Since the end of World War II, treasure hunters from across the globe have been searching for “Yamashita’s Gold,” a purported treasure said to be buried in the Philippines. Along with a three-foot tall golden statue of Buddha, the Japanese were said to have stored a fortune in gold bars in a tunnel system when they were driven from the archipelago country at the end of the war.
The existence of Yamashita’s Treasure is viewed with skepticism by many historians, but a team of Philippine hunters, led by Rogelio “Roger” Roxas, claims they retrieved part of the treasure, including the Buddha, in 1971. They believed they were poised for a big payday until the corrupt Philippine government intervened in a most brutal fashion.
Roger Roxas With The Buddha Statue
Called the “Tiger of Malaya,” Imperial Japanese World War II Army General Tomoyuki Yamashita defended the Philippines from the advancing United States and Filipino forces late in the war. While unable to stop the advance, he held part of Luzon until September 3, 1945, nearly three weeks after Japan’s announcement of surrender on August 15.
After the war, Yamashita was convicted of war crimes committed by troops under his command during the Japanese control of the Philippines even though it was not definitively determined that he approved or knew of the actions. The ruling that the commander is responsible for his or her subordinates’ war crimes as long as the he or she did not attempt to discover and stop them from occurring came to be known as the “Yamashita standard.”
Following Yamashita’s hanging in 1946, rumors persisted he had stashed a fortune of gold, highlighted by the Buddha statue, in the caves and tunnels somewhere in the Philippines.
Tomoyuki Yamashita
Under Yamashita’s command, Japanese soldiers reportedly stole the treasure from the banks, homes, museums, and religious structures of multiple Southeast Asian countries both before and during the war. The pilfered loot is believed to have been initially stored in Singapore, which the Japanese called Syonan after taking control of the island in February 1942. The booty was then transported to the Philippines, also conquered by Japan in 1942, from where it was to be shipped to the Japanese Home Islands after the war . . . presuming Japan emerged victorious.
As the United States Navy submarines and Allied warplanes sank many of the ships carrying the war cargo, the decision was made to bury what remained in the Philippines. The treasure was purportedly hidden in tunnel systems constructed in the mountains by Filipino slave labor and dynamited shut with many of the workers inside to keep the location secret. Japanese forces were unable to retrieve the reputed treasure prior to Yamashita’s surrender of the Philippines.
No credible evidence of the treasure’s existence emerged until 1971.
Alleged Treasure
Roger Roxas and his family lived on the Philippine island of Luzon. He worked as a locksmith in Baguio City, where General Yamashita had been headquartered for part of World War II.
Roxas was also part of a group of Filipino treasure hunters, one of whom was Albert Fuchigami, whose father had been an officer in the Japanese army during World War II. Roxas said Fuchigami mapped for him the location of the Yamashita Treasure and that a second man who had served as Yamashita’s interpreter during the war told him of an underground chamber containing vast amounts of silver and gold, including a golden Buddha.
Roxas’ team claimed to have broken into one of the sealed tunnel systems, complete with railroad tracks, on a plot of state-owned land near Baguio General Hospital, during an underground expedition in 1971. They found bayonets, samurai swords, rifles, wiring, radios, and the skeletons of several Japanese soldiers who had apparently been trapped underground when their own retreating army set off the explosions to seal the tunnels.
Soon thereafter, Roxas and his team located a ten-foot-thick concrete enclosure on the tunnel’s floor. On January 24, they broke through, finding multiple artifacts, including the gold bars and the Buddha reputedly plundered from one of the Southeast Asian countries conquered by Japan during the war.
The Prize Find
Before blasting the tunnel shut, Roxas’ team removed one box of gold, several artifacts, including the bayonets and samurai swords, and the Buddha, which he estimated weighed one metric ton (over 2200 pounds). Roxas took the items to his home.
The group sold seven of the gold bars and decided to also sell the Buddha, the prized possession, and use the money to buy trucks and equipment to transport the remaining gold bars from the tunnel. A man posing as a potential buyer confirmed the Buddha was 20-carat solid gold and gave Roxas 1 million pesos– $160,000–as a down payment.
Roxas noticed the buyer paid special attention to the Buddha’s neck. After the buyer left, Roxas hit the Buddha several times with a piece of wood, popping off its head. Inside were several handfuls of diamonds and several boxes containing twenty-four gold bars approximately one-inch by two-and-a-half inches.
