Thinking Sideways: Yamashita's Gold

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Thinking Sideways. I don't stories of things we simply don't
know the answer to. Hire. Welcome to another episode of
Thinking Sideways. I am Joe, joined as always by Yeah. Well,

(00:29):
and we're here to talk, of course, to talk about
another mystery. Yeah indeed, yes, if that's what you're into
these days. Yeah, it's what the kids dick until we
become a cooking show. That's not until next week. Don't
tell anybody how very good at that. Yeah. Alright, So
this week we're going to talk about a very famous

(00:49):
lost treasure, which you've probably heard of. If you haven't
heard about it, well you're in for kind of a treat.
This one is called Yamashta's Gold. Also notice of the
Masta treasure. You probably we know of it as Yamashita
because that's how it spelled, but the actually pronounced Yamashta.
Oh is it really? Yeah? Yeah, I didn't realize that.
I remember because the first time I heard about this

(01:11):
is what it was like two years ago when we
talked to Roy Baton and he mentioned this when we
were talking to him after we had finished the recording,
and he had mentioned it, and he'd call it Yamashida
as well. So I just a lot of people. Yeah,
I figured that was the correct pronunciation that you researched
this and not me. Yeah, yeah, you never know. I
mean maybe his it's actually a name like a somebody's

(01:35):
given names, So maybe maybe he pronoun he actually did
pronounce Yamashida. The Yamashta of yamash says Gold was General
Tamayuki Yamashta, who was in command of Japanese forces in
the Philippines from nineteen and as you know, what was
going on back then, it's like oh war, Yeah, the

(01:55):
second big one we had, the Second U. The Japanese
had been special guests of the Philippine people for a
while now, yeah, and then along about late nineteen four,
a bunch of Americans with guns showed up and said
something in the order we want it back. Um, yeah,

(02:18):
we gotta take this here back. Let's talk about the treasure. Though.
The treasure came from all over the place. The Japanese
invaded and occupied a lot of countries before and during
World War Two, as you guys know, brutally. Yeah, yeah,
it was there. They were kind of harsh. Uh. Those
countries include China, Korea, Burma, Malaya, Dutch East Indies, Singapore

(02:42):
and of course the Philippines, and of course besides me
and kind of brutal, they also looted the places for
all they could find. Like they took a lot of gold, silver, platinum,
precious gems and stuff like that I would do. Yeah, Yeah,
it worked so hard for this. Yeah. According to some people,
the most of the loot was shipped down to Singapore,

(03:04):
whereas the reportedly was cataloged, and then it was shipped
off to the Philippines, which is sort of on the
way to Japan. From the Philippines, the booty was sent
on to Japan, supposedly along with the valuables that they
stole from the Philippines. Also, uh, and nobody knows how
much of this loot actually made it to Japan, if
any of it. I'm sure a lot of it did. Yeah.

(03:26):
And nineteen two, though, after the Battle of Midway, the
American Navy began to dominate the Western Pacific and started
sinking a lot of Japanese ships. So probably a few
of these had loot on board. Also quite probably. Yeah,
it's sitting down. They're waiting for you if you want
to go find it. Storal. Yeah, I know at this
point that then the treasure was kind of stuck in
the Philippines because it's kind of wasteful. It's sitting on

(03:49):
a ship that's gonna get sunk, So what to do period? Yeah,
that's an idea. Yeah. Yeah. The US invaded the Philippines
in October ninety four. Msh A fought on for Aumust
a year, eventually surrendered in September, and to keep himself
occupied in the interim, he did the usual military stuff,
but also started hiding all the loots so that it

(04:10):
wouldn't fall into Yankee hands. Makes sense, right, Yeah, and
I do it. It has claimed that the treasure wound
up being stashed in between a hundred seventy two and
a hundred seventy five places, although I've heard other other
stories where it just was stashed in one enormous cavern.
That that is the one enormous cavern is kind of
the fantastic version that I've come across. Yeah, that's always

(04:33):
the first one that pops up on your searches. I
don't know, it seems like it'd be easier to just
do one. Depends on how much stuff you goss to
throw it all in that cave, put it under the dragon.
That's all idea. You go, recruiter dragon. Indiana Jones didn't
show up in your file. You're finding It's been always
been my dream to find something like this, So would

