04x23 - The Lost Gold of WWII

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Tonight, a fortune

worth hundreds of billions

of dollars plundered by

Japan during World w*r II.

Artwork, priceless treasures,

a hundred billion or more

in gold and silver alone.

It’s whereabouts

are still unknown

and shrouded in mystery.

The Philippines is

7,000 plus islands.

You can’t think of a better

place to hide things.

Now we explore the top theories

about this infamous,

missing treasure.

The United States government

would be very interested

in finding out

where this gold was.

These aren’t

just treasure hunters,

these are CIA agents.

The Marcoses aren’t

really doing a great job

of trying to hide the fact

that they suddenly

have a bunch of money.

In retrospect, how

did they get so rich?

Nobody was asking that question.

What really happened to the

lost gold of World w*r II?

It’s the spring of 1942,

just a few months

after Pearl Harbor.

w*r is raging in the Pacific.

Japan’s vast empire

stretches from Manchuria

through Southeast Asia

all the way to the

Solomon Islands,

and in every

territory it conquers,

Japanese forces seize a fortune.

The Japanese are actually

meticulous in their ability

to extract wealth and

they do so at every level.

So not only will they go after

things like national banks

and depositories of gold

bullion and silver bars,

but they will also

raid individual houses

to amass enormous

stockpiles of jewelry

and other symbols

of wealth and value.

Think about the

entire national treasure

of 13 countries.

This is a lot of

value, a lot of money.

The value of what’s estimated

that the Japanese looted

is between 60 and a

100 billion dollars

in 1945 dollars.

You know what that

translates to?

Between three and

$5 trillion today.

In March of 1942,

Japan has another conquest

in its sites, the US

territory of the Philippines.

The Japanese going to

very quickly sweep south

toward the capital of Manila.

There they’re going

to run into elements

of the United States army

that’s been in placed

under Douglas MacArthur to

try to halt their advance.

But before that happens,

MacArthur and his

headquarters team are ordered

by President Roosevelt to

withdraw from the Philippines.

So the Philippines

will fall in 1942

and MacArthur will

have to evacuate.

So he will leave

the Philippines.

He makes his sort

of famous promise.

I will return, I will be back,

back to help you

against the Japanese.

In some ways, the Philippines

is the perfect place

for the Japanese to

amass a lot of the loot

that they’re pulling off

of the mainland of Asia.

And that’s because

the Philippines

is an island location.

It’s a very easy

transshipment point.

There’s a lot of great

ports and harbors

and there’s no possibility

of an enemy overrunning

any of those storage depots.

And so what they’re gonna do

is they’re going to consolidate

the material that

they’re stealing

in a few specific locations

and then they’re

going to transship it

directly back to Japan.

But by early

1943, a US submarine blockade

has cut off the sea routes

back to Japan’s home islands.

The Japanese hold onto

the Philippines, for now.

There’s still this

hope among the Japanese

that the Philippines will

be one of the last things

that will kind of fall.

That they will continue to be

able to control that at least.

By late 1944,

the tides of w*r are turning.

MacArthur makes good on

his promise to return

to the Philippines, arriving

with 200,000 troops.

His opponent, the

notorious Japanese General,

Tomoyuki Yamashita.

Yamashita is one of

the great troubleshooters

of the Japanese army.

He’s widely perceived

as one of its greatest

field commanders.

His job is to both

enhance the defenses

and make it as

costly as possible

for any potential

American invasion.

They called him

the Tiger of Malaya.

What a great name, from

his victory in Malaya.

And what better a man

to lead the defense

of the Philippines than him.

According to

some, fighting off the allies,

wasn’t Yamashita’s only mission?

Some historians do suggest

that it wasn’t just

winning the w*r or staying

and keeping hold

the Philippines,

it was also what to do

with all of this wealth

that he had accumulated.

If they’re gonna

lose the Philippines,

they have to hide this

treasure somewhere

where they can come back

in the future for it.

The following summer,

after the US drops

two atomic bombs

on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,

Emperor Hirohito

finally surrenders

on August 15th, 1945.

But Yamashita and his

army take another 17 days

to surrender, holding out in

the mountains of Northern Luzon

leading some to ask what were

they doing during that time?

According to Sterling Seagrave,

an author who’s an

expert in this field,

a General Yamashita,

was working in cahoots

with an organization

called the Golden Lily.

