Speaker 1: Thinking Sideways. I don't stories of things we simply don't
Speaker 1: know the answer to. Hire. Welcome to another episode of
Speaker 1: Thinking Sideways. I am Joe, joined as always by Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and we're here to talk, of course, to talk about
Speaker 1: another mystery. Yeah indeed, yes, if that's what you're into
Speaker 1: these days. Yeah, it's what the kids dick until we
Speaker 1: become a cooking show. That's not until next week. Don't
Speaker 1: tell anybody how very good at that. Yeah. Alright, So
Speaker 1: this week we're going to talk about a very famous
Speaker 1: lost treasure, which you've probably heard of. If you haven't
Speaker 1: heard about it, well you're in for kind of a treat.
Speaker 1: This one is called Yamashta's Gold. Also notice of the
Speaker 1: Masta treasure. You probably we know of it as Yamashita
Speaker 1: because that's how it spelled, but the actually pronounced Yamashta.
Speaker 1: Oh is it really? Yeah? Yeah, I didn't realize that.
Speaker 1: I remember because the first time I heard about this
Speaker 1: is what it was like two years ago when we
Speaker 1: talked to Roy Baton and he mentioned this when we
Speaker 1: were talking to him after we had finished the recording,
Speaker 1: and he had mentioned it, and he'd call it Yamashida
Speaker 1: as well. So I just a lot of people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I figured that was the correct pronunciation that you researched
Speaker 1: this and not me. Yeah, yeah, you never know. I
Speaker 1: mean maybe his it's actually a name like a somebody's
Speaker 1: given names, So maybe maybe he pronoun he actually did
Speaker 1: pronounce Yamashida. The Yamashta of yamash says Gold was General
Speaker 1: Tamayuki Yamashta, who was in command of Japanese forces in
Speaker 1: the Philippines from nineteen and as you know, what was
Speaker 1: going on back then, it's like oh war, Yeah, the
Speaker 1: second big one we had, the Second U. The Japanese
Speaker 1: had been special guests of the Philippine people for a
Speaker 1: while now, yeah, and then along about late nineteen four,
Speaker 1: a bunch of Americans with guns showed up and said
Speaker 1: something in the order we want it back. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: we gotta take this here back. Let's talk about the treasure. Though.
Speaker 1: The treasure came from all over the place. The Japanese
Speaker 1: invaded and occupied a lot of countries before and during
Speaker 1: World War Two, as you guys know, brutally. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was there. They were kind of harsh. Uh. Those
Speaker 1: countries include China, Korea, Burma, Malaya, Dutch East Indies, Singapore
Speaker 1: and of course the Philippines, and of course besides me
Speaker 1: and kind of brutal, they also looted the places for
Speaker 1: all they could find. Like they took a lot of gold, silver, platinum,
Speaker 1: precious gems and stuff like that I would do. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it worked so hard for this. Yeah. According to some people,
Speaker 1: the most of the loot was shipped down to Singapore,
Speaker 1: whereas the reportedly was cataloged, and then it was shipped
Speaker 1: off to the Philippines, which is sort of on the
Speaker 1: way to Japan. From the Philippines, the booty was sent
Speaker 1: on to Japan, supposedly along with the valuables that they
Speaker 1: stole from the Philippines. Also, uh, and nobody knows how
Speaker 1: much of this loot actually made it to Japan, if
Speaker 1: any of it. I'm sure a lot of it did. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And nineteen two, though, after the Battle of Midway, the
Speaker 1: American Navy began to dominate the Western Pacific and started
Speaker 1: sinking a lot of Japanese ships. So probably a few
Speaker 1: of these had loot on board. Also quite probably. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's sitting down. They're waiting for you if you want
Speaker 1: to go find it. Storal. Yeah, I know at this
Speaker 1: point that then the treasure was kind of stuck in
Speaker 1: the Philippines because it's kind of wasteful. It's sitting on
Speaker 1: a ship that's gonna get sunk, So what to do period? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's an idea. Yeah. Yeah. The US invaded the Philippines
Speaker 1: in October ninety four. Msh A fought on for Aumust
Speaker 1: a year, eventually surrendered in September, and to keep himself
Speaker 1: occupied in the interim, he did the usual military stuff,
Speaker 1: but also started hiding all the loots so that it
Speaker 1: wouldn't fall into Yankee hands. Makes sense, right, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I do it. It has claimed that the treasure wound
Speaker 1: up being stashed in between a hundred seventy two and
Speaker 1: a hundred seventy five places, although I've heard other other
Speaker 1: stories where it just was stashed in one enormous cavern.
Speaker 1: That that is the one enormous cavern is kind of
Speaker 1: the fantastic version that I've come across. Yeah, that's always
Speaker 1: the first one that pops up on your searches. I
Speaker 1: don't know, it seems like it'd be easier to just
Speaker 1: do one. Depends on how much stuff you goss to
Speaker 1: throw it all in that cave, put it under the dragon.
Speaker 1: That's all idea. You go, recruiter dragon. Indiana Jones didn't
Speaker 1: show up in your file. You're finding It's been always
Speaker 1: been my dream to find something like this, So would
Speaker 1: that be great anyway? Yeah. The method that they used
Speaker 1: was typically this. It would d to suit the hiding place,
Speaker 1: let's see a cave, and then a bunch of booty
Speaker 1: would be hauled in with soldiers or slave labor or both.
Speaker 1: Engineers would rig up booby traps so anybody trying to
Speaker 1: get in there would get killed, and then the cave
Speaker 1: entrance would be sealed or blasted shut with everybody inside,
Speaker 1: so that way they wouldn't be able to tell anybody
Speaker 1: where the treasure was. That does sound a whole lot
Speaker 1: like Indiana Jones. Yeah. Yeah, I want my whip and everything.
Speaker 1: We're going. We're going many Incidentally, Uh, the Monster's gold
Speaker 1: was featured and not even though it was not named,
Speaker 1: but it's in Neil Stevens Neil Stevenson's Cryptanomicon, which I
Speaker 1: know I plugged before. Yeah, don't you say you've mentioned
Speaker 1: this book before? Yeah, Boilers. One of the main characters
Speaker 1: in the book is is a Japanese guy who wands
Speaker 1: up getting conscripted in one of these into hiding some
Speaker 1: fabulous amount of stuff in this cave because he's a
Speaker 1: clever guy. What they do is they seal it shut
Speaker 1: with him and a few other people inside, and then
Speaker 1: they flooded they haven't heard river, basically to flood the cavern.
Speaker 1: And but he's he's engineered, he's engineering himself a way out,
Speaker 1: so he actually escapes. Yeah, I know, I know, I
Speaker 1: should have probably spoilers. Yeah wait, wait, go back, we
Speaker 1: can let edit it in you're ready. Spoilers. The legend
Speaker 1: of your Master's Gold has never gone away, and for
Speaker 1: decades people have been looking for this, a lot of
Speaker 1: people and they're still doing it today, and quite a
Speaker 1: few of them have gotten killed trying. Also, nobody has
Speaker 1: ever found the treasure, except for one guy named Rol Rojas,
Speaker 1: who will talk about a little bit later on. Maybe
Speaker 1: maybe maybe maybe if you're good, No, I'm sorry, I
Speaker 1: meant maybe he found it. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's yeah, she's right, yeah yeah yeah, or found a
Speaker 1: part of it. We totally misinterpreted that. Yeah, well, let's
Speaker 1: talk about theories then, all right, let's that's a pretty
Speaker 1: our summation, So I guess we can talk about some
Speaker 1: of the theories. Yeah, there's a lot to go through
Speaker 1: here in theories a little bit. Yeah, there's several theories.
Speaker 1: One is that it's real and it's out there waiting
Speaker 1: to be discovered. Still, so this is is it Are
Speaker 1: we doing kind of heading theories right that we sometimes
Speaker 1: with my stories will do theory one the gold is real,
Speaker 1: but sub theory one the gold is real, and this
Speaker 1: thing are we doing that sort of thing is about
Speaker 1: the construct here. If by subhead the gold is real,
Speaker 1: most theories and then subhead are heading to the gold
Speaker 1: is not real. Alright, So if we assume the gold
Speaker 1: is real, the theories are the theories are that, well,
Speaker 1: they just did a really good job hiding it and
Speaker 1: it has yet to be found. But that's not you know,
Speaker 1: it's not really much to say about that one. So
Speaker 1: this is something that that struck me a little odd.
