The Claim
There’s a huge stash of gold hidden underground in the Philippines
During the second world war Japan invaded huge areas of land in south east Asia, and did the exact same thing that invading armies throughout history have always done when they’ve captured a new territory and looted it.
Whenever the invading army captured a new stockpile of wealth they would always move it somewhere heavily defended far from the front line, where they would add to it as more loot was found.
As for this particular stash it was named after General Tomoyuki Yamashita who was the commanding officer of at the region at the time, though its believed he didn’t have anything to do with the gold personally other that being responsible for it at some point.
The gold was supposedly made up of the looted wealth of the Philippine islands as well as gold taken from nearby Indonesia and the Vietnam/Cambodia region, which is why it’s existence has been raised into question.
Maybe sceptics have debated its existence claiming the Japan had lost much of its naval power by 1943 and it simply didn’t make sense to hide such a stash on a series of islands. A complicated law suit was filed in 1988 by treasure hunter against the former president of the Philippines about how the hunter had information leading to the location of the treasure, but the Philippines claimed rights to it should it be found. The end result was the case got very messy and after the treasure hunter claims to have found the treasure he goes on to explain how the President at the time stole it from him.
Various companies got sued through the process and it was concluded that the treasure hunter had indeed found a treasure, but it had been taken from him by the presidents men.
However the treasure that was found isn’t thought to have been the Yamashita gold as it only amounted to a few million, were the total treasure value of unaccounted for gold taken by the Japanese during the second world war is many, many times greater.
So there’s millions worth of gold buried by the Japanese during WW2 in the Philippines? Could that be true?
Well yes it could for various reasons, mostly because there’s still a massive amount of gold unaccounted for that still has to be “somewhere”.
The Japanese were known to have had various strongholds in the Philippines and armies always put the most valuable loot in the most well defended places, and with the Philippines and surrounding countries being reasonably wealthy at the time due to trade, that wealth was massed up and stored somewhere on the island network.
The Japanese were also well known to dig huge tunnel networks to survive artillery and bombing runs, and such a place would have been perfect to hide a stash of gold with the already dug tunnel network that wouldn’t take more than a small amount of explosives to seal the entrance.
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