theunredacted.com The Legend of Golden Lily: Yamashita’s Gold The Unredacted 19–24 minutes In the closing months of WW2, as American troops closed in, General Tomoyuki Yamashita of the Japanese Imperial Army committed the latest in a string of terrible war crimes. It was in a huge tunnel complex dug by the Japanese at the Cagayan Valley in the Philippines. Inside the tunnel was treasures of a staggering proportion. Labeled tunnel 8, this was just one of 175 tunnels dotted around the Japanese occupied islands of the Philippines. Each filled with billions of dollars worth of gold, jewels and priceless statues and art. The Japanese army had spent the last 8 years engaging in the biggest plunder in history. Rampaging through China, Korea, Malaysia, and Indonesia, they systematically stripped the countries of wealth built up over thousands of years. In the process, the Japanese Army committed a grisly catalogue of bloody atrocities and war crimes, gang rapes, mass murders and pillaging of the like rarely seen in history. Prince Takeda helped build the Golden Lily vaults That night in early June 1945, with Japan’s war against the Americans about to be lost, General Yamashita hurriedly oversaw the last burials of gold and treasure. Prince Takeda, of the Japanese Royal family, had helped devise and build the tunnels to hide the treasure. They called the operation ‘Golden Lily’ after a poem written by Emperor Hirohito. Each site was carefully constructed using a host of specialist engineers along with enslaved Filipinos and allied POWS forced into backbreaking labor in the searing heat. That night, Takeda took all 175 of his staff into a bunker in tunnel 8 to celebrate their latest achievement. After several hours of drink and song, Takeda and Yamashita quietly slipped away. The tunnel’s entrance was then blasted with dynamite and sealed. The men inside, if they did not commit suicide, were left to suffocate to death taunted by the vast riches surrounding them. The slave laborers suffered the same fate. Takeda and Yamashita did not enjoy their grim work, but they had no alternative — it was the only way to be certain the location of the treasure houses would not get out. Prince Takeda fled back to Japan by submarine. Yamashita took what was left of his army to the north of the country where he held on against overwhelming American opposition before surrendering on September the 2nd. If this story wasn’t already amazing enough, what would happen next would have a profound effect on the history of the world. It also remained completely and utterly secret. A secret still hidden even today. Yamashita surrenders to the American forces American intelligence had already learned of the incredible Japanese plunder before the end of the war. Undercover operatives had tracked boats disguised as hospital ships to the Philippines and watched as the treasure was unloaded. For the Americans, the loot was fair game. Asian gold was largely unaccounted for in international finance, and the possibility of it falling under communist control had to be avoided at all cost. The idea of using war loot to fund black operations had previously been discussed by senior figures in the American government in 1944. Such riches could be used as a vast secret slush fund to help in the post-war fight against communism. But Yamashita was swiftly tried for war crimes, some thought unjustly and with undue haste. With the general appearing daily in front of international observers and news cameras, they were unable to torture him for information about the burial sites. Instead, they turned to his staff. A young Captain seconded from the OSS, Edward Lansdale, and an American-Filipino torture specialist, Santa Romana, turned their attention to Yamashita’s personal driver. It wasn’t long before he broke and agreed to lead the Americans to 12 of the vaults he had driven Yamashita to in the north of Manilla. What Landsdale and Santa found inside was staggering. Row after row of gold bars, piled head high. Tons of platinum. Ceramic jars full of jewels and diamonds. Magnificent solid gold buddhas. Priceless artwork. This one vault alone was worth billions in 1945 dollars. The men were stunned by their find. They immediately reported back to General MacArthur and then traveled to Washington to brief President Truman. It was here that a pivotal decision was made — the loot had to remain secret. Repatriating such vast treasures would be a logistical minefield, especially with many of the countries it was stolen from under communist control. Furthermore, revealing the existence of such huge sums of precious metals would cause the gold price to plummet, and currencies around the world pegged to gold to crash. Truman feared an economic bloodbath. But most of all, the huge sums generated by the Golden Lily treasure could afford the US incredible power in the cold war. Such an immense, covert slush fund could manipulate governments around the world, buy elections and bankroll near limitless black operations. For the next 2 years, the Americans worked to recover hundreds of billions of dollars worth of treasure from the tunnels in the Philippines, after which it was deposited under utmost secrecy at over 170 banks across the world. The Americans discovered treasure vaults with gold stacked high to the ceiling These Golden Lily funds would have many guises over the next 50 years — the M-fund, the Yotsuya fund and the Black Eagle Trust. All would be used to bribe, subvert and manipulate governments around the world in favor of US interests. In that time, the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people of South East Asia, tortured, raped and enslaved by the Japanese struggled to find justice. And the untold wealth stolen from these people seemed to have disappeared without a trace. The Americans even saw to it that Japan would not have to pay any reparations to the countries it ransacked. This is the incredible tale of the Golden Lily treasure set out in great detail in Sterling and Peggy Seagrave’s book ‘Gold Wars’. It would make a terrific Hollywood movie. But how much truth is there in the story? Is it more wartime legend and myth-making than fact? Did Golden Lily exist and did the Americans really appropriate it as a vast black budget slush fund? Evidence for A hole in history Even those who don’t believe in the story of the Golden Lily treasures recognize the scale of Japanese atrocities in South East Asia during WW2. The brutality of their rampage across Asia, massacring an estimated 30 million Chinese, Filipinos, Malays, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Indonesians and Burmese, is one of history's darkest chapters. An estimated 200,000 Chinese were massacred in the Rape of Nanking alone. The Japanese assault on the then Chinese capital was notorious for the widespread gang rape, murder, and arson. The Japanese committed brutal war crimes against civilians and POWs The cruelty inflicted on the population were barely conceivable. 2 Japanese soldiers had a contest to be the first to behead 100 people. Pregnant women were bayoneted in the stomach. The horror was off the scale. Their looting at Nanking was also colossal. Museums, temples, government buildings and shops were stripped bare. Japanese soldiers left behind the ruins of a city littered with corpses, pulling cartloads of treasures. This picture of systematic looting by Japanese troops was observed throughout the war and featured heavily in allied reports in the aftermath. The great mystery here is where this plundered wealth went. For when the Americans moved in and took control of the rebuilding of Japan after the war, they told the world that the country was broke. The contrasts between post-war Japan and Germany are telling. The Allies launched an aggressive campaign of denazification in Germany and declassified all the records detailing Nazi war crimes. In the post-war era, successive German governments have recognized their responsibility to amend for their crimes and have paid out around $45 billion in reparations to the victims. These payouts continue to this day. In Japan, the story was quite different. Since the end of the war, only $3 billion has been paid out to victims of Japanese atrocities. This is massively dwarfed by the figure the country has paid out to those responsible for the crimes in compensation. The Japanese surrender to US forces In American occupied post-war Japan, only a handful of the worst war criminals were executed. Many others were put back in charge of the country. The Japanese royal family, thought by many to be sponsors of the looting, were portrayed as innocent victims. See Part 2: >