Speaker 1: If the job, if indeed the Japanese did gather all
Speaker 1: of this sub and they're looting everybody, why is it
Speaker 1: always the gold that everybody talks about. There would have
Speaker 1: been all kinds of precious stones and things like that.
Speaker 1: I imagine artwork would have been collected. But why is
Speaker 1: it we only ever talk about the gold. I don't
Speaker 1: understand what the I mean, I understand that people have
Speaker 1: an obscene lust for gold, but it's just funny to
Speaker 1: me that that's the only thing that ever gets brought up.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I just I just said that, you Masha's
Speaker 1: Gold sounds like a cooler title, and you know, your
Speaker 1: master's treasure. Maybe that's why maybe ems salt stolen stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah that doesn't sound so great. Yeah it's lout. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but obviously they did. They did gather up you know,
Speaker 1: jewelry and jam everything, plat and the silver, a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff besides gold. Yeah, they hoovered it all up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well they kind of. I mean, yeah, they're not the
Speaker 1: only ones that we're doing that kind of stuff in
Speaker 1: that exact same time frame. I mean, that was kind
Speaker 1: of a common practice. But it's still it's funny, is
Speaker 1: that in this particular story that it's so it's just
Speaker 1: the gold that everyone talks about. So the Philippines are
Speaker 1: still still do have enough kind of undeveloped lush areas
Speaker 1: that this is a feasible thing that it just hasn't
Speaker 1: been discovered yet. Yeah, it's yeah, I have no I
Speaker 1: I got to be honest, I have no kind of
Speaker 1: scope of how saturated the population is on the Philippines. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's there's some I don't know
Speaker 1: much about the Philippines, to be honest with you, I
Speaker 1: know some islands have a fairly decent sized population and
Speaker 1: summer practically deserted. Sure. Yeah, because that would be my
Speaker 1: question about this is you know, is it even feasible
Speaker 1: that there would be a hundred and seventy caches of well,
Speaker 1: it's a pretty big area. Yeah, And you know, most
Speaker 1: of those islands tend to have all of their majority
Speaker 1: of their population centered in one or two major cities
Speaker 1: reports so that leaves a lot of undeveloped rural areas.
Speaker 1: So I think that's why everybody's kind of saying, well,
Speaker 1: it's still got to be out there. Yeah, Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I still don't know exactly how the number one seventy
Speaker 1: two hiding places where that exactly came up from? Some
Speaker 1: and some of those are not all on land either.
Speaker 1: Some of them, like around forty or so, or are
Speaker 1: supposedly underwater somewhere like an underwater cave or Yeah. But
Speaker 1: he found a map that he was playing Tic Tac
Speaker 1: toe on and interpret in every ax is a location
Speaker 1: for Yeah. Yeah, well our next there is this, which
Speaker 1: is that your Monster's gold really was real, but the
Speaker 1: Americans got their hands on it. That's in this series
Speaker 1: of advanced in the book that's called Gold Warriors by
Speaker 1: Sterling and Peggy Seagrave. Did you read any of this
Speaker 1: of the book? Yeah? No, I um. I went out
Speaker 1: to Amazon dot Com and I read the description, and
Speaker 1: then I went to the reviews, and the reviews were
Speaker 1: very useful. They save me from wasting my time with this.
Speaker 1: Well I read they They put out some like three
Speaker 1: or four page summation of their stuff, and I found
Speaker 1: that and I read through it, and they're really stretching
Speaker 1: in my opinion, And I know we're going to go
Speaker 1: into some of this, but I was really surprised at
Speaker 1: some of the correlations. And I'm using air quotes here
Speaker 1: that they made. Yeah, they took they took a lot
Speaker 1: of liberties with the truth here. Well, let's let's happen.
Speaker 1: So they what what they say is an intelligence operative
Speaker 1: is probably from interrogating captured Japanese. They got onto the
Speaker 1: scent of the booty somehow, and then um, they really
Speaker 1: couldn't interrogate and torture Yamashta, so they grabbed this driver
Speaker 1: and tortured him for a while until he confessed. And
Speaker 1: since he was too much, this driver, he was driving
Speaker 1: them all over all these locations, presumably so he was
Speaker 1: underwater and stuff. Yeah, exactly. Uh, and then they used
Speaker 1: all this lute that they found to fund black operations
Speaker 1: all around the world, including including bribing politicians, buying elections,
Speaker 1: and all kinds of stuff. And their book is supposedly
Speaker 1: very well documented, but to find out the sources of
Speaker 1: their information you have to buy a bunch of CDs
Speaker 1: separately from the book. Oh yeah, I don't actually list
Speaker 1: their their references and sources like every other book I've
Speaker 1: ever read does. Well, I think that they do have.
Speaker 1: I think they do have citations in the book. But
Speaker 1: apparently if you want all their information then you have
Speaker 1: to buy the CDs. Yeah and so, and that's a
Speaker 1: whole separate price in the books they found the gold Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, obviously, Yeah, this is this is stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know. It's kind of like kind of like the
Speaker 1: gold Rush, you know, the guys who really made out
Speaker 1: like bandits were the guys that want and sold sold
Speaker 1: shovels and stuff like that to all the prospectors. You know,
Speaker 1: prospectors all weren't broke, almost of them did. Anyway, My favorite,
Speaker 1: my my favorite of all the reviews on there was
Speaker 1: a one star review from a guy named Angus Waycott
Speaker 1: that it was written a book called a book called Sodo,
Speaker 1: Japan's Island in Exile and the Sea Graves in their
Speaker 1: book claim that more than a thousand Korean slave laborers
Speaker 1: vanished without a trace on Sodo Island, and they cite
Speaker 1: Angus Waycott's book to support this. But according to Waycott,
Speaker 1: his book says no such things. That's a direct quote, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was on the Amazon review. Yeah yeah, Elsie said.
Speaker 1: He said it was a deliberate misrepresentation and he also
Speaker 1: said it was shameful. And so you know, after reading
Speaker 1: that review, I just figured I was going to leave
Speaker 1: it at that. I think you guys can go read
Speaker 1: the reviews on Amazon and decide for yourselves. But I
Speaker 1: think support for this theory is not really not really there. Well,
Speaker 1: and like I said, I I read some of their
Speaker 1: stuff and it is really thin and there is a
Speaker 1: lot of leaps of faith made in it. Yeah, a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of the other critical reviews out
Speaker 1: there said the same thing. That's just poorly sourced. And
Speaker 1: one under one guy said, this would make a fine
Speaker 1: little thriller to reach it read at the beach when
Speaker 1: you're on vacation. Yeah, you shouldn't treat it as nonfiction. Nice,
Speaker 1: So I will put that theory to bed, all right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The next another theory is that under the Golden real
Speaker 1: thing is that maybe some Japanese soldiers who had knowledge
Speaker 1: of at least some of these places have have gone
Speaker 1: back in the decades since and actually found some of
Speaker 1: this stuff and spirited spirited out of the country. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I like it. Yeah that makes sense. Yeah yeah. What
Speaker 1: does not make sense to you? Well, I'm just I'm
Speaker 1: just thinking about the state of Japan after the war
Speaker 1: and everything that's going on. Well, not like you'd have
Speaker 1: to wait, like somebody would have to wait at least
Speaker 1: a decade or two before they could even think to
Speaker 1: do it. Oh yeah, I mean, now you'd have to
Speaker 1: you have to wait quite a while just for he
Speaker 1: just for emotions to die down in the Philippines, because
Speaker 1: let's face it, they didn't behave themselves perfectly when they
Speaker 1: were there, and so you probably want to wait a
Speaker 1: decade or two when you went back, unless it was
Speaker 1: you know, in remote areas of the Philippines and you
Speaker 1: just get a boat, I mean, oh, yeah, sneak on shore,
Speaker 1: or it's not on shore, it's underwater, and you just
Speaker 1: just come back. Yeah, that's that's a possibility. Uh, this
Speaker 1: is a this is a fine theory, and it's entirely possible,
Speaker 1: but it's sure speculation and oh it's absolutely yeah, and
Speaker 1: I'm just throwing it into waste everybody's time. Thanks. So, yeah, possible,
Speaker 1: but based on the evidence, I've got to give it
Speaker 1: a fail. I guess you could, um, you know that
Speaker 1: kind of gold bribe some officials in the Philippines. Well
Speaker 1: that's that's true too. I mean you could you could
Speaker 1: go to them and just say, hey, look, I know
Speaker 1: where there's a huge stash of gold. Yeah, let's let
Speaker 1: let's dig it up and you can have half. Or
Speaker 1: you don't even say that, or you just sneak in
Speaker 1: and if you get caught sneaking out, you say, here's
Speaker 1: some gold, have some gold. Well, yeah, and as long
Speaker 1: as somebody melt sit down. I'm assuming, of course, that
Speaker 1: it's in bar form and not in whatever original jewelry
Speaker 1: shape it was. If it's in bar form, they're in
Speaker 1: turn going to have to turn around and melt it
Speaker 1: down themselves. Then whoever being bribe? Because what do they
Speaker 1: call it when they stamp gold? I think it's called hallmarks, okay,
Speaker 1: because it would definitely have that hallmark on it to
Speaker 1: indicate where it was from. And I would be a
Speaker 1: little and I guess if you're willing to take a bribe,
Speaker 1: you don't really care where it came from. But that
Speaker 1: could cause a lot of a lot of alarms to
Speaker 1: go off if you then turn around and try and
Speaker 1: pass that off. Do you think that was something that
Speaker 1: was documented, Like do you think they have records in
Speaker 1: the places that they were stolen from that these specific
Speaker 1: gold bars were stolen they you know, it just depends.