Who was in the Golden Lily?

m*llitary strategists,

economic experts,

members of the

Japanese royal family,

they had the job to

find, take and use,

and ultimately hide

all of this treasure.

So 1943, tons of gold and

treasure piling up in Manila

and Emperor Hirohito hires

his brother Prince Chichibu,

to head the Golden Lily and

to spearhead the operation

of securing the treasure.

The Philippines is

7,000 plus islands.

You can’t think of a better

place to hide things.

Prince Chichibu arranged this

group to create locations

to place these

hundreds of tunnels.

And you can’t do this alone.

You need thousands of laborers

and the Japanese

had plenty of them.

They would build these

tunnels with allied forces.

They would use American

and Allied POWs

and they would use

enslaved Filipinos

to construct these tunnels.

They were really complex

so they weren’t just a tunnel

underground, they

were just massive.

There were all kinds of

little kind of secret ways

and a lot of things

designed to throw off anyone

who might go underground who

might discover the tunnels.

The defensive aspects

of Japanese tunnels

included booby traps and

these could take the form

of physical traps.

So pits with spikes

at the bottom of them.

Chemical w*apon att*cks, fragile

containers full of cyanide.

They even used the water table

so that when people

would come in,

the water tables could rise

and the people in the

caves would drown.

Likely the last 17 days they

would seal these entrances

with concrete and then they’d

let the jungle take over.

The story of buried treasure

sounds like the stuff of myth,

but there’s at least

one witness who says

he survived the destruction

of one treasure tunnel.

Decades later, a Filipino

civilian Ben Valmores

came forward, claimed

he had information.

As a kid, at 14 he was

hired to be the valet

for Prince Takeda.

So Valmores claims he was

there when this massive tunnel

was built that was 225

feet below the ground.

And Yamashita says they

want to have a party

to celebrate the construction

of this massive tunnel

and he tells all the engineers

to go inside the tunnel.

At that time, Prince

Takeda calls Valmores out.

He says, "No, you’re

my valet come out.

You don’t get to

go to the party."

They blow this thing up.

Everyone dies inside.

So Prince Takeda saves Valmores,

who is the witness to

watching the Japanese k*ll

their own engineers again

to keep everything silent.

The Japanese were really

interested in secrecy.

They wanted to preserve

what they had done,

making it off limits

knowledge-wise to the allies.

Anybody who knew about

this gold was gone.

According to Seagrave,

the loot is so cleverly hidden,

Golden Lily members will

need maps to find it again.

Maps were produced in

blue for the engineers

who actually designed

the various vaults

throughout the Philippines.

And then maps were

designed in red

to tell people how to

find the treasure.

And these maps would have flags

that pointed in one direction

if they were to be read

in a mirror and in

the other direction

if they were to

be read normally.

So even if you can read this map

and you can find

where the vault is,

you could have the

map upside down.

You could have the map backwards

and realize that you go the

wrong place, you can die.

The cartographers

supposedly draw up

several copies of the maps

which go only to the

highest ranking members

of the Golden Lily.

The Golden Lily was

really counting on

keeping the Philippines

for the peace talks,

to allow ’em to go back

and get the treasure

to refund the imperialist army.

They didn’t get that.

So Japan has to keep

not only the treasure

in the Philippines now because

they can’t transport it,

they’ve gotta keep it secret.

But did

Yamashita and his soldiers

really hide billions in gold?

There are lots of maps to

this gold in the Philippines

that start cropping up, why?

’Cause everybody wants to

go hunting for treasure.

The question is,

are these maps real?

Ben Valmores claims

that as Prince Takeda

prepared to leave Japan,

he approached him and gave him

a satchel that included maps

to 175 different treasure sites

throughout the Philippines.

Takeda was on a

submarine fleeing,

and in case the submarine sunk,

he wanted someone to

know where the gold was.

So Prince Takeda goes back,

he instructs Valmores to bury

these maps, these 40 maps,

and he does, he buries

them in his backyard.

Keep in mind that Prince

Takeda saved his life

when that tunnel was exploded,

he called him out of there.

And so maybe there’s a sense

of duty on Valmores’ part.

It’s sort of weird,

you think if he got

these maps from Takeda

that maybe he would’ve

gone and dug one up

and gone and gotten some gold

and lived an immensely

luxurious life, no.