(04:54):
that be great anyway? Yeah. The method that they used
was typically this. It would d to suit the hiding place,
let's see a cave, and then a bunch of booty
would be hauled in with soldiers or slave labor or both.
Engineers would rig up booby traps so anybody trying to
get in there would get killed, and then the cave
entrance would be sealed or blasted shut with everybody inside,

(05:15):
so that way they wouldn't be able to tell anybody
where the treasure was. That does sound a whole lot
like Indiana Jones. Yeah. Yeah, I want my whip and everything.
We're going. We're going many Incidentally, Uh, the Monster's gold
was featured and not even though it was not named,

(05:36):
but it's in Neil Stevens Neil Stevenson's Cryptanomicon, which I
know I plugged before. Yeah, don't you say you've mentioned
this book before? Yeah, Boilers. One of the main characters
in the book is is a Japanese guy who wands
up getting conscripted in one of these into hiding some
fabulous amount of stuff in this cave because he's a
clever guy. What they do is they seal it shut

(05:57):
with him and a few other people inside, and then
they flooded they haven't heard river, basically to flood the cavern.
And but he's he's engineered, he's engineering himself a way out,
so he actually escapes. Yeah, I know, I know, I
should have probably spoilers. Yeah wait, wait, go back, we
can let edit it in you're ready. Spoilers. The legend

(06:21):
of your Master's Gold has never gone away, and for
decades people have been looking for this, a lot of
people and they're still doing it today, and quite a
few of them have gotten killed trying. Also, nobody has
ever found the treasure, except for one guy named Rol Rojas,
who will talk about a little bit later on. Maybe

(06:42):
maybe maybe maybe if you're good, No, I'm sorry, I
meant maybe he found it. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's yeah, she's right, yeah yeah yeah, or found a
part of it. We totally misinterpreted that. Yeah, well, let's
talk about theories then, all right, let's that's a pretty
our summation, So I guess we can talk about some

(07:02):
of the theories. Yeah, there's a lot to go through
here in theories a little bit. Yeah, there's several theories.
One is that it's real and it's out there waiting
to be discovered. Still, so this is is it Are
we doing kind of heading theories right that we sometimes
with my stories will do theory one the gold is real,
but sub theory one the gold is real, and this

(07:24):
thing are we doing that sort of thing is about
the construct here. If by subhead the gold is real,
most theories and then subhead are heading to the gold
is not real. Alright, So if we assume the gold
is real, the theories are the theories are that, well,
they just did a really good job hiding it and
it has yet to be found. But that's not you know,

(07:47):
it's not really much to say about that one. So
this is something that that struck me a little odd.
If the job, if indeed the Japanese did gather all
of this sub and they're looting everybody, why is it
always the gold that everybody talks about. There would have
been all kinds of precious stones and things like that.

(08:10):
I imagine artwork would have been collected. But why is
it we only ever talk about the gold. I don't
understand what the I mean, I understand that people have
an obscene lust for gold, but it's just funny to
me that that's the only thing that ever gets brought up.
Oh yeah, I just I just said that, you Masha's
Gold sounds like a cooler title, and you know, your

(08:31):
master's treasure. Maybe that's why maybe ems salt stolen stuff.
Yeah that doesn't sound so great. Yeah it's lout. Yeah,
but obviously they did. They did gather up you know,
jewelry and jam everything, plat and the silver, a lot
of stuff besides gold. Yeah, they hoovered it all up. Yeah,
well they kind of. I mean, yeah, they're not the
only ones that we're doing that kind of stuff in

(08:53):
that exact same time frame. I mean, that was kind
of a common practice. But it's still it's funny, is
that in this particular story that it's so it's just
the gold that everyone talks about. So the Philippines are
still still do have enough kind of undeveloped lush areas
that this is a feasible thing that it just hasn't
been discovered yet. Yeah, it's yeah, I have no I

(09:15):
I got to be honest, I have no kind of
scope of how saturated the population is on the Philippines. Um,
you know, I think it's there's some I don't know
much about the Philippines, to be honest with you, I
know some islands have a fairly decent sized population and
summer practically deserted. Sure. Yeah, because that would be my
question about this is you know, is it even feasible

(09:37):
that there would be a hundred and seventy caches of well,
it's a pretty big area. Yeah, And you know, most
of those islands tend to have all of their majority
of their population centered in one or two major cities
reports so that leaves a lot of undeveloped rural areas.