Speaker 1: I mean if the records survived the war or not.
Speaker 1: A lot of buildings got destroyed. It seems like the
Speaker 1: sort of thing you would destroy if you were taking stuff.
Speaker 1: You might, yeah, but I mean if if if something
Speaker 1: is stamped, you know, such and such bank Shanghai, China,
Speaker 1: now then that's that's kind of a giveaway. Yeah. Yeah, Actually,
Speaker 1: the hallmarks do do play a small part in our
Speaker 1: story here in the future. Yeah. Yeah, well, let's let's
Speaker 1: move on to our next theory. It's real and somebody
Speaker 1: has actually found some of it. That's the Yeah, that
Speaker 1: is the theory. Yeah, there is some evidence for this theory,
Speaker 1: unlike our our the series and which are all kind
Speaker 1: of like not really much evidence, not really any evidence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is Roelio Rojas and we're gonna tell his story
Speaker 1: and it's kind of interesting. There's more information on this
Speaker 1: one because it was litigated in the nineteen eighties and
Speaker 1: nineties and so there's a fair amount of information available
Speaker 1: for this and people people testified in court and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, so there's a legal documentation. Yeah, yeah, there was,
Speaker 1: there was a lawsuit. Rohelio Rojas was a locksmith in
Speaker 1: Baggio City, the Philippines, which is on the island of Luzon,
Speaker 1: which you know, for all of you who know all
Speaker 1: about the Philippines is where Middla also is. I think
Speaker 1: it's the most populous island in the Philippines. And again
Speaker 1: I was that was too busy research this to research
Speaker 1: stuff like that. He besides being a locksmith, was also
Speaker 1: a coin collector and a treasure hunter. In he met
Speaker 1: a man named Albert Futagami in Bagio City who was
Speaker 1: a fellow treasure hunter and they became friends. Fuchigami was
Speaker 1: the son of a Filipino woman and a Japanese soldier
Speaker 1: and uh Eventually Fuchigami took Rhelio into his confidence and
Speaker 1: told him his father had drawn a map identifying the
Speaker 1: location of one of the treasure trows of your Monster's gold. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He also around the same time met this other guy
Speaker 1: who has an unpronounceable name who claimed to have served
Speaker 1: as General Yamashta's interpreter during World War two. Shibo Okuba Okubauba. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that sounds about right. He told him that this interpreter
Speaker 1: said that during the war he had been taken to
Speaker 1: some tunnels controlled by General Yamashta in order to get
Speaker 1: some silver to pay for food for the troops. And
Speaker 1: he said he saw boxes of various sizes. It contained
Speaker 1: gold and silver, and also he saw a golden Buddhist
Speaker 1: statue which was at a convent very very close by.
Speaker 1: And uh, so, with the clusive he got from this
Speaker 1: guy and the map, that he got from Puchigamy. He
Speaker 1: partnered up with Fuchigami and they hired some laborers to
Speaker 1: search for the treasure. They got a permit and everything
Speaker 1: for it. You're supposed to because it was on government lands,
Speaker 1: they're gonna be looking. Oh yeah, that would be important. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it kind of would be. Uh. In nineteen seventy, they
Speaker 1: began digging in up near the Baggio General Hospital in
Speaker 1: Bagio City, and after seven months of searching and digging,
Speaker 1: they broke into a system of tunnels underground. You know,
Speaker 1: that's a good thing, would be exciting. Yeah, And inside
Speaker 1: that the tunnel they found wiring and radio's band at swords, rifles,
Speaker 1: and a human skeleton wearing a Japanese army uniform. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Not to be fair enough that that was so uncommon
Speaker 1: for Japanese soldiers to have tunnels, right, yeah, not really
Speaker 1: fairly common. Yeah yeah, so mean, yeah for hiding in
Speaker 1: that kind of natural cave systems are great for that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know if this was a natural cave system
Speaker 1: or what. Okay, I presumed it was a natural cave,
Speaker 1: even unnatural, I mean that was that was a pretty
Speaker 1: solid part of their warfare. Strategy wasn't it was tunnels,
Speaker 1: I think. I think a lot of armies do that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's not yeah yeah, just because the tunnel excess
Speaker 1: doesn't mean treasure. It doesn't mean it was there for treasure.
Speaker 1: But they spent about a month in this tunnel though
Speaker 1: actually it was a whole series of tunnels, and they
Speaker 1: explored and they didn't find any find anything. And then
Speaker 1: Rojas got himself a metal detector and went around and
Speaker 1: got himself a strong signal. In one place, they dug
Speaker 1: a little bit and they hit concrete and they hammered
Speaker 1: through the concrete. I'm not sure how long it take
Speaker 1: to break through, but we probably, yeah, could. They found
Speaker 1: a room below below the tunnel, and inside this room
Speaker 1: they found a gold buddha, a solid gold buddha, yeah,
Speaker 1: which according to Rojas, about three feet in height. It was.
Speaker 1: It was really heavy. It took ten men to get
Speaker 1: it to the surface. That you had to use a
Speaker 1: chain block, hoist and ropes, and then they rolled it
Speaker 1: on logs through the tunnels apparently, and rouse guests was
Speaker 1: probably about a metric ton and he told his men
Speaker 1: to take it to his house and put it in
Speaker 1: the closet. Wait a second, I know, Wait a second.
Speaker 1: It takes ten guys to haul this out of the cave.
Speaker 1: And he's like, oh, yeah, then take it to my
Speaker 1: house and put it in the closet. Yeah, how do
Speaker 1: you get the rolling lodge through your house? This is unspecified. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, this whole part, this part of this,
Speaker 1: the of his story mystifies me. Well, there's there's other
Speaker 1: parts that mystify you and then mystify me too. But okay,
Speaker 1: he did manage to persuade the persuaded jury to believe
Speaker 1: his story. I know. But yeah, I gotta be honest
Speaker 1: with you. The thing that mystifies me is that he
Speaker 1: was a treasure hunter who somehow didn't have a metal detector,
Speaker 1: Like he had to go out and say, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go get a metal detector. Yeah, but in my mind,
Speaker 1: like treasure hunters, the staple of treasure hunting is metal detector.
Speaker 1: Indiana Jones never had a metal detector on. He wasn't
Speaker 1: a treasure hunter. Yeah, he was, he kind of was.
Speaker 1: He was an adventurer, he was an archaeologist. He was
Speaker 1: an archaeologist. He had better reason to have the metal
Speaker 1: detector and he didn't yeh. He had an interesting style
Speaker 1: when it came to archaeology. Yeah, just go and steal
Speaker 1: some stuff. Poked the walls. Yeah, sorry, we just we
Speaker 1: just got way off on the side there. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Back at the back to Rojas Helio, about fifty ft
Speaker 1: from where Buddha was, it was a big stack of boxes.
Speaker 1: There were stacked five or six high, open area over
Speaker 1: an area six ft wide and thirty ft long roughly.