Despite

allegedly being in possession

of so many of the

Golden Lily’s maps,

Valmores never seems

to profit from them.

Publicly, Valmores

never found anything,

never became a rich man.

But think about it for a second.

If you have a map and

you find treasure,

are you gonna tell anyone?

I wouldn’t.

It’s the fall of 1945.

The Pacific w*r is over,

but the US maintains a

strong m*llitary presence

in the Philippines.

America’s prime mission

is to rebuild the country

and provide relief for

its suffering people.

But there are also

whispers of hidden gold.

Think about this.

Estimates are that the value

of just the gold between 60

and a billion

dollars in 1945 money

that’s between three

and $5 trillion today.

It’s a pretty history

altering amount of wealth,

if it does exist.

And it wouldn’t just be

Japan that would want it,

it might be other nations

who might be interested

in getting it as well.

According to some,

President Truman is briefed

on the Golden Lily hoards

and orders the fortune

to be found and seized.

There starts to be

rumors that again soldiers,

American soldiers know of

perhaps former Japanese soldiers

or people who knew

Japanese soldiers

who had heard about

Yamashita’s wealth

and they know someone who

knows where to look for it.

According to this theory,

Japanese officers

looking for leniency

begin sharing information

about the Golden Lily’s

top secret operation.

That doesn’t mean

they know exactly

where the treasure

filled tunnels are,

but apparently there’s

one prisoner who might.

The person that

has the information,

most information is Yamashita,

who they have in custody.

He is in prison in Manila.

How do you get that

information from him?

You can’t t*rture him,

it’d be a w*r crime.

So US is trying to

think what they can do

to get this information.

Yamashita will never give

it up because in his eyes,

this is the future

of imperial Japan.

But Yamashita’s

driver, Major Kojima Kashii

is a much easier target.

Yamashita’s driver finds

himself in a small dark cell

being interviewed by a

couple of OSS operatives,

the precursor to the CIA.

It wasn’t a good day for him.

According to Seagrave’s

notorious American spook

Edward Lansdale and a

Filipino National by the name of

Santa Romana, who is referred to

generally as Santy,

were the people

who were involved

in the t*rture of

Yamashita’s driver.

So the driver

cracks, big surprise.

What’s he do?

He leads Santy and

Lansdale to a dozen or so

of the more easily

accessible treasure troves.

What do they find?

Gold bars, platinum bars,

diamonds, gold Buddhas.

They not literally, but

figuratively find Fort Knox.

While Santy

and his team are supposedly

breaking open more vaults,

Lansdale flies to Washington

to brief President Truman

about the find.

Truman consults with his cabinet

and makes a really

pivotal decision.

He says like, we

are gonna keep this.

We are gonna keep all of this,

but we’ve got to

keep it under wraps.

You’re looking

ahead to a cold w*r

that the US is

gonna be engaged in.

And the fear of communist

domination was at a fever pitch.

Pragmatic approach is to say

we have access to these funds,

we can keep off the books to

advance US democratic interests

around the world.

And why would we give that up?

To use this wealth, you

have to keep it a secret.

And what does that mean?

It means silencing Yamashita.

On October 29th, 1945,

an American m*llitary

tribunal in Manila

begins presenting its case

against General Yamashita

for w*r crimes relating to his

campaign in the Philippines.

It’s a controversial move.

So you think about how long

these tribunals usually take.

You think about like the

Nazis that were brought up

on trial.

It takes a long time.

Sometimes it takes decades.

Yamashita’s trial is run

through very, very fast.

Yamashita, once

Japan’s outstanding general

takes the stand.

Before him witnesses have

presented harrowing evidence

of atrocities committed

under his command.

The big question is what’s

Yamashita’s guilty of?

Yes, he was a Japanese general,

but he is not on record

ordering the death of,

for example, American POWs.

Yamashita himself

says he was not aware of

half the stuff

he was charged with.

In his position and with the

number of troops he oversaw,

he couldn’t have been.

On December 7th, 1945,

the four year anniversary

of Pearl Harbor,

they deliver their verdict.

The commission finds

you guilty as charged

and sentences you

to death by hanging.

Yamashita is really

the first commander

to be held

responsible for things

that his men commit

without him knowing it.

And that feeds into this

idea of why the execution?

Well, if the government

does want the money,

you wanna keep him quiet

and that’s how and

why he is ex*cuted.

