YES ANOTHER THREAD TOO DEBUNK. THIS TIME ITS A HOAX/MYTH/URBAN LEGEND THAT IN WW2 IN THE PHIL. (MY HOME COUNTRY YUP I`M PINOY AND PROUD OF IT)THE TREASURES OF THEIR RAIDS OF NUMEROUS ASIAN COUNTRIES WERE KEPT IN THE PHILIPPINES BECAUSE WELL THEY CONQUERED IT.IT WAS A TREASURE MANY WW2 VETERANS CLAIMED SO PRICELESS THE GENERAL WHO KEPT IT HID IT IN BAGIO THE SUMMER CAPITAL OF THE PHIL. BU DON`T GO TO BAGIO YET MANY PEOPLE CLAIM IT WAS NOT THE TREASURES FINAL RESTING PLACE. BUT COME ON WITH BAGIO`S MIST IT COULD`VE BEEN A NICE HIDING PLACE
LAST THING, THE TRESURE HAS A NAME BUT I FORGOT.TELL ME IF U KNOW IT.Yamashitas treasure.Updated by radish.

Silver, could you please provide a link.  Also, the use of all capitals is not appreciated on this forum.

“Their raids”?  They who?  The Japanese?  The Americans?  The Philippine Constabulary?

the japanese

What Silver is trying to discuss is a very old controversy surrounding the Japanese occupation of the Philippines during WW2, where systematic looting of the country by a certain Japanese general named Tomoyuki Yamashita was purported to finance the Japanese army’s campaign.

Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamashita’s_gold

Legend has it that the treasure was part of deposed president Ferdinand Marcos’ hidden wealth.

Up to now, there are many people who have tragically died in pursuit of this legendary loot, with many would-be treasure hunters digging up their own houses on the mistaken belief that gold is buried under their homes.

@ Silver
It’s Baguio, not Bagio

the guy is right thats what i was talking about and yeah i really have bad spelling

Bah, gold bullion….: boring.

What I am more interested in, is what the Japanese did with the original “Peking Man” Homo erectus fossils they captured along with a group of US Marines that were trying to get them safely out of China. Nobody has ever seen those fossils again since.

yup according to legend it wasn`t only gold treasures but valuables maybe even those according to legend

There are several things that seem wrong with the whole story to me.  I’m perfectly willing to accept the idea of the Japanese systematically looting the places they conquered; the whole purpose of their empire-building was to gain access to resources, and gold or money is just as much a resource as oil is.  Besides, they wouldn’t have been the only ones doing it; the Germans and the Italians were doing the same thing in their own new territories, and the allies no doubt did it on a smaller, more individual scale as well.

What makes no sense is the Japanese gathering together all that treasure together in Singapore and them shipping it off to the Philippines.  Stopping to refuel the ships in the Philippines, fine.  Stopping off in the Philippines to collect the local loot gathered together there, fine.  But to take all that valuable wealth that was so essential to the Japanese at the time and ship it to a place where the locals hated them, where guerrillas were constantly active, that was exposed to Allied invasion, and where it was beyond the immediate control of the Japanese government?  That would be sort of like the Germans taking all the stuff they collected in France, shipping it out of Bordeux, and stashing it on one of the Channel Islands.  If the Japanese shipped that anywhere, it would have been to someplace like Japan itself.

If the Japanese were that nervous about the convoy being sunk, they would either have never let it set sail in the first place or else given it a huge escort (it would have been worth the effort, since it would have been quite valuable for funding the war).

And even if they did decide to set up Baguio as their empire’s financial center, why would they have left the treasure there?  The allied attack and capture of the Philippines was not unexpected or swift.  The Japanese had plenty of time to see that their Philippine territory was in danger and to ship the treasure out to Japan.  Their navy was in bad shape at that time, yes, but for the collected wealth of South-East Asia I imagine that they would have made some effort at rescuing it.  At that point they wouldn’t have worried about submarines sinking it; they could either leave it there and lose it for certain, or ship it out and at least have a good chance of keeping some of it.

It neither makes sense that the Japanese would store all that treasure in the Philippines, nor that they would have left it there when the Allies started making landings.

What I could see being possible is some of the Japanese officials there gathering up their own private stash based off of what they could loot from the immediate region.  Most of what they found they probably would have added to the official coffers, but it wouldn’t be unheard of for well-placed officers to skim a little for themselves.  And a private, unofficial stash of treasure would be more likely to 1) be hidden away in some cave somewhere rather than kept under guard in some military vault, and 2) be left behind because a small group of officers would have much less resources for rescuing it than would the entire Japanese Empire.

So if there is a treasure hidden away there someplace, it’s most likely a relatively minor one consisting of a small percentage of what the Japanese were able to loot from Luzon.

LaMa - 23 March 2008 12:08 PM

What I am more interested in, is what the Japanese did with the original “Peking Man” Homo erectus fossils they captured along with a group of US Marines that were trying to get them safely out of China. Nobody has ever seen those fossils again since.

Heh. . .maybe buried in some graveyard somewhere as an unknown casualty of WWII.

LaMa - 23 March 2008 12:08 PM

What I am more interested in, is what the Japanese did with the original “Peking Man” Homo erectus fossils they captured along with a group of US Marines that were trying to get them safely out of China. Nobody has ever seen those fossils again since.

They are safely interred somewhere awaiting ‘rediscovery’ as Okinawa Man, hence establishing Japan’s credentials as the Birthplace of Man just prior to their reconquering all of Asia and restoring the glory of the Chrysanthemum throne.

Accipiter the reason for that is that the phil. was abandoned by the allies and was only returned after the war. wich gives a good reason why they just dump it in the phil.

silver caliber magnum - 24 March 2008 09:49 PM

Accipiter the reason for that is that the phil. was abandoned by the allies and was only returned after the war. wich gives a good reason why they just dump it in the phil.

No, that still doesn’t make much sense.  When the Japanese captured or kicked out or drove into hiding the Allied forces in 1942, the Philippines became occupied territory.  Which meant that a large percentage of the people there were very unhappy with the Japanese being in control, and that there was a constant insurrection going on.  If the Japanese took the trouble to put all that treasure on ships and send it sailing off, then they wouldn’t have sent it to someplace unstable and far removed from their own government bureaucracies like that.  They would simply send it to Japan, where it would be safe and directly usable and more easily converted into a more convenient form.

And when the Allies came back, it’s not as though they simply over-ran the Japanese forces in the Philippines overnight.  It was almost a year between the time the Allies first landed in the Philippines in 1944 and the time that the Japanese forces finally officially surrendered there.  So the Japanese would have had ample warning that the treasure was in danger of falling into Allied hands, and so trying to evacuate it to Japan would have been worth the risk of having it sunk (after all, they’d just lose it otherwise).

There’s no good reason that I can see why the Japanese would have gathered all that treasure together and stored it in the Philippines, and a number of reasons why they shouldn’t have done so.  And even if they had done so, there’s no good reason why they would have left it there and plenty of reasons why they would have removed it.