Speaker 1: And he came back the next day and opened one
Speaker 1: of the boxes and it contained twenty four bars of gold,
Speaker 1: and he didn't open any of the other boxes. I
Speaker 1: got this weird. Well, yeah, and I got this from
Speaker 1: he gave He actually died before this whole thing went
Speaker 1: to trial, but he gave a deposition before and so
Speaker 1: this is from the courts documents. So this is this
Speaker 1: is from the mouth of Jelio. Yeah. Yeah, if that
Speaker 1: seems a bit odd, I mean I would be if
Speaker 1: I saw a pile of boxes, I would open them
Speaker 1: right up. Maybe there would be snakes in one though,
Speaker 1: that's a good point, so I wouldn't open run. You
Speaker 1: opened one and it was like the right door, right,
Speaker 1: it was show the right door so you just stay,
Speaker 1: you don't open all the rest of that makes total sense.
Speaker 1: I know. That's why I am the one of us
Speaker 1: that keeps finding all the treasure and don't one gets
Speaker 1: a bit by snakes. Yeah, I screaming like a little girl.
Speaker 1: Yeah about him several weeks later, and they don't specify
Speaker 1: exactly in the court documents, he returned because he wanted
Speaker 1: to seal the tunnel closed, and so he was going
Speaker 1: to use dynamite to plastic closed for safe keeping of
Speaker 1: the treasure. Right, he returned to shut it. He took
Speaker 1: the twenty four bars of gold then, and also some
Speaker 1: sam restaurats and bayonets and other souvenirs. And some weeks
Speaker 1: went by after that. This is, by the way, they
Speaker 1: found the Buddha and the gold on January. So this
Speaker 1: is about this is in February when he's blasting his
Speaker 1: shut western the whole shut. And some time went by
Speaker 1: and he sold seven of the gold bars, and he
Speaker 1: was looking for a buyer for the golden Buddha, and
Speaker 1: his plan was to raise funds to go back and
Speaker 1: get the rest of the gold bars, which you know, okay,
Speaker 1: that's a strategy. Yeah, I guess sell sell a small
Speaker 1: amount of treasure to fund getting the rest. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: got it. Could they'd be heavy, you would need a
Speaker 1: lot of Yeah. In April sevente she he had showed
Speaker 1: the Buddha to two other people, and then he showed
Speaker 1: it to a third buyer, a guy named Joe Oyahara,
Speaker 1: who said he was interested, and he said he would
Speaker 1: come back in several days with the million pacos as
Speaker 1: a down payment. After he left, Roehus got curious about
Speaker 1: the Buddha. He took a closer look at and he
Speaker 1: found out that the head was removable, So he got
Speaker 1: the head off of it, and he looked inside and
Speaker 1: there was a compartment and said inside the Buddha that
Speaker 1: was filled with stones which looked like uncut diamonds. So
Speaker 1: he scooped me out. He said, they're about two handfuls
Speaker 1: of uncut diamonds inside the buddha. If you put the
Speaker 1: head back on, put the diamonds I guess in a
Speaker 1: bag and put them in the closet next to the buddha. Yeah. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this guy's got a great safe system. Yeah, I know.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it took ten dudes to carry
Speaker 1: the bood out. It's not exactly gonna walk up, but
Speaker 1: the bag of diamonds, the bag of diamonds I would
Speaker 1: have taken out in my backyard and buried or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think. So, you know, we've searched in your I mean,
Speaker 1: we helped, we were digging for treasure. It's it's booby
Speaker 1: trapped by the way, so don't go near and don't
Speaker 1: go near it. Yeah. So four days after Joe Oihara
Speaker 1: came over to look at the Buddha, at two thirty
Speaker 1: in the morning, eight men from the Criminal Investigation Service
Speaker 1: and the National Bureau of Investigation came pounding on the
Speaker 1: door and demanded to be let in, and they said
Speaker 1: they had a search warrant. So after Roejus opened the door,
Speaker 1: these eight guys come inside. They are wearing military uniforms
Speaker 1: and they've got Joe Oihara with them, uh, And they
Speaker 1: showed him a document that they said was a search warrant.
Speaker 1: And the soldiers were beat on Rohaus's brother with their
Speaker 1: rifles and made the whole family get on the floor.
Speaker 1: And then when they left, they took the buddha, also
Speaker 1: the diamonds, the remaining seventeen bars of gold, the samurai swords,
Speaker 1: a piggy bank belonging to the kids and and his
Speaker 1: wife's coin collection, so that they they cleaned pretty much
Speaker 1: cleaned him out. Yeah, so Roehus reported it to the
Speaker 1: media and also the local police. He also went to
Speaker 1: this judge who he knew was just name was Peo
Speaker 1: Marcos and he apparently was related to Ferdinand Marcos. I
Speaker 1: guess at one point Rojaus used to work for him
Speaker 1: and that's how they knew each other. And also Marcos
Speaker 1: judge Marcos was the guy that he wants to to
Speaker 1: get the permit to dig on stay lands. I forget
Speaker 1: to mention that, uh, he had noticed Marcus his signature
Speaker 1: and the search warrant that the police had showed him,
Speaker 1: and he asked why he had signed his search warrant,
Speaker 1: and Marcos said they had no choice because Ferdinand Marcos
Speaker 1: had ordered it and said he had ordered the confiscation.
Speaker 1: The whole pretext for them coming into the house is
Speaker 1: Joe Oi Harris companion had claimed he was seen the
Speaker 1: illegal gun in the house, so he he filed the complaint.
Speaker 1: But this guy apparently had connections to Marcos also, So
Speaker 1: anyway we'd have gotten back to Marcos that there was
Speaker 1: gold and a Buddha and all this stuff. We all
Speaker 1: know who Ferdinand Marcos is, but I don't know that
Speaker 1: all of our listeners do. She might want to want
Speaker 1: to let some people know who we're alluding to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: good point. Ferdinand Marcos was president of the Philippine I
Speaker 1: believe from nineteen sixty nineteen eighty six. I know he
Speaker 1: was definitely he was deposed in x Yeah. He he
Speaker 1: eventually became, you know, supreme dictator and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: Lots of human rights abuses. Eventually there's a revolution in
Speaker 1: nine six and he was ousted and he and his
Speaker 1: wife Emelda of the eight hundred shoe collection Marcos. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: they want to political asylum in America and they wind
Speaker 1: up living in Hawaii. And that's how we've got all
Speaker 1: of this because the lawsuit that you're referencing for this
Speaker 1: material is was filed in Hawaii. Yeah, it was. Judge
Speaker 1: Marcus also appeared angry, according to Roja, said he had
Speaker 1: reported the case of the police and the media and
Speaker 1: said as a result, he would likely be killed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Rojas interpreted that as a threat. So he went
Speaker 1: into hiding for a little while, and then, uh, not
Speaker 1: too long after that April ninetee, the military deposited a
Speaker 1: buddha's statue with the city court in Baggio City, apparently
Speaker 1: the same one this stance. So what did they do?
Speaker 1: They put it out front or they took it they
Speaker 1: turned it in that I don't know. I guess that
Speaker 1: the court doesn't really say why, but they basically took
Speaker 1: it in there and said, here's just here's his Buddha
Speaker 1: back because in response to all the unwanted attention that
Speaker 1: he'd been calling this Buddha. So, yeah, we confiscated it,
Speaker 1: but here it is back returns. Yeah, we thought it
Speaker 1: might be a dangerous exactly smiling Buddha. Yeah. Ten days
Speaker 1: after that, Rojas went to the courthouse in Baggia City
Speaker 1: where the Buddha was and it was accompanied by a
Speaker 1: couple of bodyguards and a lawyer and miscellaneous reporters, and
Speaker 1: he examined the buddha and he said it was not
Speaker 1: the same Buddha that was in it that was taken
Speaker 1: from his house. He claimed its color was different, he
Speaker 1: said it had different facial features. Claimed the head was
Speaker 1: also not detachable. And so I'm not so sure about
Speaker 1: this because I've seen pictures of his brother took pictures
Speaker 1: of him with the gold Buddha. Two pictures of their
Speaker 1: kind of low resolution, but you can see the Buddha
Speaker 1: pretty clearly. I don't know if you guys ever saw
Speaker 1: those pictures, And there are also there's also one from
Speaker 1: from the trial we'll lead up to the trial of
Speaker 1: a Nel de Marcos looking at a Buddha. It looks
Speaker 1: like the exact same Buddha to me. He claims that
Speaker 1: the facial features are different, so it looks like the
Speaker 1: exact same. But do you know that the one that
Speaker 1: Amel de Marcos is in front of isn't the one
Speaker 1: they were trying to return to him? That is that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's the one that they were trying to return
Speaker 1: he claimed was not the same as his original one. Right,
Speaker 1: But I I've seen the pictures from before the Buddha
Speaker 1: was confiscated and then after, and they looked exactly the
Speaker 1: same to me. Yeah, well, I mean he did, you know,
Speaker 1: he made some claims about markings on it from tests
Speaker 1: that were running stuff, and I know that that got
Speaker 1: refuted and there's some there's some controversy around that itself.
