YAMASHITA’S YAMASHI TA’S GOLD Posted on Sep 16, 2008 in Lost Treasure
It is often said that behind every great fortune lies a great crime. The twisted tale of Yamashita’s gold, allegedly buried in the Philippine islands, is a story of a great fortune and many crimes that became inseparably intertwined.
The tale begins with Japan‟s J apan‟s plundering of its neighbors before and during World War II. As the Germans did in Europe, the Japanese squeezed vast fortunes from their Asian domain, creating a river of riches flowing toward the homeland. The Japanese government intended that loot pilfered from Southeast Asia would finance their war effort. This was not the haphazard looting of a rampaging army – it was a highly organized effort – perpetrated on a massive scale by some of Japans most prominent citizens; allegedly including Emperor Hirohito and yakuza gangsters such as Yoshio Kodama. Emperor Hirohito appointed his brother, Prince Yasuhito Chichibu, to head a secret organization called Kin no yuri (“Golden Lily”), to organize the looting.
Golden Lily teams systematically emptied treasuries, banks, factories, private homes, temples, churches, mosques, museums pawn shops and art galleries, and stripped ordinary people of what little they had, while Japan‟s top gangsters looted Asia‟s underworld and its black economy. The stolen property reportedly included gems, golden Buddhas, coins, and precious metals of immense value. THE TREASURE ROUTE
Not since the Spanish conquered the Incan Empire in 1532 had the world seen such an aggressive looting campaign. This sort of enterprise took careful planning and an established network to transport the loot safely and efficiently back to the Japanese homeland. The hub of the Golden Lilly‟s looting network was the Philippine island of Luzon – it‟s strategic location and proximity to Japan made it a natural and necessary trans-shipment point.
click map to enlarge During the early days of the war the looting network functioned as planned – treasures from all over South East Asia arrived in the Philippines daily – the loot was then transferred to freighters for the trip back to Japan. But toward the end of World War II. The Allies were gaining control of the Pacific, making it increasingly difficult for the Japanese to transport the stolen treasure. Allied submarines and aircraft took a heavy toll on Japan‟s shipping; some of the ships carrying loot to Japan were sunk. So, instead of shipping the treasure back to Japan, Golden Lilly operatives began hiding the loot in caves and underground complexes throughout the Philippines. The Japanese believed that when the war ended they would be able to keep the Philippine Islands as a concession for peace. They would then be able to dig up the vast wealth hidden there to rebuild their failing empire.
General Tomoyuki Yamashita
Arriving in the midst of this frenzied activity was the Philippines‟ new military governor, General Tomoyuki Yamashita, “the Tiger of Malaya” – a nickname he had won by conquering that complacent and ill-defended British colony. As the Allied forces closed in, General Yamashita kicked the treasure concealment campaign into high gear. Yamashita dug massive tunels in the mountains outside Manila, some to depths of hundreds of feet, leading to the final „storage chambers‟. Many of these tunnels were excavated just below the water table during the dry season, which meant that they would eventually fill with water – a deterrent to any future salvagers. And if that were‟t enough, most if not all of the tunnels were booby -trapped with 1,000 and 2,000 lb bombs and poisonous gas. Alied Prisoners were used to dig the intricate tunnel systems and once the gold was safely stashed in the pits, the POWs were executed and buried along with the treasures. In rare cases, Japanese officers even had their own soldiers killed and buried along with the treasure, to protect the secret locations. Yamashita also blasted caves in coral reefs, and sank entire shiploads of valuables in the sea around the islands. But in the end all this hard work was for nothing – the Americans invaded the Philippines in October 1944. When the Allied forces landed on Luzon there was still much treasure remaining to be buried, so General Yamashita loaded the remaining loot on trucks and took it with him as his army retreated across the island.
Japanese and American Troop positions on Luzon Island – Philippines 1945.