The notorious general is hanged

on February 23rd, 1946.

Whatever secrets he’s

hiding about buried gold,

go to his grave with him.

What happens to the

wealth that supposedly

as historians

claim was collected

by the United States government?

Well it has to go somewhere.

And that’s this secret

banking society,

this secret wealth container

system, the Black Eagle Trust.

And according to the Seagraves,

this is a trust which

now houses all the funds

of the loot seized

from Yamashita,

but also all the loots

seized from the Nazis.

And it wasn’t

until decades later

that a former deputy

director of the CIA Ray Cline

admits to Seagraves

that this money

was put into 176 different

banks spanning 42 countries.

Now a lot of historians

will sort of question that idea.

Was there really a

Black Eagle Trust?

Is this a conspiracy theory?

But the reality is that when

Santy, Santa Romana d*ed,

he left hundreds of

millions of dollars.

Some historians say it

was because he had access

to the looted Yamashita Gold

for his role that he was able

to play in uncovering it.

If you wanna

question this theory

or think about how

truthful this is,

one question would be, well,

why does the United States

care about keeping this secret?

One explanation could be

all of the logistic trouble

that we would have to

go through in admitting

that this stuff came

from victims of w*r.

This is the fruit

of the poison tree.

I didn’t steal the money,

but it’s stolen money.

You’re responsible and

you’re accountable.

So that’s why the US government

would probably want to keep

the existence of these

billions and billions

and billions of

dollars, a state secret.

It begs a very

tantalizing question.

If the US government got their

hand on billions of dollars

from 12 sites, what

happened to the other 163?

So what does that mean?

Billions of dollars today,

trillions of dollars could

be sitting hidden in caves

throughout the Philippines

waiting to be discovered.

If in fact

hundreds of millions of dollars

in treasure was buried in

tunnels in the Philippines

during the end of World w*r II,

then where did it go?

Was it handed to a secret

government slush fund

as some believe or did

it end up somewhere else.

Decades after the w*r,

one of the most infamous

dictators in world history

in the 20th century, he

becomes part of the story.

It’s 1986

and the eyes of the world

are on the Philippines.

As notorious dictator

Ferdinand Marcos is overthrown

in a popular uprising.

There’s a lot of complaints

living under a dictator,

but living under the Marcoses

has a very specific complaint.

While the Filipinos are

living in abject poverty,

Ferdinand Marcos and his wife,

they’re living in

the lap of luxury.

I vividly remember

being a kid in the 1980s

and reading about these million

dollar shoe shopping sprees

that Imelda Marcos went on.

The Marcos aren’t just rich,

they’re significantly wealthier

than most of the country.

And the way they spend money

is in complete contrast

to the way that most

Filipinos are living

after World w*r II

in the Philippines.

There’s the one story that

they went to Rome on vacation

and on the way back they

had to turn the plane around

because Imelda

Marcos had forgotten

that she wanted to buy a

particular kind of cheese.

The Marcoses aren’t

really doing a great job

of trying to hide the fact

that they suddenly

have a bunch of money.

The good only question comes,

where’s that money coming from?

It’s obviously not from

his government salary.

There are

accusations that Marcos

and his cronies embezzled

upwards of $10 billion

from the Philippines treasury.

But is there more to this story?

Could their wealth in fact

come from another source?

So if the Marcos are in

charge of the Philippines,

then they have such vast

power in the Philippines.

One explanation could be,

were the Marcos are drawing

from Yamashita’s gold.

If that’s the

case, it all begs the question,

how did the Marcoses get their

hands on Yamashita’s gold?

The Marcos chapter of the

lost gold saga

really begins in 1961,

with the 17 year old

boy named Rogelio Roger Roxas.

Enter Rogelio Roxas,

who is born towards the end

of the w*r in the Philippines.

And keep in mind the Philippines

is an impoverished country.

Roxas is born into poverty,

but he’s also born into

the legend of this gold.

And he meets this Japanese

man who claims to know

from a Japanese soldier where

Yamashita’s gold is located.

So he claims to know of a

site of one of these tunnels.

He has a map and he

knows where it is.

If he’s interpreting

this map correctly,

it says that one of

the Golden Lily vaults

is actually very close to

his hometown of Baguio.

In fact, right by the hospital.

Roxas thinks he’s

actually onto something.

In early 1970,

Roxas gets a permit from a

local judge to begin excavation.