Speaker 1: But but the fact that the head doesn't come off
Speaker 1: if he said the head comes off, that's kind of
Speaker 1: an important thing. Now, that would be kind of an
Speaker 1: important thing. But the thing about it is is, um
Speaker 1: he could have been faking that too, because he had
Speaker 1: a hard time getting the head offer. He originally didn't
Speaker 1: didn't know for quite a long time that the head
Speaker 1: came off. Yeah. Yeah, and guys are hauling it around.
Speaker 1: I've got a guess they knocked it over at least
Speaker 1: once by accident. You would think the head would have
Speaker 1: popped off. Maybe I took him he had to whack
Speaker 1: the head with a piece of with the like a
Speaker 1: two by four. Yeah, okay, yeah, so he could have said, yeah,
Speaker 1: it comes off really easy, and then oh, it didn't
Speaker 1: come off. Okay, okay. I thought initially that the head
Speaker 1: was just loose. No, no, no, it actually it was
Speaker 1: hard to get off. But the I mean, the pictures
Speaker 1: do show that the head was off in one black
Speaker 1: and white pictures. Yeah, so that at least we know
Speaker 1: it did actually come off. It did actually come off
Speaker 1: on the original Buddha. And and again the one, the
Speaker 1: one that they left at the courthouse, appeared to me
Speaker 1: to be the same. Yeah, I mean, they look pretty similar.
Speaker 1: It's hard to tell with resolution, you know photo resolution
Speaker 1: of the time. If the color is actually different and
Speaker 1: it's a different angle and there's like rope around the
Speaker 1: one in the black and white pictures versus the one
Speaker 1: in the court, there's not the rope, so it's hard
Speaker 1: to tell. You know, lines that your eyes make without
Speaker 1: the rope, they might not make. It's hard to tell.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I personally think the one with the
Speaker 1: rope that you can still see enough features, like, look
Speaker 1: at the same they're not No, I'm can at it
Speaker 1: right now. Um, if you look at the one that
Speaker 1: he has, it's got you know, the line on your
Speaker 1: face that runs from the corner of your nose, the
Speaker 1: nasal labial fold. Yes, that one. I don't know how
Speaker 1: the hell you know that. But I I actually, as
Speaker 1: as I've looked at the photos and I had to
Speaker 1: pull them up real quick just to double check, I
Speaker 1: kind of think that they look different. I mean, I,
Speaker 1: as we were saying, I see differences in in the face.
Speaker 1: It's hard to tell for me just because it's I
Speaker 1: I think the the they hit me as two different images, right,
Speaker 1: But I can't say we'll see in this image it's
Speaker 1: this and this issue is that because the resolution is
Speaker 1: solo in the original two, and they're from a different
Speaker 1: angle than any of the other way and the style
Speaker 1: at the time there were there very stylistically similar. They're
Speaker 1: from the same era. Yeah, they're very very similar, but
Speaker 1: there's I see differences in the face. So I I, personally,
Speaker 1: I don't through the same one just based on what
Speaker 1: I've seen in the photos. I don't know what His brother,
Speaker 1: Jose who was there at the house when the police
Speaker 1: showed up and took the took it away. He's he
Speaker 1: testified years later. Of course he he looked at it
Speaker 1: and stantestified that it was the same Buddha. That's what
Speaker 1: his brother said. So yeah, yeah, so I confused. Well
Speaker 1: they do. They look very very similar. Yeah. Anyway, back
Speaker 1: to Rohelio at this point, he wants to a kind
Speaker 1: of a difficult three year period. He was arrested, beating,
Speaker 1: tortured with electric shocks. They wanted to know, They wanted
Speaker 1: to sign papers first of all, saying that the two
Speaker 1: Buddhas were the same, and they also wanted to know
Speaker 1: where he'd found it because obviously and the gold bars. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he refused to talk. They let him go, but
Speaker 1: then he was re arrested. He managed to escape. He
Speaker 1: wanted to hiding for a while, eventually was caught again. Uh.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy three, he was convicted of possession of
Speaker 1: an illegal gun and unlockfably firing a revolver into the air.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that was true or not. I
Speaker 1: think that the government had it in for him at
Speaker 1: this point in time, and so it might have been
Speaker 1: entirely bogus. But he went to jail for about a
Speaker 1: year and a half and said that he would continue
Speaker 1: to be beaten and interrogated in prison. When he arrived
Speaker 1: home from prison in November in nineteen seventy four, back
Speaker 1: to Bagio City, he went by the treasure site and
Speaker 1: he noticed soldiers were standing outside tents near the near
Speaker 1: the hospital, right at the treasure site where they had
Speaker 1: done their excavation. Yeah, that's where they found the tunnels. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Rohilo at this point kind of figured they probably had
Speaker 1: found his treasure and and so he gave up on
Speaker 1: pressing his claims and didn't do anything more about it
Speaker 1: until after Marcos was deposed in Then he filed suit
Speaker 1: in March in Hawaii against against both of the Marcus
Speaker 1: is for theft and also for human rights abuses. A
Speaker 1: lot of the information I'm gonna show you he comes
Speaker 1: from that comes from the trials. As far as him
Speaker 1: seeing soldiers at the dig site, the treasure site, there
Speaker 1: were two witnesses that backed that up. They both worked
Speaker 1: at the hospital and they both said that they saw
Speaker 1: a lot of soldiers and laborers digging and around back there,
Speaker 1: and they said they saw them carrying out boxes and
Speaker 1: crates that appeared to be extremely heavy. It would be
Speaker 1: like take like four to six guys to carry one
Speaker 1: of these boxes. Uh. And and one of them said,
Speaker 1: actually one time that he saw a box get dropped
Speaker 1: in a broke open and a bunch of yellow bars
Speaker 1: came out of it. So that kind of that's that
Speaker 1: kind of backs up Julio story. Another guy named Robert
Speaker 1: Curtis on a mining and refining business, and he said
Speaker 1: he was brought over to the Philippines at the behest
Speaker 1: of Marcos because because he wanted him to melt down
Speaker 1: a bunch of gold bars to get rid of the
Speaker 1: hold the hallmarks and cast new bars out of them.
Speaker 1: So he actually did some work for them and building
Speaker 1: and building a smelter. I don't know why they had
Speaker 1: to call it get him. There had to be somebody
Speaker 1: in the Philippines was capable of doing this. I'm wondering
Speaker 1: if it was the scale. Yeah, yeah, because apparently, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he saw he saw a room in the presidential Palace
Speaker 1: that was like forty by forty ft that was stacked
Speaker 1: to the ceiling with gold bars. He claims, that's a
Speaker 1: pretty big scam. That's a nice lot. That's nice. A
Speaker 1: little bit of gold there. Yeah. Although you know, if
Speaker 1: anybody that knows about the gold market, that much gold
Speaker 1: would flatten the economy globally, you couldn't. You couldn't just
Speaker 1: dump it on the market all at once. You have
Speaker 1: to dribble it out a little bit of a time. No,
Speaker 1: I mean, we've assigned this this random figure or value
Speaker 1: to gold. There is nothing special about gold. It's just
Speaker 1: this thing we all covered so it we give it
Speaker 1: this value, and when you flood the market with it,
Speaker 1: it's not worth anything anymore. So you're not gonna be
Speaker 1: you know, I'm gonna sell the gold and become super rich. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can. You're just gonna have to dribble it out
Speaker 1: a little of the time. It's probably a good way
Speaker 1: to attract less attention to Oh yeah. There were several
Speaker 1: other people who testified at the trial that they had
Speaker 1: also been shown rooms full of gold bars at both palaces.