Legend says that as Yamashita fled, he broke the treasure into many smaller stashes that were hidden along the line of his retreat, the bulk of the stashes are said to be concentrated in the mountainous area where Yamashita made his last stand against the invading US troops. Yamashita eventual surrender on September 2, 1945. According to popular lore, there are said to be 172 documented, official Japanese imperial burial sites (138 on land and 34 in deliberately scuttled ships), not to mention the numerous instances of loot buried by greedy officers and renegade soldiers. The worth of all this booty is estimated to be as much as $3 billion at 1940 rates – the equivalent of over $100 billion today. According to various post-war estimates, the gold bullion alone totals 4,000 to 6,000 tons! Many of those who knew the locations of the loot were killed during that final battle, or were later tried by the Allies for war crimes and executed. General Tomoyuki Yamashita himself was executed for war crimes on February 23, 1946 taking the secret of his treasure to the grave. RECOVERY EFFORTS
Many Yamashita researchers believe that a portion of the treasure has already been recovered by various parties in the sixty years since Yamashita‟s Execution. A great many facts have been accumulated, maps have been found, witnesses have sworn their testimonies, but the truth remains shrouded in mystery and lies. Two of the more credible and well researched rumors of recovery are listed below: Clandestine Operation
The first rumor reads like a Tom Clancy Novel. It‟s said that, in October 1945, American intelligence agents learned where some of the Japanese loot was hidden. Agents of the O.S.S.
(forerunner of the CIA) watched as Japanese troops buried treasure on the island of Luzon and once the Japanese were defeated they began a clandestine recovery operation that lasted until 1948.
Peggy and Sterling Seagrave‟s book, Gold Warriors: America‟s Secret Recovery of Yamashita‟s Gold (2003), Is one of the best written on the subject and a great place to start your research on this fascinating tale. The initial edition comes with CD-ROMs containing 900 megabytes of documents, maps and photographs.
There were important reasons for all this secrecy. If the recovery of this huge mass of stolen gold became public knowledge, the countries and individuals that had been plundered could not lay claim to it; and the OSS/CIA had no intention of returning any of the plunder to its rightful owners. Instead, they set up numerous front companies to launder the secretly recovered gold bullion. This is supposed to have become the basis of the CIA‟s „off the books‟ operational funds during the immediate post-war years, used to create a world-wide anti-Communist network. General William Donovan, head of the O.S.S., supposedly knew of the gold recoveries, as did General Douglas MacArthur, and former US presidents Herbert Hoover and Harry Truman. Marcos’ Gold
Perhaps the most credible rumor of recovery involves a young, up and coming Filipino politician named Ferdinand Marcos – who became successively a congressman, senator, president, and finally dictator of the Philippine islands.
Ferdinand Marcos
It was rumored that Marco‟s rise in politics was financed in part by Yamashita‟s hoard. One of many stories about Marcos places him with a party of Japanese soldiers who hid gold in a tunnel at the end of the war.
Then sometime in the mid 1960′s he recovered $8 billion from a tunnel known as “Teresa 2″, which was located 38 miles south of Manila, in the Rizal province. An interesting fact about Marcos is that he was the leader of the Ang Maharlika guerrilla force in northern Luzon during World War II. This would have put him in the center of the action as the Japanese made their final stand against Allied forces. Whether the dictator ever found Yamashita‟s gold is pure speculation – but it‟s a well documented fact that he searched diligently, freely using his presidential powers and the nation‟s armed forces in the hunt. When he declared martial law in 1972, Marcos took full advantage of the clout it conferred to step up his treasure-hunting efforts. In 1975, Marcos awarded himself a monopoly on underwater recovery efforts, decreeing that all future salvage operations in Philippine waters would require his personal approval. From time to time, scraps of information leaked from the Marcos inner circle indicating that the dictator did indeed find some sort of treasure. In the 1970s, Marcos hired an American, Robert Curtis, to search for buried treasure and remelt gold bullion to hide its origins. Curtis later told of seeing bars of gold “stacked from floor to ceiling” in one of the dictator‟s provincial palaces. “The ingots”, he said, “were of a distinctive shape used around the time of World War II”.