More Gold Inside The Buddha
In the early morning hours of April 5, two months after the discovery of the gold, eight armed soldiers, one of whom was the man posing as the buyer, raided Roger Roxas’ home. The red ribbons on their rifles signified they were members of President Ferdinand Marcos’ elite, and notoriously brutal, Palace Guard. The soldiers produced a search warrant claiming Roxas had violated banking regulations and had illegal weapons in his home. They ransacked the house for approximately an hour, taking the Buddha and all of the gold, diamonds, bayonets, and samurai swords. Roxas said the soldiers also took his wife’s jewelry and family photo albums.
After reporting the robbery to police, Roxas contacted Judge Pio Marcos, for whom he had previously worked as a chef. It was Judge Marcos, a cousin of the Philippine President, who had granted Roxas a permit to search for the treasure, but he now said he could not be of assistance because the President himself had asked for the Buddha. The police told Roxas they could not aid him either.
Home Ransacked
Buddha Taken
Ferdinand Marcos had been elected President of the Philippines in 1965 and later ruled as a dictator. Although the Philippines was still nominally a democracy, he and his wife Imelda ruled the island nation with virtual autonomy and brute force.
Ferdinand And Imelda Marcos
When the Filipino press learned of the story, Marcos allowed them to view what he said was the confiscated Buddha; most believed he had substituted a fake.
An opposition party member located Roger Roxas, who had gone into hiding with his family in an isolated village in the jungle, and convinced him to come to Manila to confirm the Buddha as phony. He did so on April 29, telling the press the Buddha shown by Marcos was different in color (bronze) from the one he had found (gold) and that the head came off on the Buddha he had found while the head of the Buddha presented by Marcos did not. In addition, Roxas’ Buddha was missing a piece from the back that had been used for testing. Marcos’ Buddha was not missing any pieces.
Roxas told reporters he believed Marcos had ordered the theft of the real Buddha from his home and showed them the damage the soldiers had done there.
The Replica Buddha
A Philippine Senate committee opened an investigation into Roger Roxas’ claims. He testified before them on May 4. In addition to stating what he had told the press, he testified that Marcos’ mother, Josefa, had attempted to purchase the Buddha at a far-below-value price the day before the raid on his home.
The committee identified and questioned the men who ransacked the Roxas home. They claimed they had taken the Buddha because a Japanese treasure hunter had reported it stolen two years earlier. When pressed, they would not, and seemingly could not, identify the fortune seeker and had no explanation for why this supposed theft was not mentioned in the warrant.
Roxas Testifies
After testifying, the Roxas family again went into hiding, this time in Cabanatuan City, one-hundred miles south of Baguio. The Palace Guard located them two weeks later, on May 18. Roxas was forcibly taken to constabulary headquarters in San Fernando and ordered to sign a letter confirming the Buddha’s authenticity, that he was paid off by the Opposition Party to say it was phony, to name the Senators who paid him to implicate Marcos in the Buddha theft, and that the raid of his house was conducted in a “peaceful” manner.
The kidnappers also demanded the location of the tunnel where he had found the Buddha. Upon refusing, Roxas contended the Palace thugs locked him in a Manila hotel room. After several weeks of torture from an electro-shock machine fashioned from automobile batteries and being burned with cigarettes, he signed the document and gave up the tunnel’s location.
Roxas (Left) With The Real Buddha Statue
After the worst of his wounds healed, Roxas was taken to the Baguio City courtroom. Under threat of harm to his family, he was photographed several times giving the tacit sign of approval in pointing to the fake Buddha. After briefly being allowed to see his family, he was re-imprisoned at the hotel. Using his locksmith skills, he escaped through a window and again went into hiding, from which he contacted a Senator and again testified before the Senate on June 30, 1971, this time about being tortured. He then returned to Baguio City but was arrested a week later on an illegal weapons charge. In August, he was released on bail and again went into hiding.
In January 1973, Roger Roxas was convicted on the weapons charge. While imprisoned, he was again twice beaten and questioned about the location of the treasure before again going into hiding following his release in November 1974.
Sometime afterward, Roxas says he saw soldiers digging near Baguio General Hospital and several people reported seeing the soldiers removing boxes from a nearby tunnel.
Tortured
Several people claimed to have subsequently seen the gold bars in Marcos’ possession and two people claimed to have seen the Buddha in 1975 at one of his summer palaces. A tape was even obtained of his talking about having the Yamashita Treasure.