Speaker 1: They had a summer palace in a regular palace, and
Speaker 1: of course, yeah, one guy said he still see this
Speaker 1: had been taken blindfolded and taken to a warehouse and
Speaker 1: then because he had questioned the existence of all the
Speaker 1: gold and so they he saw this huge stack of
Speaker 1: crates and and then they opened one up and it
Speaker 1: they was pulled to gold bars. Although he said that
Speaker 1: they were rather crudely made, so these might have been
Speaker 1: some of the resmelted ones, and he said they were
Speaker 1: they had finished like an orange peel. Yeah yeah, that's
Speaker 1: not normal. Yeah yeah, I know. So between all these
Speaker 1: between all these people testifying at the trial, that wasn't
Speaker 1: not to convince the jury that Rohelio roe House was
Speaker 1: telling the truth. And they certainly believed all the human
Speaker 1: rights and stuff too, so they awarded there was plenty
Speaker 1: of evidence of that. Yeah, oh yeah, I know, they
Speaker 1: awarded the Royal House of State and the Golden Buddha Corporation.
Speaker 1: I forgot to mention the bullet and the Golden Buddha Corporation.
Speaker 1: He got a friend in the US to incorporate, uh,
Speaker 1: and then he signed his interest in the treasure over
Speaker 1: to the Golden Buddha Corporation, and Rohelio was a shareholder
Speaker 1: in the corporation. Yeah, and so and so maybe that
Speaker 1: maybe that's easier to sue an American court if it's
Speaker 1: an American corporation versus a Filipino guy. Yeah, it sounds possible.
Speaker 1: In nineteen six, the jury awarded the Royal House of
Speaker 1: State and Golden Buddha twenty two billion dollars plus interest
Speaker 1: plus interest. Yeah, what the interest? It came to over
Speaker 1: forty billion dollars. Largest judgment of history. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: the Hawaiian Supreme Court reverses a couple of years later.
Speaker 1: On the ground set. Even though there was a stack
Speaker 1: of boxes, nobody actually knows what was in them. It's
Speaker 1: it's a reasonable assumption to assume that they were all
Speaker 1: full of goals, since one was. But actually, but like
Speaker 1: I said, it could have been snakes. It could have
Speaker 1: been snakes, It could have been dirt, It could have
Speaker 1: been food that had long since rotted away. It could
Speaker 1: have been could have been, it could have been stacks
Speaker 1: of unicorn horns. Those are actually worth more than gold, though,
Speaker 1: So this that would have been. This stood. That's good,
Speaker 1: that's a good point. Uh. So the Supreme Court ordered
Speaker 1: a new hearing to value just the golden Buddha and
Speaker 1: the seventeen bars of gold, and also a few other
Speaker 1: things like the coin collection, keep a piggy bank and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Uh and so like And by the way,
Speaker 1: I read the course, I've read the whole opinion, and
Speaker 1: it's pretty obvious they think the claim of the solid
Speaker 1: gold Buddha as purebs Yeah, yeah, yeah, Like when they
Speaker 1: talk about the Buddha, they they call it the gold
Speaker 1: Buddha in it, you know, and quotes the gold Buddha.
Speaker 1: So it's it's yeah, they obviously are unconvinced. But the
Speaker 1: jury it doesn't really matter. The jury was convinced, I guess,
Speaker 1: so from a legal standpoint, that's all that really matters.
Speaker 1: In the next go around, they were awarded thirteen million
Speaker 1: in change for the Buddha and the gold bars and
Speaker 1: and all the other stuff, and the Rohsa state was
Speaker 1: awarded six million dollars for the human rights abuses because
Speaker 1: because at this point Rhalio was dead. Yeah, I forgot
Speaker 1: to mention he died in Yeah, unfortunately that kind of
Speaker 1: really well, he there was some stress that happened, I know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: two years after he died. This is this would have
Speaker 1: been his brother. Jose commenced an action at the Regional
Speaker 1: Truck Court in Baggies City asking for release of the
Speaker 1: buddha since they still had it in their custody all
Speaker 1: these years later and they wanted it to have it
Speaker 1: back as a memento to Rohelio. And are they going
Speaker 1: to use it as like a headstone? Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I just put it in the yard and
Speaker 1: the headstone would be kind of cool. Yeah, nobody will
Speaker 1: ever get rid of that memo. Yeah. At the initial hearing,
Speaker 1: he testified that he had been present when the rating
Speaker 1: party took the buddha out of his out of the house,
Speaker 1: and the court told him to take a look at
Speaker 1: the Buddha that they had there and say is this
Speaker 1: the same one? And he said it was. And then
Speaker 1: at a second hearing, Jose said he test untestified under
Speaker 1: oath that the Buddha that had been at Rohelio's house
Speaker 1: was made of lead or copper, but reporters had added
Speaker 1: that the Buddhas made of gold, so it might have
Speaker 1: been the press actually puffed this up a little bit. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He also said that Rohelio Rojas knew it was made
Speaker 1: out of lead or something and not gold, but he
Speaker 1: said that wrote Rojas had claimed it was gold because
Speaker 1: he had been bribed by opposition politicians to do to
Speaker 1: do this. Yexplained that to me, the opposition politician bid
Speaker 1: yea in the Philippines. Yeah, they've been bribed by politicians
Speaker 1: to say this, to pump the story up. Oh, to
Speaker 1: then throw dirt at Marcos essentially, okay, okay, got it.
Speaker 1: Didn't didn't make that connection right away. So that's sort
Speaker 1: of sort of some of his other claims, I guess. Oh.
Speaker 1: And by the way, as a counterpoint to that, that's
Speaker 1: the same trial record also had a letter to the
Speaker 1: judge sent by Daniel Kaskar, who was the attorney for
Speaker 1: Golden Buddha and the Rojasa State, and his letter said
Speaker 1: that Emelda had met with Jose Rojas and offered him
Speaker 1: money to petition the court for the brass Buddha and
Speaker 1: then false identify it as the same one as have
Speaker 1: been taken from Roelio. I know it's yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: that's I guess that's possible. Uh So the buddha that
Speaker 1: was in the court custody had been brass all along,
Speaker 1: brass or lead or something. It wasn't to me like
Speaker 1: it's painted. And if it really weighed as much as
Speaker 1: they as they said it, dude, then I'm thinking lead. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But so that that was the case, right, it wasn't
Speaker 1: the one that wasn't it was in court custody, wasn't
Speaker 1: in fact full gold. It wasn't gold. Did Rojas find
Speaker 1: imatched his gold or at least some of it? He
Speaker 1: might have unsolved mysteries. Did an episode about this before
Speaker 1: he died, and he was He had a lot of
Speaker 1: FaceTime on camera and he seemed sincere and believable. But
Speaker 1: I still have a few problems with this story, such
Speaker 1: as he spots a huge pile of boxes near the buddha,
Speaker 1: but he didn't bother opening a single one until the
Speaker 1: next day. Well, that's a lot of work to get
Speaker 1: the boot out. Yeah, that's true, I guess. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, the buddha could have been blocking the way
Speaker 1: to the boxes, right, They had to move it before
Speaker 1: he get to the boxes, and by the time they
Speaker 1: got it out, he was like, coming back tomorrow, could
Speaker 1: be Yeah again, I would be. I would be hugely
Speaker 1: curious about what was I would too, but you know,
Speaker 1: I would step over the three foot tall bood. I
Speaker 1: would think that's just me. Yeah. He left the box
Speaker 1: of gold bars four gold bars sitting in the tunnels
Speaker 1: for several weeks, so we're talking like three or four
Speaker 1: weeks before he came back and retrieved them and then
Speaker 1: blasted the tunnel ship. Would you do that? No, you
Speaker 1: either continue to pull stuff out or you shut it
Speaker 1: up right away exactly. But he might not have He
Speaker 1: might not have known what he was going to do.
Speaker 1: He may have thought, I can continue to pull this
Speaker 1: stuff out, suddenly realized he was out of money and
Speaker 1: selling the gold he had wasn't going as quickly as
Speaker 1: he expected. I mean, people do this stuff in business
Speaker 1: all the time. Oh, don't worry about it. We'll have
Speaker 1: this totally take care of in like two days, No
Speaker 1: big deal. Three weeks later they still have nothing done.
Speaker 1: It happens, Well, yeah, I don't know. It's just I
Speaker 1: still feel like it would have it would have driven
Speaker 1: me crazy. I mean, I found if I found this
Speaker 1: tunnel and I know that there's at least twenty four
Speaker 1: gold bars sitting there, and that anybody could just one
Speaker 1: of the people that I that one of the laborers
Speaker 1: that I had hired, for example, knows where it's at,
Speaker 1: he could go back there with his buddies and steal
Speaker 1: all that gold. But he never opened the boxes in
Speaker 1: front of those people. But maybe that's why he didn't
Speaker 1: open the boxes. Maybe you wanted to. That's that's possibility. Um.