The „gold‟ Buddha allegedly returned to Rogelio Roxas by Ferdinand Marcos. Roxas claimed the Buddha he‟d found had been solid gold with a cavity in the removable head that contained diamonds
Rogelio Roxas, a Filipino locksmith, is said to have found a one-ton, solid-gold Buddha and thousands of gold bars in a tunnel near Baguio in 1971, only to have them stolen by President Ferdinand Marcos. In 1986 Roxas sued the Marcos estate for damages, but died from poisioning on the very day he was set to testify. Marcos was eventually overthrown in 1986; It was reported that when he fled the country, U.S. Customs agents discovered 24 suitcases of gold bricks and diamond jewelry hidden in diaper bags. In addition, certificates for gold bullion valued in the billions of dollars were allegedly among the personal properties he, his family, his cronies and business partners had surreptitiously taken with them when U.S. President Ronald Reagan provided them all safe passage to Hawaii. GOING FOR THE GOLD!
To this day, not one “officially accepted” Yamashita find has been documented. But despite all the disappointments and dead-ends, fortune hunters remain undaunted. Many individuals and consortia, both Filipino and foreign, continue to search for treasure sites. Before you launch your own hunt for Yamashita‟s Lost Gold, here are a few things to keep in mind…
Danger – Dozens have died digging up roads, riverbeds and mountainsides in a relentless pursuit of
Yamashita‟s gold. For example, in late 2000, two men were buried alive whe n a tunnel collapsed near the Mindanao town of General Santos after they had dug as far as 24 feet.Four others suffocated in Lumban, Laguna. And in 1998, three men were killed in Nueva Ecija in Luzon province when a tunnel they had dug caved in.
Con Men – As many of these recovery projects have ended in failure, a side
industry has emerged based on the fever itself. Foreign investors are often enticed into funding the digging of holes known to contain nothing or sold “treasure maps” of questionable origin such as the one to the right
If you are tempted to take up the Yamashita challenge you might
→
want to read this article first, which tells how a 74-year-old man lost his life savings by investing in a Yamashita scheme. Desperate race for vast riches – www.geocities.com/filipinoculture/treasure.html
Sharing with the man- The Philipine government has some pretty strict, and well enforced
guidelines for would be treasure hunters operating in their territories. Many expeditions have been escorted by the Philipino Military, who stand guard night and day to make sure that the government gets their fair share of the treasure – which is listed below: a) For Treasure Hunting within Public Lands – Seventy-five percent(75%) to the Government and twenty-five (25%) to the Permit Holder. b) For Treasure Hunting in Private Lands – Thirty Percent (30%) to the Government and Seventy Percent (70%) to be shared by the Permit Holder and the landowner. c) For Shipwreck/Sunken Vessel Recovery – Fifty percent (50%) to the Government and Fifty percent (50%) to the Permit Holder.”
Yamashita's Gold Eyewitness Reveals Truth Of Fabulous WWII Hidden Treasure By Sterling and Peggy Seagrave South China Morning Post 9-3-1 In the closing months of World War II, in the Philippines, several of Japan's highest ranking imperial princes hid tons of looted gold bullion and other stolen treasure in caves and tunnels, to recover later. This was the wealth of 12 Asian countries, accumulated over thousands of years. Expert teams accompanying Japan's armed forces had systematically emptied treasuries, banks, factories, private homes, pawn shops, art galleries, and stripped ordinary people, while Japan's top gangsters looted Asia's underworld and its black economy. There were 175 ''imperial'' treasure sites hidden throughout the Philippines. When American tanks were close, the chief engineers of those vaults were given a farewell party 67 metres underground in Tunnel 8 in the mountains of Luzon, stacked with row after row of gold bars. As the evening progressed, they drank great quantities of sake, sang patriotic songs and shouted banzai (long life). At midnight, General Yamashita Tomoyuki and the princes slipped out, and dynamite charges were set off in the access tunnels, entombing the engineers. Their vaults would remain secret. The princes escaped to Tokyo by submarine, and three months later General Yamashita surrendered to American troops. Japan had lost the war militarily, but the princes made certain Japan did not lose financially. This grisly event has remained unknown until now, and the hidden treasure was brushed off as a fanciful legend of ''Yamashita's Gold''. But an eyewitness to the entombment has taken us there and given us his