That judge’s name

is P.O. Marcos.

Roxas didn’t really

make the connection,

but the judge that grants the

excavating permit to Roxas

is actually connected

to the Marcos family.

So he is part of, you know,

this vast network of Marcos.

It connects Roxas to Marcos

and to Yamashita’s gold.

So now Yamashita’s Gold is

part of the Marcos story.

In May of 1970,

Roxas and his team

start hacking away

through dense vegetation

near the hospital.

So after two months

they find a cave.

While the bad news is about a

hundred yards inside the cave,

it’s caved in and it appears

to have been dynamited shut.

What does that mean?

They’re gonna have

to tunnel around it.

Weeks go by, the

men are running out of money.

Treasure hunting,

it’s like gambling.

You’re sitting at

a roulette wheel

and you just can’t get up.

It’s that last spade of dirt.

It’s that last pass

with the metal detector

and that’s like Roxas.

They’re about to quit and

Roxas decides to give it

one last look with

his metal detector.

And,

the metal detector

senses something.

Full of adrenaline, they

start digging and digging.

They break through, they find,

you know a whole

chamber underneath them.

And they look down and

what do they see inside?

28 inch tall, golden

Buddha, Burmese style.

They’ve hit the jackpot.

The thing weighs a ton.

It’s only this big.

They get it up and

they bring it back

and he stores it in his closet

because they want to

get back to excavating

and digging more.

That’s when Roxas claims

to have found another chamber,

crammed with wooden boxes

from floor to ceiling.

He opens one of the

boxes, inside gold bars.

And if Roxas is

telling the truth,

this is a massive

quantity of treasure.

It’s a mind blowing experience.

It’s like something out

of an Indiana Jones movie.

This is too much gold

to move in a day.

They’re gonna go

home, sell the Buddha

and use the money

to hire more workers

and get more personnel.

Go back up in the cave and

get the rest of the gold.

And Roxas of course

wants to celebrate.

He has his brother

take a picture of him

next to the Buddha.

We’ve got this picture

of the one thing of Roxas

with this golden Buddha and

a prospective buyer comes

and looks at it, test the gold

and finds it is

actually 22 karat.

The mysterious

buyer offers Roxas a $160,000

for the Buddha.

Roxas says, he’ll

think about it.

And as he’s thinking about it,

he’s looking at this

Buddha and he notices

what just imperceptively

looks like a fine liner

on the neck of the Buddha.

So he takes this and he looks

at it and he starts to strike.

It takes a fricking wooden stick

and he starts hitting this

thing until it comes loose,

removes the head and inside

are handfuls of diamonds,

cut and uncut.

Is all that glitters in

the Philippines really gold?

More than 20 years after

the Japanese Imperial Army

surrenders the islands,

Rogelio Roxas digs up

what appears to be part

of Yamashita’s

legendary treasure.

But just as Roxas is

celebrating his find,

the tale of the lost gold

takes another dramatic twist.

April 5th, 1971, 2:30 am and

there’s a knock at the door.

Bad thing in the

Philippines, opens the door,

it’s the police.

They come in, they arrest

Roxas, they seize the statue,

they later put him in jail.

But guess who is there?

The buyer and Roxas knows

what’s going on, why?

Because on the r*fles there

are these little red ribbons

and that means palace

guard, Ferdinand Marcos,

who knows who’s behind this.

And if you go back and realize

that the permit originally

came from P.O. Marcos who was

related to Ferdinand Marcos,

connect the dots and you realize

that’s where their

information came,

then Marcos probably

sent that buyer

to make sure it was legit.

Then the palace guards come

and confiscate and arrest him.

Outraged,

Roxas goes to the police

and the media with his story.

It’s not long before

the word spreads

of his treatment by Marcos.

When the Buddha

is stolen from him,

this is really heartbreaking.

Again, it’s not just

about the money,

but what it meant to him and

what it meant for being able

to continue to

search for the truth.

Everyone knows about

Roxas and this Buddha.

And so there’s this

enormous public outcry

when this happens ’cause

he’s sort of a folk hero

and Marcos decides

to return the Buddha.

But the Buddha that’s returned

isn’t the same Buddha.

Buddha that returned

isn’t made of gold,

it’s made of bronze.

The head is stuck on.

It’s just not the same

Buddha that gives this like

copycat Buddha to

try to appease the public.

