The mystery of the Japanese billion dollar gold tunnel system

General Yamashita is tasked with organizing the underground tunneling plan and finding caves to hide all the gold and silver plundered from Asian countries, gathered in the Philippines.

The gold warehouse of the Aztecs or Incas is already too famous, but the gold store is said to be worth billions of dollars by General Yamashita, so many people may not have heard of it.

Japanese fascist general Yamashita (left) was escorted from court after receiving a hanged sentence on December 31, 1945.

There is a clear fact that the Japanese military has plundered so much in colonial countries in Asia in the years before and during World War II. It was reported that they formed a special raid task force.

The transport of loot goods across the sea back to Japan requires great efforts, especially during the war years with the Allies. The Philippines was chosen as a place to gather stolen treasures before being loaded onto the ship during a voyage to sea to Japan.

However, US forces became a major threat when they began sinking a series of Japanese ships offshore. The Royal Family decided to hide the remaining treasure in the Philippines, and that's where General Yamashita was sent.

General Yamashita released American troops in the Philippines.

Yamashita is tasked with organizing and executing underground tunneling plans and finding caves to hide all the gold and silver jewels. Japanese soldiers and war prisoners as well as indigenous workers were mobilized to dig tunnels and transfer treasure to caves. In this treasure hiding system there is a large tunnel in the Cagayan Valley, Philippines. Labeled the No. 8 tunnel, this is one of 175 tunnels dug through Philippine islands occupied by Japanese troops. Those tunnels are believed to contain treasures of up to hundreds of billions of dollars including gold, pearls and priceless statues.

In fact, Prince Takeda of the Royal Family helped advise and build tunnels to hide the treasure. They called this campaign 'Yellow Lily' , following a poem by Emperor Hirohito.

There is a rumor that, one night in early June 1945, when the war between Japan and the United States went into its final stages, the Takeda Prince led all his 175 people to the bunker in the 8th tunnel to eat. celebrate the latest victory. After a few hours of drinking and singing, Takeda and Yamashita quietly left.

Japanese Prince Takeda.

The tunnel door was then set up with explosives knocked down and sealed. The insiders, including entourage and slave labor, were left to death. Takeda returned to Japan on a submarine, and Yamashita led his army north of the Philippines to fight with the Americans before surrendering on September 2, 1945.

There are many theories about what happened to Yamashita's gold over the years.

One theory is that, former dictator Philippines Ferdinand Marcos has found the treasure and kept it made own. He conducted very strict control of the search and excavation of treasures during his travels. One of such trips was led by Rogelio Roxas .

In 1971 Roxas himself announced that he had discovered a large gold store in a cave. He filed a lawsuit against Marcos and his wife on the court alleging that only Marcos knew his findings. Roxas thought he was arrested and beaten, and the gold was confiscated by Marcos' men. The court in Hawaii, where Roxas filed a lawsuit, finally ruled in support of Roxas, claiming that there was enough evidence to show that he had actually discovered the gold deprived and declared Marcos to pay 6 million. USD.

Rogelio Roxas took a picture with a golden Buddha image that he supposedly found in the cave.

Researchers and other historians argue that the United States has been revealing the location of most treasures in exchange for not prosecuting the Royal Japanese members for war crimes.

There is also a vague story about a young captain of the US Strategic Intelligence Agency (OSS) Edward Lansdale and a Filipino American torture expert who exploited General Yamashita's driver and once Reach 12 treasures north of Manilla. What they found inside was really stunned. Each row of rows of gold bars is higher than the head; tons of platinum and porcelain pots containing jewels, diamonds . For the next two years, Americans were thought to have taken treasures out of Philippine basements and secretly sent them to over 170 banks. all over the world.

The room filled with gold is said to be found by the US military in the Philippines, although it has not been verified.

However, even when Roxas's evidence appears, the story of the US military's discovery, there are still many doubts about the existence of Yamashita's treasure, or its scale. These people argue that if such a large amount of gold is hidden, there will be more stories about its discovery. But in reality there is almost no evidence of any gold found outside the conflicting claims of gold hunters or Filipinos.

So Yamashita's treasure became more and more legendary, like the golden city that had lost El Dorado of the Incas or the Oak Island money deposit, where Captain Kidd's treasure was buried.

Still, there are many treasure hunters who spend their whole lives searching for the gold treasure Yamashita in the hope of only discovering a small part of the treasure hidden for so long.