personal account. During the war, Ben Valmores was the young Filipino valet of a senior prince, who was in charge of closing all imperial treasure sites in the Philippines. A sometimes sentimental man, the prince spared Ben's life and led him out of Tunnel 8 just before the dynamite was detonated. Japan's looting of Asia was overseen by [then-emperor] Hirohito's brother Prince Chichibu. His organisation was codenamed kin no yuri (Golden Lily), the title of one of the emperor's poems. Other princes headed different parts of Golden Lily across the conquered territories. Eventually, Japanese sources told us that Ben's wartime master was prince Takeda Tsuneyoshi, first cousin of Hirohito and grandson of emperor Meiji. In 1998, we tested Ben with 1930s photographs of many princes, all the names removed, and he instantly identified prince Takeda, Hirohito's brother prince Chichibu and other princes. Ben said he had spent time with each of them, bringing them food, tea and cigarettes while they inventoried each treasure site. When he saw our photo of Prince Takeda, Ben froze, then began softly crooning the Japanese folk song Sakura, Sakura (Cherry Blossoms), which he said Takeda often sang to himself. In the final stages of work on a biography of Japan's imperial family titled The Yamato Dynasty, we were told that in October 1945, American intelligence agents learned where some of the Japanese loot was hidden in the Philippines, and quietly recovered billions of dollars worth of gold bullion, platinum, and loose diamonds. This information, if true, revealed the existence of an extraordinary state secret, something the United States Government kept from its own citizens for more than half a century. There was no time to include this in the biography. It had to be investigated separately. Here is some of what we have since learned: After surrendering on September 2, 1945, General Yamashita was charged with war crimes over gruesome atrocities committed in Manila under the order of an admiral, while Yamashita had ordered withdrawing troops to leave the city unharmed. During his trial, there was no mention of plundered treasure, or of looting during the war.
But we now know there was a hidden agenda. Because it was not possible to torture General Yamashita physically without this becoming evident to his lawyers, members of his staff were tortured. His driver, Major Kojima Kashii, was given special attention. In charge of the torture of Major Kojima was a Filipino-American intelligence officer named Severino Garcia Santa Romana, whose friends called him Santy. He wanted the major to reveal each place where he had taken Yamashita, where bullion and other treasure was hidden for recovery after the war. Supervising Santy during the torture was Captain Edward Lansdale, later one of America's best known ''Cold Warriors''. Early that October, Kojima broke and led Lansdale and Santy to more than a dozen Golden Lily treasure vaults in the rugged country north of Manila. What they found astounded everyone from General Douglas MacArthur all the way up to the White House. After discussions with his cabinet, President Harry Truman decided to keep the recovery a state secret. Santy's ensuing recoveries greatly altered America's leverage during the Cold War. According to senior US government officials and highranking US Army officers, the Truman administration set this treasure aside along with Axis loot recovered in Europe, as a secret political action fund to fight communism in the Cold War. Crudely put, it would be used to bribe statesmen and military officers, and to buy elections for anti-communist political parties. The idea for a global political action fund based on war loot had originated with US secretary of war, Henry Stimson. During the war, Stimson had a braintrust thinking hard about recovered Axis plunder, and how it should be handled after the war. Their solution was to set up what is informally called the ''Black Eagle Trust'', after the black eagle emblem of Hitler's Reichsbank in Berlin. The Black Eagle Trust was first discussed in secret during July 1944, when 44 nations met at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to plan the post-war economy. This was confirmed to us by a number of high-level sources, including former CIA deputy director Ray Cline, who knew about Santy's recoveries in 1945, and continued to be involved in attempts in the 1980s and 1990s to hide blocks of Japanese war loot still said to be in the vaults of banks in New York. In November 1945, General MacArthur strolled down row after row of
gold bars stacked two metres tall during a tour of vaults opened by Santy. >From what was seen in these vaults alone, it was evident that over a period of years Japan had looted billions of dollars in treasure from all over Asia.Much of this plunder had reached Japan overland earlier, from China through Korea, but the rest was hidden in the Philippines, unable to be shipped to Japan by sea because of the successful US submarine blockade. According to Ray Cline and others, between 1945 and 1947 the gold bullion recovered by Santy and Lansdale was moved discreetly to 172 accounts at banks in 42 countries. There were important reasons for all this secrecy. If the recovery of this huge mass of stolen gold was known only to a trusted few, the countries and individuals that had been plundered could not lay claim to it. Truman recognised that the very existence of so much black gold, if it became public knowledge, would cause the metal's fixed price to collapse. But as long as the gold was kept hidden, prices could be maintained and currencies