When Roxas speaks out,

he’s arrested and spends

the next two years in jail.

The guards then t*rture

Roxas and all of his teammates.

Roxas supposedly never

breaks, which makes sense,

being that driven as

a treasure hunter.

You’re not gonna break,

that’s your life’s goal.

But apparently one

of his team breaks

and gives up the location.

After Roxas

is released from prison

on November 19th,

1974, he finds soldiers

standing outside tents near

the Baguio General Hospital.

And the hospital staff later

actually remembers seeing

and they’ve reported seeing

soldiers come out of the cave

behind the hospital,

carrying wooden crates

and putting them

in m*llitary trucks.

They didn’t have to

guess what was inside,

’cause some of these

boxes they were rotten

and they broke up and now

they’re being carried.

And what falls out, gold bars

the size of cigarette boxes.

To give you an

extent of how much gold

we’re talking about, it’s 10

boxes a day going up every day

for a year.

Roxas is

certain Marcos’s soldiers

have found his tunnel

and stolen his treasure,

but there’s nothing he can

do, at least not for now.

Meanwhile, Ferdinand

Marcos is on the hunt

for even more

Golden Lily vaults.

Fast forward not

long after this,

Marcos allegedly gets his

hand on something else.

Not more treasure, but a

full set of Golden Lily maps.

So, remember those maps that

Valmores had 10, 15 years ago?

Maybe the same maps.

Allegedly Marcos uses these maps

to successfully excavate

five more tunnel complexes

piled high with dizzying

amounts of gold and jewels.

Ferdinand and Imelda

constantly spend money

and they do it

with wild a abandon

if it is connected

to this hoard.

Well that goes back to this idea

of whose money are

they actually spending.

They’re not spending just

Japanese captured goods,

they’re spending goods that

belong to all different people

across the Pacific.

So if Marcos is

gonna make this work,

he’s gotta make this gold

appear like it didn’t come

from the Japanese, stolen

from other countries.

So Marcos hires a mining expert

and a metallurgist

named Robert Curtis.

The theory is that

one of the things

that Robert Curtis was

able to do for Marcos

is to doctor the

gold or make it seem

through playing around

with the properties

that it did actually

come from the Philippines

and didn’t come

from someplace else

and wasn’t captured and

brought to the Philippines.

But in 1986,

Marcos’s plans change

when over a million

Filipinos take to the streets

to protest his corrupt regime.

On February 26th, 1986,

the Marcos family flees

the Philippines undercover

of darkness and having

been granted asylum

by President Reagan

take up a life of exile

in Honolulu, Hawaii.

But when the Marcos flee,

they leave behind

a lot of mystery.

There’s a lot of questions

about what happened to

you know the rest of

Yamashita’s hoard.

Is it still there?

And that’s something

that fuels Roxas.

Roxas is trying to

figure out what he can do.

He’s not gonna

get the gold back.

He decides to turn to the

law and he files a civil suit

in Hawaii against the Marcoses

and the suit goes through

the courts for years

and years and years.

It takes forever.

Meanwhile, Roxas’s

lawsuit against the Marcoses

takes another turn.

The suit’s still going on.

Roxas dies in a fairly

suspicious manner.

Official cause of

death is tuberculosis.

But there are questions

about how is it that he d*ed.

According to his family,

he never had any signs of

symptoms of tuberculosis.

But despite his death,

Roxas has one Tr*mp

card still left to play.

In 1993, the court hears Bob

Curtis’s sworn testimony.

Can you raise

your right hand to be sworn.

Do you solemnly swear the

testimony you’re about to give

is constantly the

truth, so help you God.

I do.

Your name

again on the record please.

Robert H. Curtis.

Bob Curtis

claims he was hired by Marcos

to launder Yamashita’s gold.

He testifies to seeing another

item in Marcos’s possession,

a solid gold Buddha

with a removable head.

The very same golden Buddha

Roxas is photographed with.

Curtis’s testimony

helps the court

to come to a final decision.

In 1996, the court awards

the Roxas estate damages

of $22 billion.

The largest civil

settlement in history.

20 billion is a lot of money.

This was what the treasure

was worth from that one vault

that he found.

There were 175 vaults.

But even more important from

like a history perspective,

it’s not about the money,

it’s the that a court of

law actually validated

that the existence

of these vaults,

that these things were real,

that Yamashita did bury these,

and that this legend is

actually based in fact.