Speaker 1: But still, if those people saw the pile of boxes,
Speaker 1: then I wouldn't you wouldn't you? I mean, you're not
Speaker 1: really here. They are one of the labors. You see
Speaker 1: the pile of boxes, aren't you going to go and
Speaker 1: probably want to open yourself? Yeah? You know most people would. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I'm just saying this is from if I were Hlio,
Speaker 1: I would not be able to sleep knowing that this
Speaker 1: tunnel was open and that the people that have had
Speaker 1: seen the pile of boxes could go back at any
Speaker 1: time and take or knowing that some random do could
Speaker 1: just come along discover the opening and go in there
Speaker 1: and discover and take all this stuff. I wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to sleep, and yet he wants several weeks just
Speaker 1: leaving all the gold in there. I okay, So I think,
Speaker 1: as we've done in the past, we're presuming that the
Speaker 1: crew is with him and in there working the entire time,
Speaker 1: and therefore intimately familiar with everything that's going on, when
Speaker 1: in fact, they were hunting around at a bunch of
Speaker 1: freaking caves for weeks on end. And it is possible
Speaker 1: that once he found the concrete bit that he had
Speaker 1: to break through, that he was like, oh, well, I
Speaker 1: don't want to pay anybody else to do it, I'll
Speaker 1: just swing a sledgehammer for a day and broke through
Speaker 1: it himself and then said, you know, hired these how
Speaker 1: were ten men or whatever it took, said hey, I
Speaker 1: have this thing in this tunnel. I want you to
Speaker 1: pull out, and they just completely different than the other crew,
Speaker 1: maybe unawares walk in, Oh yeah, this thing is heavy
Speaker 1: and all it out and have no idea what they're
Speaker 1: walking into. Well, you know that's true enough, but still
Speaker 1: there's still the possibility of some random dude could discover
Speaker 1: the cave right there. I'm just saying that it may
Speaker 1: not have been a situation where the workers knew what
Speaker 1: was going on to then get the idea of, well,
Speaker 1: I'm going to go back on my own and see
Speaker 1: what it really is. Yeah. Maybe not, I don't know,
Speaker 1: but I still I still would not have left that
Speaker 1: pile of gold sitting there. No, I mean I don't
Speaker 1: think anybody would. He'd have to be crazy to do that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty much, I think so. Yeah. Next, he was trying
Speaker 1: to sell the Buddha to raise funds to finance the
Speaker 1: removal of the boxes of gold bars in the tunnel.
Speaker 1: But he sold seven gold bars. That was that should
Speaker 1: have dedit him a big punch of money. Yeah, unless
Speaker 1: he got swindled. Well, it didn't know the value of
Speaker 1: the gold he was getting, or it wasn't high quality goals.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's there's a bunch of oars here. Well
Speaker 1: I'm sure, yeah, I'm sure he had to sell it
Speaker 1: at a discounted price. I'm sure he didn't get full
Speaker 1: gold value for it. But it may not have been
Speaker 1: twenty two or twenty four carrot gold. It could have
Speaker 1: been low quality gold, which therefore is worth less money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but still it would have been worth quite a bit.
Speaker 1: It would have been worth charge. But then you if
Speaker 1: if you say it's low quality, and then you're selling
Speaker 1: it at a cut rate, and then you don't really
Speaker 1: know what that cut rate should be. So your gold buyer,
Speaker 1: who's kind of a swindly little guy, knocked you down
Speaker 1: even more. You could be getting you know, ten or
Speaker 1: twenty percent of what the value of what you're selling is.
Speaker 1: I mean, it still should have been enough to fund
Speaker 1: some more some more hauling out of stuff. Actually, since
Speaker 1: you know, my question is is like why not just
Speaker 1: do a couple of bars a day? You just walk
Speaker 1: over to your okay, right, I mean the impression I
Speaker 1: have is it was close to his home. You just
Speaker 1: walk over there and throw a couple in a box
Speaker 1: and you know, put it over your shoulder and walk
Speaker 1: home and that, Like what's the finance need? I mean
Speaker 1: I have to do it in one fall swoop. Of
Speaker 1: course you need the financing. But yeah, you know what
Speaker 1: I would do is what I would have done is
Speaker 1: I would have just hired, you know, hired some laborers,
Speaker 1: people that were trustworthy, didn't know we were't going to
Speaker 1: kill me for the gold or anything. And they say, look,
Speaker 1: you help me with this. I'll give you each a
Speaker 1: couple of bars of gold. Yeah that works. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what I would have done. But hey, the one thing
Speaker 1: that I I like the idea of just going and
Speaker 1: packing out a couple of bars a day, except that
Speaker 1: gold bars, even when they're little ones, they're freaking heavy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think, and I'm I don't know the exact number,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna ballpark it between fifty two seventy pounds
Speaker 1: is what I want to say. A bar of gold wayspack.
Speaker 1: But that means you can carry one or two, maybe three,
Speaker 1: not three in a backpack. A very physically fit person
Speaker 1: could pack three a day. But you pack that for
Speaker 1: five ten miles, that's a that's a workout and a half. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that that would be better shut in daunting task
Speaker 1: while you're gaining money for you're not you know, it's
Speaker 1: like the best gym workout, except for free. I mean,
Speaker 1: actually you're getting paid a lot of money for it.
Speaker 1: Because that was the other thing, right, is that the
Speaker 1: cost of gold per ounce was like almost nine hundred
Speaker 1: bucks at that point, right something. It was more than
Speaker 1: it had climbed up away. So there I think it
Speaker 1: might have been. It might have been more like five
Speaker 1: or six hundred even back. But even then, if you
Speaker 1: if we're saying it's fifty or seventy pounds, right, we're
Speaker 1: saying it's like four hundred ish ounces you're getting. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're if you're getting even five hundred dollars per ounce,
Speaker 1: that's incredible. And even if you're only making of that,
Speaker 1: you should be able to easily finance with one bar
Speaker 1: getting the rest of that stuff out of it, especially
Speaker 1: since labor of the Philippines is really pretty cheap. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you just say you know, or again you
Speaker 1: just they here's a bar. Yeah, everybody way. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: next thing I want to know is who do you
Speaker 1: sell the bars too? He sold seven bars, supposedly, his
Speaker 1: lawyers never asked him. They've never asked him because, after all,
Speaker 1: that guy would have been a great witness, because it
Speaker 1: would have established that that Rohalio did indeed have some
Speaker 1: gold bars in his possession. Also, they couldn't find somebody
Speaker 1: to lie about it, even if not much of a lawyer.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, So evidence regarding the gold bars, it's really
Speaker 1: pretty thin when you come down to it. Another thing
Speaker 1: that I was I really kind of scratched my head
Speaker 1: over is that his partner and friend, al Albert Fusugami
Speaker 1: was never heard from. They didn't track him down, They
Speaker 1: didn't track down any of the hired laborers. Perhaps that
Speaker 1: helped out in their little dig and had them testify. Well,
Speaker 1: it may have been that they didn't know who the
Speaker 1: labors were. Well, possibly because they're just guys he hires,
Speaker 1: and maybe Albert's dead by now. I don't know. Still,
Speaker 1: I'm kind of I'm kind of surprised that they were
Speaker 1: not to find any of those people and that they
Speaker 1: would have been That would have been something that they
Speaker 1: would have been able to just do, like a deposition
Speaker 1: in the Philippines for right. I mean, the trials are
Speaker 1: happening in Hawaii. It's not cheap to fly people places.
Speaker 1: It's not not everybody wants to fly places, So that
Speaker 1: would have been right. That's what we're saying is we
Speaker 1: could have just gone, could have gone in the Philippine
Speaker 1: and just done some positions. Okay, I want to be
Speaker 1: clear statement on the record, So long story short, I
Speaker 1: am I really don't think Rohlio found anything other than
Speaker 1: a lead Buddha because the people, the people who actually
Speaker 1: saw the boxes, and we don't know how many people
Speaker 1: other than saw the boxes, But any of those people
Speaker 1: that saw it were never never part of this whole thing.