pegged to gold would be stable. Meanwhile, the black gold would serve as a reserve asset, bolstering the prime banks in each country, and strengthening the anti-communist governments of those nations. To hide the existence of all this treasure, Washington had to tell a number of lies. Especially lies about Japan, which had stolen most of the gold. America wanted Japan to become its anti-communist bastion in Asia, where the mainland was being overrun by communists. If American conservatives and Japanese conservatives were to ally effectively against communism, they had to begin by enlarging their financial resources for the Cold War. Above all, the source of much of this hidden wealth must never be acknowledged. Washington had to insist, starting in 1945, that Japan never stole anything, and was flat broke and bankrupt when the war ended. Here was the beginning of many terrible secrets. Because they remained ''off the books'', these enormous political action funds got into the wrong hands, where they remain to this day. We can reveal that in 1960, then vice-president Richard Nixon ''gave'' one of the biggest of these political action funds, the US$35-billion (about HK$272 billion) M-Fund, to leading members of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party
(LDP). In return, he is believed to have sought their support for his presidential campaign that year. The M-Fund, now said to be worth more than US$500 billion, is still controlled by members of the LDP. Officially, we are told that Japan's wartime elite the imperial family, the zaibatsu (large industrial business conglomerates), the yakuza (Japanese mafia) and the ''good'' bureaucrats ended the war as impoverished victims of a handful of ''bad'' military zealots. We are told that Japan was badly damaged and impoverished, barely able to feed itself at war's end. In fact, Japan emerged from the war far richer than before, and with remarkably little damage, except to the homes of millions of ordinary Japanese who did not count, at least in the view of their overlords. Evidence of Golden Lily loot comes also from straightforward legal actions in America. Such simple things as the probating of the will of Santa Romana (Santy), verification of his tax records, and legal evidence of his fortune deposited in the US, Switzerland, Hong Kong and elsewhere, provide hard proof that the world is awash with clandestine bank accounts growing out of Golden Lily. Other lawsuits in the US prove that Golden Lily war loot was indeed hidden in the Philippines. Rogelio Roxas, a Filipino locksmith, found a one-tonne solid-gold Buddha and thousands of gold bars hidden in a cave near Baguio only to have it stolen from him by President Ferdinand Marcos. Roxas was subsequently tortured and died in suspicious circumstances. Some believe he was murdered. In 1996, a US Federal Court awarded his heirs a judgment of US$22 billion against the Marcos estate. As the 1951 Peace Treaty was skewed by secret deals, thousands of Japan's victims have been deprived of any compensation for their suffering. According to Article 14 of the Treaty: ''It is recognised that Japan should pay reparations to the Allied Powers for the damage and suffering caused by it during the war. Nevertheless it is also recognised that the resources of Japan are not presently sufficient.'' To reinforce the claim that Japan was broke, Article 14 noted that ''the Allied Powers waive all reparations claims of the Allied Powers and their nationals arising out of any actions taken by Japan...'' By signing the Treaty, Allied
countries concurred that Japan's plunder had vanished down a rabbit hole, and all Japan's victims were out of luck. In return for going along with the Treaty, the Allies received portions of the gold bullion recovered by Santy. We have evidence from former CIA deputy director Cline that the gold bullion Santy and Lansdale recovered was secretly moved to national treasuries and prime banks in more than 42 countries, including Great Britain. We also have evidence from British archives confirming this. More than half a century later, the last battle of the Pacific War is being waged in courts in the US and Japan where surviving prisoners of war, slave labourers, comfort women and civilian victims of Japan have filed billion-dollar lawsuits to win compensation so mysteriously denied them after the war. In 1995, it was estimated that there were 700,000 victims of the war who had still received no compensation. Today, their numbers are dwindling rapidly because of age and illness. Backing them is an extraordinary coalition, including international law firms with years of experience, fighting for compensation from German industries and Swiss banks, for crimes committed and money looted during the Nazi Holocaust. Sterling and Peggy Seagrave are the authors of ''Golden Warriors''. This is an edited extract of the book's prologue. It will be published in French by Editions Michalon in November
