was there a real Yamashita's gold?

Question

where is it now?

Answer 1

This was a question much pursued by the Allies during the little publicized Japanese War Crimes Trials immediately following the end of hostilities.

It has been said that gold and other valuables that the Japanese stole during their occupation of the Philippine Islands is still there, perhaps buried, or maybe hidden in a cave.

Adventurers and historians, to this very day, are still searching for Yamashita's Stash.

Do I believe it still exists, remaining uncongenial to discovery?

I like to think so..

Answer 2

It's impossible to prove a negative, but the likelihood of there being any substantial amount of Japanese gold in the Philippines at the end of WW2 is very, very small.

Here's a US News article that gives some of the reasons:
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/doubleissue/mysteries/yamashita.htm

The most obvious argument against the Yamashita's Gold fable is: Why?

Why would Japan, a country at war and desperately in need of money for supplies, pile up huge stacks of gold in the Philippines?

The story goes that much of this gold was from China. But Japan had been conquering China throughout the 1930s; the Philippines wasn't conquered until 1942. Was the gold allowed to sit on docks in China for several years? Why? And why, when it finally was moved, was it sent to Manila instead of to Japan?

It makes no sense.

Other gold was supposedly looted from southeast Asia and then sent to Manila. Again -- why? The story is that it was too dangerous to move the gold from Manila to Japan once the US Navy controlled the seas -- but it was equally dangerous to move it from Singapore to Manila.

I grew up in Arizona hearing stories about the Lost Dutchman gold mine -- those stories are more credible than Yamashita's Gold.

Answer 3

HAHAHA, if I knew where it was I would be so rich I sure wouldn't be here typing this answer. A load is in the Philippines, allegedly Marcos got his hands on it. We know a large shipment heading to Japan at the end of the war was sunk by a PT boat, but the commander never bothered to accurately mark the location. According to manifest that ship has over 2 billion in gold/silver/gems. It is somewhere near malaysa

Answer 4

Continued research by the Seagraves has revealed that the United States did recover portions of the Golden Lily and Nazi treasure and used the treasure to clandestinely fund various right wing causes and covert operations.97 This enormously large secret slush fund became known informally as the Black Eagle Trust.

Up until September 1945, Edward Lansdale had remained an immaterial advertising copywriter, who had spent the war writing propaganda for the OSS. In September, with the disbanding of the OSS, he was offered an opportunity to transfer to the US Army’s G2 operation in the Philippines.

On transferring to the Philippines, Lansdale was placed in charge of supervising a Filipino-American intelligence officer named Severio Garcia Diaz Sanata, better known as Santy. Yamashita had surrendered and was arrested for war crimes relating to gruesome atrocities committed by Admiral Iwabuchi Kanji’s sailors while evacuating Manila. There was no mention of the Golden Lily or war loot during Yamashita’s trial. It was impossible to torture a war criminal without it being exposed in the subsequent trial. Yamashita’s driver however, fell under special scrutiny. He had driven Yamashita everywhere since Yamashita’s arrival in the Philippines.

Santy proceeded to torture the driver, Major Kojima Kashii, to find the burial sites of the Japanese treasure. Lansdale soon joined the torture sessions as an observer and participant. In October, Kojima broke down and led Santy and Lansdale to the location of a dozen sites in the mountains north of Manila. Two of the sites were easily opened and revealed a prodigious quantity of gold, precious metals, and gems.

While Santy and his teams started to open the other sites, Lansdale flew to Japan to brief MacArthur and then on to Washington to brief President Truman. After a cabinet discussion, Truman decided to proceed with the recovery. However, the recovery would be kept a state secret.

The decision was not Truman’s alone. Henry Stimson, Secretary of War, first proposed using gold recovered from the Nazis as a secret slush fund during the Roosevelt administration. The Nazis had already did the dirty work and re-smelted the gold, making it hard trace the gold's origin. Many of the owners had perished in the war and many of the pre-war governments had ceased to exist. With many of the eastern countries falling under the influence of the Soviet Union, returning any gold to these countries was out of the question with the cold warriors.

Stimson’s special assistants on this topic were John McCloy, Robert Lovett, Clark Clifford, and Robert Anderson. Both McCloy's and Lovett's backgrounds have been discussed in previous chapters. Anderson was a former Texas Republican legislator. In 1953, he was appointed Secretary of the Navy by President Eisenhower, and in 1954, Secretary of Defense. Some sources say he was appointed as Secretary of the Navy based solely on the need to move gold from the Philippines. In 1957, he was appointed Secretary of the Treasury. In 1987, he pled guilty to running an off shore bank after being caught up in the BCCI scandal. The same scandal also ensnared Clark Clifford.

The idea of the Black Eagle Trust was first discussed with the Allies in secret during July 1944, at Bretton Woods. This has been confirmed by CIA Deputy Director, Ray Cline, who as late as the 1990s has sought to control Japanese war booty sitting in the vaults of Citibank.

After briefing Truman, Stimson, Lovett, and others Lansdale returned to Tokyo with Anderson in November. From there MacArthur and Anderson accompanied Lansdale on a secret flight to Manila. Santy had by then already opened the sites and MacArthur and Anderson strolled down row after row of gold bullion stacked two meters tall. This was only the gold that had not reached Japan once the home islands were blockaded in the war.

Cline and others have confirmed that the gold recovered by Santy and Lansdale was covertly moved by ship to 176 accounts in 42 different countries. Truman had been informed that if such a large quantity of gold became public knowledge that the fixed $35 an ounce price would collapse. Other documents show large deposits of gold and platinum were made in various Swiss banks between 1945 and 1947.98

Secrecy was vital to the success of the Black Eagle Trust. The United States declared Japan was broke from the very beginning. The United States elite lead by Herbert Hoover, wanted to maintain Japan as a staunch anticommunist state in the Far East. The Japanese elites were hard-core conservatives and alarmed by the communist threat. The most ardent of the anti-communist were the indicted war criminals. As noted earlier only a few Japanese war criminals were ever punished due to a large part of the interference by MacArthur in cleansing the Emperor of all crimes.

Such secrecy led to immediate abuses and the misleading of the American and Japanese people. Those most responsible for the war were left in power. The 1951, peace treaty between the Allies and Japan was greatly skewed by considerations for the Black Eagle Trust. To shield Japan from war reparations, John Foster Dulles secretly negotiated the treaty with three Japanese officials. One later became Prime Minister and served repeatedly as Minister of finance, Miyazawa Kiichi.

Another words. they don't know where it is.