It was a hard fought victory

for the Roxas family, but

a largely symbolic one.

Despite Bob Curtis’s testimony,

the Marcos fortune is still

caught up in legal wrangling.

The Roxas family has

yet to see a penny

and the mystery of Japan’s

lost gold still lingers.

Now this just gives

even more sort of proof

if you subscribe to this

theory of Yamashita’s hoard

that there’s more

to be discovered.

Some people

are convinced whatever gold

the Japanese may have

hidden in the Philippines

was cleaned out by

Ferdinand Marcos.

There’s another theory,

the Marcos regime just

pretended to find gold

so they could cover their

tracks for embezzlement.

But others think

there’s reason to believe

that some Japanese

gold remained hidden

in the Philippine jungle

through the late 1980s.

It’s the promise of this gold

that brings retired US Army

General Jack Sinlaub

to the Philippines.

So Jack is a retiree and

an amateur fortune hunter.

That’s what he says.

And the US Embassy,

they back up his claim,

they paint him to the local

media, just a hobbyist.

But no one believes this

because in addition to being

a rabid anti-communist,

he also happens to be one

of the founders of the CIA.

Jack Sinlaub forms his own

treasure hunting organization

that he calls Nippon Star.

And his objective is to

go to the Philippines

and potentially take

advantage of information

he already knew about these

possible treasure troves.

One of his associates,

Alan Foringer,

he’s the acting CIA head

at the embassy in Manila.

And so there’s this idea

that these aren’t

just treasure hunters,

these are CIA agents

operating as part of a deeper,

darker, or more secret mission.

According to this theory,

Jack Sinlaub decides Nippon

Star needs to recruit someone

with proven insider information.

All they need to

know is where to dig

and who has that information.

They know one guy who’s

got it, Bob Curtis.

Bob Curtis is the metallurgist

that worked with

Ferdinand Marcos,

essentially to not only

decode Japanese maps

that were in

Marcos’s possession,

but also then to

effectively money launder

any loot that was discovered.

Bob Curtis saw himself

as an American patriot.

And according to one

version of the story,

President Reagan himself had

endorsed Sinlaub’s efforts

to recover stolen loot that

the Japanese had hidden

in the Philippines.

With all their expertise

and alleged deep pockets,

Jack Sinlaub’s team

should be well placed to

find Yamashita’s gold.

But their search for the

treasure doesn’t go to plan.

Publicly, Nippon Star

is a, is an abject failure

throughout the 1980s.

There are a whole host of media

stories about their efforts

to uncover buried treasure

and their failures

to be successful

in those endeavors.

Is it possible that they

actually recovered treasure

and put out a cover story

that suggested that

they’d been a failure?

Of course, Curtis

claims he was inspired

to give his all towards these

treasure hunting efforts

because any treasure

recovered might be used

as a private funding

source for defense

and intelligence initiatives

on behalf of the United States.

As Foringer

wrote in a letter to Curtis,

those initiatives included

the private funding

of defense projects

like the B-1 Bomber,

MX m*ssile and Ronald

Reagan’s Star Wars program.

He appears to

have been convinced

that these private funding

sources might create

so-called black budget programs

that would protect the United

States from Soviet aggression.

This money, if they find

the Golden Lily treasure

is going to be used to establish

a new arch conservative,

m*llitary industrial complex

controlled by the United States.

But by 1990,

the pressure is growing

on Nippon Star.

And there are rumors

of Soviet agents

listening in on

their communications.

While Foringer’s

vacationing in Hawaii,

he’s at the beach and

a passerby walks by

and something nicks his leg.

Within a day, he’s

in the hospital

suffering from

mysterious ailments.

And although he pulls through,

after returning to his

apartment in the Philippines,

the usually healthy 37 year

old begins having seizures

and his heart gives

out and he dies

under mysterious circumstances.

You gotta ask, was Foringer’s

worked with Nippon Star?

Is there a connection

to his death?

You gotta ask the question.

Maybe that put a

target on his back.

Despite Foringer’s death,

no gold is ever officially

found by Nippon Star.

Conspiracy theories

love unexplained deaths,

particularly to individuals

that are getting close

to the answers.

And we’ll often link

those deaths together

to suggest they’re part

of a bigger pattern.

Oftentimes humans die

for unknown causes.