First of all, TSEATC would like to thank all of you for contacting us with your treasure stories. We are also honored and flattered that we have been contacted by so many of you relating your stories to us of how and why you think that you have Japanese WWII treasure buried on your property. However, we strongly feel that many of you that are contacting us are mearly "wishful thinkers" whom are hoping and praying that there is a chance that you may have treasure buried on your property. It seems that WWII treasure stories have been floating all over the Philippines for the past 20 years or so. And, that is exactly what 99% of them are, stories just like it says. Almost everyone and his brother claims to have treasure buried on his/her land. The Japanese Imperial Army officially occupied the Philippines from May 1942 through to their surrender in mid 1945. During this time, these soldiers commandeered hundreds (probably even "thousands") of homes, buildings and properties from Filipinos. After all, they needed somewhere to operate from. They certainly weren't going to run military operations from the local street corner were they? Our point is this; Just because the Japanese Imperial Army occupied your property, house or land during the war, this does not warrant there to being treasure bur ied on your property. Just because grandma (or, grandpa) said they saw a Japanese Imperial Army soldier digging a ditch during the war doesn't mean anything. Maybe he preparing a fox hole for the expected clash with American soldiers. W ho knows. Just because a Japanese guy took a piss on your rice paddy in 1975 (or whenever), doesn't warrant that he was looking for long-ago buried treasure. This is not what we call solid evidence. After over 20 years of research and direct involvement concerning World War II treasure buried throughout the Philippine Islands by the Japanese Imperial Army during WW II, there are many facts that we have come to know. A few of which we will state here; MAJOR SITES : Fact Number One: There were 172 "documented" WWII sites buried throughout the Philippine Islands between 1943 and 1945 (34 of these were "sea" sites). The remaining 138 land burials were top secret and under direct control of the highest authority of the Japanese Imperial Army at that time. They were major deposits consisting of many tons of gold (sometimes also buried was; silver, jewelry, even golden Buddha's). These sites took anywhere from several months to a year or more to complete. Many of these sites were buried at (or very near) POW camps using POW labor. Some were buried on Japanese Army encampments (located near to POW camps). Either way, you will notice the common link between the two - that link being - POW. Burial depth was anywhere from 100 to 350 feet deep inside a complex tunneling system. Extremely detailed maps were made of all of these sites. These maps were all written in special "codes" which would ultimately be of no use to an untrained
person who happened upon one of these maps. Not that you could possible happen upon one of them anyway as these maps have long been destroyed so there is no chance of the average person to happen along and find one.
POW MAPS Click here to see a map showing the location of 16 major POW internment camp sites throughout the Philippines during World War II. MINOR SITES : Fact Number Two: There were numerous (possibly hundreds) of additional "undocumented" minor WWII treasure sites also buried throughout the Philippines. This has been proven as there has been several 'finds' throughout the Philippines since the end of the war. Usually made by local Filipino treasure hunters. One on the most famous and well known 'find' was made by Roger Roxas and his group in December 1970. Most of these minor treasure burials occurred between late 1944 through to the end of the war in mid 1945. These small deposits were placed during retreat to the mountains of renegade officers and soldiers. These sites were usually of relatively small size a few gold bars. Of course, renegade officers' sites could have been much larger deposits (few tons of gold or more. ..). One large renegade site was discovered to have 1,800 gold bars (each weighing 6.2kg or just over 13 pounds). Roxas' group recovered numerous gold bars and a one-ton Golden Buddha. Nevertheless, these sites were usually buried rather quickly as these soldiers were on the run. Question: "Where would you bury your gold bars if you were being chased by an army of American soldiers?" Answer: "Anywhere - and as quickly as possible". With no time on their hands, maps were usually not made and if one was made it was usually very crude and not showing much detail. See maps below for; Major battle sites on Philippine islands, Japanese Imperial Army strong holds and retreat routes, etc.:
BATTLE SITE MAPS * Top 10 Major battle sites between USA/Filipino forces against the Japanese Imperial Forces on Northern Luzon between January 9th and August 15th, 1945. * Japanese Imperial Army troop locations on Northern Luzon in Feburary 1945. * Final Imperial Army mountainous strong hold on Northern Luzon before surrendering (July - August 15th, 1945). * Location of 16 major POW internment camp sites throughout the Philippines during World War II. * More maps coming soon.... Of course the obvious question you should be asking yourself is, " What hard and solid evidence do I have to justify believing that WWII treasu re is buried on m y prop erty? "
