila. Roxas died prematurely in suspicious circumstances, leading to suggestions that he was murdered. A jury in Honolulu awarded $22 billion in compensatory damages that after the jury verdict had increased with interest to over $40billion. The jury did not award punitive damages. On November 17 1998, the Hawaii Supreme Court reversed the $41 billion judgment against Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos. The court found insufficient evidence that Roxas had actually discovered the gold bullion while treasure hunting north of Manila in 1971.

Yamashita's gold in popular culture

• Yamashita's gold, though not mentioned by that name, serves as a major plot element of Cryptonomicon, a novel by Neal Stephenson.
• A film about the alleged treasure, Yamashita: The Tiger's Treasure, directed by Chito S. Roño was released in the Philippines in 2001.
• An episode of Unsolved Mysteries, first screened on January 27 1993, discussed the loot accumulated by Yamashita.
• The latter part of the console game Medal of Honor: Rising Sun is about the gold.
• Yamashita's gold serves as a plot element of Dragon, a novel by Clive Cussler.
• Malaysian movie, Senario:Pemburu Emas Yamashita tells about Yamashita's hidden gold in a cave in the Malaysian jungle.