Sometimes it really

is just an accident.

Since the end of World w*r II,

the legend of Japan’s lost gold

has captured the imagination

of treasure hunters worldwide.

But as the decades have passed

without new discoveries,

some question if the

treasure ever existed,

and if yes will

more ever be found?

We do know, we’ve got

one great photo of Roxas

with that Buddha,

and after 80 plus years of

searching for that treasure,

that is the only real

proof that we have.

Like a lot of theories,

there are certain key

points that you can see

or that you know are real.

And so with Yamashita’s hoard,

we certainly know that

the Japanese plundered.

They stole tens of

billions of dollars.

The Japanese

conquered the Pacific,

they plungered like

there was no tomorrow.

They brought the wealth

back to the Philippines.

There certainly was

looting in the Philippines

just like there was

looting by the Japanese

in really anywhere

that they went.

That is a fact.

But there’s no photos of vaults,

there’s no records of how much

gold was brought into Manila.

Probably the

diamond filled Buddha

is a spoil of the

Japanese looting,

but maybe it’s more of a one-off

than the tip of the iceberg.

Maybe this was just one

tunnel that was filled

and we found it

and maybe there isn’t

this vast network

that was part of

the Golden Lily.

Some also

point to logistical concerns

around Yamashita’s last

days during World w*r II

to question the extent

of the legendary treasure

he supposedly buried.

If you think about just

how much gold was purported

to have existed, how

heavy and how much it was,

the logistical requirements

to move that kind of wealth

would’ve been not only

one of their main tasks,

it would’ve been the only

thing that they could do.

I think one of the real

treasures in the Philippines

is that millions of dollars

spent on the local economy,

fortune hunting and

treasure hunting.

Treasure hunters are

drawn to the Philippines

and the Philippines,

from my experience,

seemed quite easy

to embrace them,

comfortable embracing them

and trying to send them

to these sites.

And again, I think it’s,

from what I’ve seen,

it’s people who

really believe that

you can find these things

buried on the island.

A lot of these legends

that sort of become folklore

that stay because they

become part of our history

and part of our culture and

the Filipino people like

are immensely proud people.

And in many ways they’re very,

very attached to this idea

that this could exist

and it could be here.

So it in many ways lives because

of the people themselves.

Treasure in the

Philippine jungle,

it’s a story that never dies.

Just when you think it’s over,

it comes right back to life.

Over the course

of one weekend in 2017,

a video is uploaded to YouTube.

It quickly gains hundreds

of thousands of views.

In a submerged cave

in the Philippines,

what appears to be gold bars.

They were really

dirty and muddy,

but became this

internet sensation

where people found

them and all of a sudden

the Yamashita’s gold

legend comes back.

Maybe this is really happening.

That stokes the fire again and

makes that legend continue.

Is there a connection

to Yamashita’s gold?

Maybe and a lot of viewers

like me, they remain skeptical.

Maybe they just want views.

It definitely warrants

further investigation.

Now you have a lot of

amateur treasure hunters

who can upload videos.

They can upload what they claim

is proof of what they found.

And going back to Roxas

and his Buddha’s statue,

that’s something

that people can see.

And when you can see something,

it makes it a little

bit more real.

The fact that it does

still spark interest,

I think is something

that it’s still creating

the conversation.

And as long as there’s a

conversation around it,

it’ll never die.

I have no doubt that

treasure went into the ground.

What I believe today is

that whatever is left there

is going to be

incredibly hard to find.

And based upon the stories

that we know about the way

that these places

are booby trapped

and trying to seek this treasure

would be incredibly dangerous.

And you know, I mean a

billion dollars worth of gold

would be really nifty to have,

but it’s also nice to be alive.

We never run out of

treasure hunters

and people never stop dreaming

for being the one person

that’s gonna find this

thing, to be the next Roxas.

To find that next Buddha

and to pop open the head

and find diamonds.

Every treasure

hunter wants that.

And so that legend’s

never gonna diminish.

For 80 years the lure

of Japan’s lost gold

has mesmerized world

leaders and commoners alike.

We won’t know the full truth

about this legendary treasure

until someone

finally strikes gold.

But with such a dazzling

fortune still on the line,

there is one certainty.

No one’s laying down their

treasure maps anytime soon.

I’m Laurence Fishburne.

Thank you for watching,

History’s Greatest Mysteries.