The definition of hard and solid evidence being either in the form of locating of; tunnels which were dug by the Japanese Imperial Army, Japanese treasure markers on your property, or, something that you can physically hold in your hands (for example; gold or silver bars, jewels, etc.). Now this is definitely hard and solid evidence. Of course, some of you are probably thinking by now, "If I have the gold bars in my hand than what do I need TSEATC for?" Well, TSEATC would only be going on the assumption that "if you found those gold bars - there could very well be MORE buried somewhere near -by". Maybe we can help you locate it. Now, we will list a few questions which you need to ask yourself to determine what, if anything, may be buried on your property. Concerning MAJOR SITES; 1. Was there a major Japanese army encampment on your property during the war? If not, how far away was it? 2. Where was the closest POW camp? 3. Are there any natural caves or man made tunnels on your propert y? If so, have you physically located them? 4. If your answer to the first three questions was favorable, than; Have you found any Japanese markers on your property? If so, what do they look like? Concerning MINOR SITES; 1. Are there any natural caves or man made tunnels on your property? If so, have you physically located them? 2. If your answer to the above questions were favorable, than; Have you found any Japanese markers on your property? If so, what do they look like? 3. Have you or anyone else recovered any treasure from your property? If so, what was found? If you cannot answer any of the above questions favorably, than, chances are highly likely that there is nothing buried on your property. For those of you with favorable answers to the above questions, please proceed and read the information below as it may also be of interest to you. Assuming that your above answers are favorable, what would then be your next logical step to prove that something may be buried on your property? Obviously what is needed now is to VERIFY that there may be something buried on your property. There are several tests which could be preformed, two of which we shall list here. These two tests should be the following;
1) Resistivity ground testing. 2) Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) scanning. 3) Spot Drilling. The Resistivity test will prove two things; 1. Whether there is a MASS of conductive material buried on your site (Gold is very conductive). 2. Whether there are any VOIDS underground (whether they are 'natural' caves, or, 'manmade underground tunnels'). NOTE: Resistivity ground testing will NOT tell you the DEPTH of the objects buried. GPR tests will prove the following; 1. Prove whether there are any VOIDS underground (whether there are 'natural' caves, or, 'man-made underground tunnels'). 2. Prove whether the ground has been disturbed (previous digging operations). 3. Prove whether there are any unordinary OBJECTS buried below. 4. Provide the actual DEPTH from details of the above three test results. NOTE: GPR CANNOT identify whether the objects buried below are; GOLD, SILVER, CONCRETE, etc. It will only verify that the objects are there. 2nd NOTE: GPR PENETRATION DEPTH depends on the following; o Type of GPR being used. o Soil type and condition. o Frequency of GPR Transducer. (A HIGH frequency transducer has LESS ground penetration but HIGHER resolution. A LOW frequency transducer has MORE ground penetration but LOWER resolution). Spot Drilling is another way to pinpoint whether there's buried treasure on your property. A portable drill and water are used for these operations. If you're lucky enough to drill directly over the buried object the gold shavings will come up to the surface with the water flow and that's the sure indication that you've hit the jackpot. There are several companies there in the Philippines that offer these types of drilling services (usually the mining-type companies).They usually charge on a per foot drilling depth basis. So, the point here is that a minimum of the above two test need to be performed first, before you can quite confidently state the fact that there may be WWII treasure buried on your
property. Also, these tests must be performed before you can semi-accurately provide an estimate on; * Estimated total project finance amount required for the success of your project. * Estimated treasure recovery time frame. We hope this information has helped those land owners/treasure hunters whom are interested in this subject. For those of you with favorable answers to the above questions, please DO NOT send email to TSEATC at this time because we are simply overwhelmed with responses to this website. If things should change at a later date - TSEATC will ask you to email information regarding your site. Thanks for your patience. However - if you happen to have any information on any OLD SHIPWRECKS (not WWII wrecks - we're talking the really old types like the SPANISH GALLEONS, CHINESE JUNKS, etc) - PLEASE EMAIL US ASAP because we're always interested in those! Thank you for taking the time to read this page and good luck with your ventures... Sincerely, TSEATC