Marcos ruled the Philippines until he was deposed in a 1986 coup. After his ouster, he fled to Hawaii where he died in 1989. At the time of his death, his personal wealth was estimated to be $10 billion, exceeding the entire Philippine National Treasury.
Death Of The Dictator
Roger Roxas believed the bulk of Marcos’ wealth came from the Buddha and gold bars confiscated from his home. Through the Golden Buddha Corporation, formed with a friend, Felix Dacanay, in the United States, he filed a lawsuit against Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos in March 1988, alleging theft and human rights abuses. The lawsuit continued against Imelda following her husband’s death.
Lawsuit Filed
Roxas had given deposition testimony and he was scheduled to testify in the civil suit on May 25, 1993. That day, however, he died, at age forty-nine.
The cause of his death was listed as a heart attack, but some have alleged foul play.
Roxas Dies
Before He Can Testify
In July 1996, a Hawaii jury concluded the late Roger Roxas had found a treasure, most likely the Yamashita Treasure, which was then forcibly confiscated on the orders of the late Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos. The Golden Buddha Corporation was awarded the then-largest judgment in history, $22 billion which with interest increased to $40.5 billion.
In November 1998, the Hawaii Supreme Court affirmed the jury’s decision but negated the award amount, ruling it was too speculative because the exact quantity and quality of the gold bars found in the tunnels was unknown. A new trial was ordered to determine the value of the treasure.
In 2001, the Golden Buddha Corporation obtained a final judgment against Imelda Marcos to the extent of her interest in the Marcos estate in the principal amount of $13,275,848.37. Roger Roxas’ estate was granted a $6 million judgment on the claim of human rights abuse. The Hawaii Supreme Court affirmed these judgments in 2005.
The Marcos Estate’s appeal was denied, with the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal concluding, “The Yamashita Treasure was found by Roxas and stolen from Roxas by Marcos’ men.”
Despite the ruling, neither the Golden Buddha Corporation nor Roger Roxas’ family have received any money. A Marcos family attorney says “It’s noncollectible. It’s Monopoly money . . . “Everything in the Marcos estate is tied up by the Philippine government . . . There’s no money there.”
Judgment Granted
In October 2019, the Roxas family sued Imelda Marcos in Manhattan Supreme Court for the $25 million she had previously been ordered to pay after lying about her access to her late husband’s estate.
Now ninety-four-years-old, the former Philippine first lady has paid approximately $1.4 million and claims she has no more money.
Imelda Claims She’s Broke
The Buddha and other parts of the alleged Yamashita Treasure are rumored to still be somewhere in the Philippines, hidden by members of the Marcos family. Some have speculated the Buddha was melted down into gold bars and became part of the Marcos family’s hidden wealth abroad, including their real estate holdings in the United States.
Two subsequent searches for the gold were conducted by Nevada treasure hunters Robert Curtis and Charles McDougald; one during the 1970s, while Marcos was in power at, they claimed, the invitation on the President, and the other in 1986, following his ouster. Nothing was found in either instance.
Where Is The Buddha?
Roger Roxas’ son Henry now runs a museum in Baguio City dedicated to his father and the treasure.
Henry Roxas
Roger’s Son
Authors Sterling and Penny Seagrave believe the looting done by Japanese soldiers during World War II was organized by Yakuza gangsters and high-ranking Japanese officials going all to way to Emperor Hirohito. They believe the Yamashita Treasure was used to finance Japan’s war effort and that most of those who knew the location of the treasure were killed either during or shortly after the war.
The Seagraves contend American military intelligence operatives learned about possible locations of the treasure near the end of the war and that they tortured General Yamashita’s driver for information regarding the locations of over one-hundred tunnels and caves holding the treasure. Much of the treasure was removed, the Seagraves purport, and used for CIA operations, principally in fighting Communism.
Most historians, American and Filipino, say there is no credible evidence to back up the Seagraves’ claims. They are skeptical that the Japanese would bring the treasure to the Philippines because American ships controlled the nearby waters and would most likely have sunk any ships carrying the treasure as they had done to many Japanese ships throughout the war.
CIA Involvement?
SOURCES:
- Honolulu Star-Bulletin
- Los Angeles Times
- New York Times
- Unsolved Mysteries
Very interesting story. I didn’t read about this escaped in the news. I’m not surprised that Marcos had something to do with the theft. They were always shady.