During World War II, the Japanese army looted all the countries that they conquered and carried away great wealth from private citizens, churches, temples, banks, corporations, fallen governments and the underworld in those nations. This cache included precious gems, priceless artifacts, and enormous hoards of gold.
Speculation on the total worth of this war loot exceeded 20 billion 1940 dollars, the equivalent of close to a trillion dollars in today's currency. According to various postwar estimates, the amount of gold bullion alone was 4,000 to 6,000 tons. These estimates were probably far too conservative, made at a time in the late 1940's when little was known and much was being covered up.
We might arrive at a more accurate total if 6000 tons were considered to be only the amount stolen or seized from the legitimate sources, including banks. Add to this a bigger sum in illicit, or black gold -- perhaps two or three times as muchı, then add to this the gold that was mined for 3-1/2 years. The numbers are astonishing.
Ferdinand Marcos began his own quest for the buried Japanese gold in the late 1950's. Brought in to arbitrate a dispute over a small cache of buried treasure in northern Luzon, Marcos met two former Japanese naval officers who knew the exact location of the buried treasure. Secret Japanese treasure maps held by these men detailed 138 land locations and 34 water locations -- 172 sites in all. After obtaining some of the original maps, Marcos excavated several major sites and recovered billions of dollars in gold over the next twenty years.
Many Filipinos thought tales of the buried treasure were little more than legend until 1960, when an amateur treasure hunter unearthed a solid gold Buddha weighing one ton. This staggering find inspired numerous Filipinos and foreigners to search for the remaining Japanese booty, whose worth was measured in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
Robert Curtis, an American metallurgist and mining engineer who was ushered into a treasure vault in Marcos' beach palace, remarked, "I saw the (gold) bars stacked from floor to ceiling. "The general who accompanied him to the vault mentioned that there was considerably more stored in adjacent vaults.
This South Pacific gold does exist and many of the 172 burial sites are still untouched. The few surviving Filipinos who helped with the burials lack the money, machinery and engineering skills to unearth the gold. As a result, billions of dollars of wealth remain unclaimed.
Sterling & Seagrave, The Marcos Dynasty (New York; Harper & Row, 1988) p. 100.