Speaker 1: They never testified, So we only have Rohelio's word that
Speaker 1: there were this there was a huge pile of boxes,
Speaker 1: and so I'm kind of thinking maybe he only found
Speaker 1: the lead Buddha and nothing else. Well, and furthermore, there
Speaker 1: were there were a lot of people who testified that
Speaker 1: they saw the boxes, but at Marcos's palaces, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: some people said they saw boxes, not necessarily also saw
Speaker 1: just stacks and stacks, right, So there's really no evidence
Speaker 1: to suggest that Marcos stole that stuff, right that at
Speaker 1: the hospital, yeah, yeah, which seems to be supported. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But also in fairness, if you just kind of figured
Speaker 1: out that this guy who's been claiming all this stuff,
Speaker 1: that's where he claimed to have been digging, it might
Speaker 1: warrant a dig just to see even if it was
Speaker 1: a lie, you know, you wouldn't know. You just say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: this guy said he found a bunch of gold here,
Speaker 1: so we'll go dig there. Yeah, right, what's the harm
Speaker 1: you have a lot of military Yeah, send those guys. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, there were other other people involved. Two besides
Speaker 1: Roelio so somebody else might have might have squealed. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why you didn't hear from them. Yeah, I could be.
Speaker 1: Let's move on to our last series. So then, do
Speaker 1: you guys have anything more to say about Rohelio? Do
Speaker 1: you think you found it? Do you think he do
Speaker 1: you think he didn't find it? No? But I can't
Speaker 1: believe this is our last theory. You've left one out.
Speaker 1: Oh oh, Mr Gold, Yeah, I can talk about Mr Gold. Well,
Speaker 1: we'll talk to Mr We'll talk about Mr Gold after this,
Speaker 1: because Mr Gold is mostly just for fun. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: back there last day, Mster's Gold is just an urban legend.
Speaker 1: In favor of this, I have to say a lot
Speaker 1: of people have been looking for the treasure for decades
Speaker 1: now and you haven't found a trace of it, and
Speaker 1: so you would think somebody would have found something by now.
Speaker 1: It does seem suspicious. And also, why would the Japanese
Speaker 1: send everything to the Philippines. It would have made it
Speaker 1: more really, it would really would have made more sense
Speaker 1: to ship at overland, say that Shanghai or Korea, which
Speaker 1: are much closer to Japan, and go from there. Um.
Speaker 1: And if it did wind up and it was too,
Speaker 1: if it was too risky to take to Japan on
Speaker 1: ships from the Philippines, assuming it had wound up in
Speaker 1: the Philippines, and why not just use submarines. Well, the
Speaker 1: other the other thing that I wonder is if if
Speaker 1: they're putting everything on a boat and they're taking it somewhere,
Speaker 1: why wouldn't they take it to the main land, Because
Speaker 1: they controlled huge chunks of the mainland at that time,
Speaker 1: they could have taken it to Korea, which is kind
Speaker 1: of in a straight line. It's one of the shortest
Speaker 1: water distances to Japan from the mainland, and then you
Speaker 1: make the run from there, because that's that's your narrow
Speaker 1: one that that's what I'm saying, that would have been
Speaker 1: more sense. Okay, yeah, uh yeah. Shanghai is actually it's
Speaker 1: it's probably it's it's a little further away, but still
Speaker 1: it's a lot hell of a lot closer than than
Speaker 1: the Philippines. Yeah, so I don't I don't really see
Speaker 1: why they would ship all that stuff to the Philippines
Speaker 1: to begin with. It also seems to me that if
Speaker 1: it did wind up in the Philippines, getting on that
Speaker 1: loop back to Japan would have been a very high priority.
Speaker 1: Don't you think that would have been a and said
Speaker 1: they would have found a way to do at submarines whatever,
Speaker 1: you know, it would have been something. Yeah. Against this
Speaker 1: seria is it's been proven that the existence sub urban
Speaker 1: legends is itself an urban legend. Really, people don't just
Speaker 1: make stuff up. No, No, they never happened. Never happened.
Speaker 1: So you guys have any favorites. What's what's your favorite
Speaker 1: theory to talk about. We're gonna talk about Mr Gold
Speaker 1: for a second because I came across this one and
Speaker 1: when I when I saw your notes, I was laughing
Speaker 1: that you had intentionally left out Mr Gold because he
Speaker 1: loves gold. Because his name is Mr Gold, which is
Speaker 1: a pseudonym, would assume him be the right word. It's yeah,
Speaker 1: because we don't know who this guy is. He's the
Speaker 1: American Free Press dot net I believe it is, has
Speaker 1: been putting out his story. They put it out over
Speaker 1: the course of like six months or a year. Some
Speaker 1: guy who is an American citizen says he went down
Speaker 1: there and he found all the gold, and he hired
Speaker 1: a company to to excavate it and pack it out,
Speaker 1: and that company never showed. Years later, he gets some
Speaker 1: of it, and then suddenly the FED show up at
Speaker 1: his door because his name is on record with this
Speaker 1: other company, the one that never showed up, which, by
Speaker 1: the way, the name of the company is B I
Speaker 1: AM Incorporated, which the B I M is in capital letters,
Speaker 1: but if you look at it and you flip it around,
Speaker 1: because I do word jumbles all the time, it's M
Speaker 1: I B as in men and black men and black incorporated.
Speaker 1: And uh so, now he's been detained by the US
Speaker 1: government because he's got, you know, a hundred trillion dollars
Speaker 1: worth of gold and he's on these trumped up mail
Speaker 1: fraud charges. Is why he's still in jail. And it's
Speaker 1: in it's a it's a fun tale, and I'll leave
Speaker 1: it at that. Is it's just it's a really fun tale.
Speaker 1: But nothing of its even smells remotely of truth. No,
Speaker 1: not even slightly. Yeah, work of fiction is what I
Speaker 1: would say on that one. But it's it's it's one
Speaker 1: of the things that you find, it's one of the
Speaker 1: initial things you find when you start ching for this story.
Speaker 1: So that's why. Yeah, yeah, it does kind of out,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's obviously nonsense. So yeah, what do you
Speaker 1: guys think how many favorite theories. I don't think it
Speaker 1: actually exists. Yeah, I mean either, I don't think they
Speaker 1: would have taken the time. If they're looting jewelry and
Speaker 1: everything from everyone and it's full of precious gems, that's
Speaker 1: a lot of work to separate everything and then melted
Speaker 1: down and then pack that out instead of just chucking
Speaker 1: it in a box and packing it all out. I
Speaker 1: also think that, um, if soldiers are looting, they're probably
Speaker 1: gonna keep that stuff, a fair amount of it. Maybe
Speaker 1: not all right, They're they're gonna keep a cat. I
Speaker 1: think that supposedly this whole thing was was organized from
Speaker 1: the highest levels and so so it was like they
Speaker 1: did a fairly decent job supposedly. But again, you know,
Speaker 1: Steve's point is is totally right. You you just have jewelry, right,
Speaker 1: If you jewelry, you just toss it in a box
Speaker 1: or you know whatever, and it's it's even it's harder
Speaker 1: to trace at that point. I mean, you know, the
Speaker 1: number of super unique pieces of jewelry out there is
Speaker 1: because you don't you don't want to, you don't want
Speaker 1: to spend the time and effort It takes too for
Speaker 1: your people who you're employing to sit down and separate
Speaker 1: all of this. I mean, the Germans did this when
Speaker 1: they looted everybody, but they use slave labor to do
Speaker 1: that separation process. The Japanese didn't have a whole huge
Speaker 1: swath of that available, so that's a lot of effort
Speaker 1: on their part. Well, also, it just doesn't I mean,
Speaker 1: it just doesn't make sense that you would do that
Speaker 1: in the middle of a war. You Yeah, well, especially
Speaker 1: when you're in these small areas. Yeah, they did, and
Speaker 1: they would have. They would have probably actually not all
Speaker 1: of it would have been melted down into gold bars,
Speaker 1: but they would would have come across gold bars and
Speaker 1: banks and like that. Yeah. But yeah, I just can't
Speaker 1: see it. I'm shipping into the Philippines. It makes no sense,
Speaker 1: I agree. Yeah, alright, sorry everybody. I guess it doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: Well that's about it for this week, unless you guys
Speaker 1: have anything more you want to say about your Muson's gold.
Speaker 1: Yeah all right. Well, if you guys, if you have
Speaker 1: any thoughts about it out there, listener person, you can
Speaker 1: call person. You know. I like that designation. They are
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Speaker 1: this one done. All Right's see you next week folks. Later, guys. Bye, guys,