(09:58):
So I think that's why everybody's kind of saying, well,
it's still got to be out there. Yeah, Okay, Yeah,
I still don't know exactly how the number one seventy
two hiding places where that exactly came up from? Some
and some of those are not all on land either.
Some of them, like around forty or so, or are
supposedly underwater somewhere like an underwater cave or Yeah. But

(10:20):
he found a map that he was playing Tic Tac
toe on and interpret in every ax is a location
for Yeah. Yeah, well our next there is this, which
is that your Monster's gold really was real, but the
Americans got their hands on it. That's in this series
of advanced in the book that's called Gold Warriors by

(10:41):
Sterling and Peggy Seagrave. Did you read any of this
of the book? Yeah? No, I um. I went out
to Amazon dot Com and I read the description, and
then I went to the reviews, and the reviews were
very useful. They save me from wasting my time with this.
Well I read they They put out some like three

(11:02):
or four page summation of their stuff, and I found
that and I read through it, and they're really stretching
in my opinion, And I know we're going to go
into some of this, but I was really surprised at
some of the correlations. And I'm using air quotes here
that they made. Yeah, they took they took a lot

(11:22):
of liberties with the truth here. Well, let's let's happen.
So they what what they say is an intelligence operative
is probably from interrogating captured Japanese. They got onto the
scent of the booty somehow, and then um, they really
couldn't interrogate and torture Yamashta, so they grabbed this driver
and tortured him for a while until he confessed. And

(11:42):
since he was too much, this driver, he was driving
them all over all these locations, presumably so he was
underwater and stuff. Yeah, exactly. Uh, and then they used
all this lute that they found to fund black operations
all around the world, including including bribing politicians, buying elections,
and all kinds of stuff. And their book is supposedly

(12:04):
very well documented, but to find out the sources of
their information you have to buy a bunch of CDs
separately from the book. Oh yeah, I don't actually list
their their references and sources like every other book I've
ever read does. Well, I think that they do have.
I think they do have citations in the book. But
apparently if you want all their information then you have

(12:25):
to buy the CDs. Yeah and so, and that's a
whole separate price in the books they found the gold Yeah,
I know, obviously, Yeah, this is this is stuff. Yeah,
I know. It's kind of like kind of like the
gold Rush, you know, the guys who really made out
like bandits were the guys that want and sold sold
shovels and stuff like that to all the prospectors. You know,

(12:45):
prospectors all weren't broke, almost of them did. Anyway, My favorite,
my my favorite of all the reviews on there was
a one star review from a guy named Angus Waycott
that it was written a book called a book called Sodo,
Japan's Island in Exile and the Sea Graves in their
book claim that more than a thousand Korean slave laborers
vanished without a trace on Sodo Island, and they cite

(13:08):
Angus Waycott's book to support this. But according to Waycott,
his book says no such things. That's a direct quote, right, Yeah,
that was on the Amazon review. Yeah yeah, Elsie said.
He said it was a deliberate misrepresentation and he also
said it was shameful. And so you know, after reading

(13:32):
that review, I just figured I was going to leave
it at that. I think you guys can go read
the reviews on Amazon and decide for yourselves. But I
think support for this theory is not really not really there. Well,
and like I said, I I read some of their
stuff and it is really thin and there is a
lot of leaps of faith made in it. Yeah, a

(13:55):
lot of a lot of the other critical reviews out
there said the same thing. That's just poorly sourced. And
one under one guy said, this would make a fine
little thriller to reach it read at the beach when
you're on vacation. Yeah, you shouldn't treat it as nonfiction. Nice,
So I will put that theory to bed, all right. Yeah.
The next another theory is that under the Golden real

(14:15):
thing is that maybe some Japanese soldiers who had knowledge
of at least some of these places have have gone
back in the decades since and actually found some of
this stuff and spirited spirited out of the country. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I like it. Yeah that makes sense. Yeah yeah. What
does not make sense to you? Well, I'm just I'm

(14:36):
just thinking about the state of Japan after the war
and everything that's going on. Well, not like you'd have
to wait, like somebody would have to wait at least
a decade or two before they could even think to
do it. Oh yeah, I mean, now you'd have to
you have to wait quite a while just for he
just for emotions to die down in the Philippines, because

(14:58):
let's face it, they didn't behave themselves perfectly when they
were there, and so you probably want to wait a
decade or two when you went back, unless it was
you know, in remote areas of the Philippines and you
just get a boat, I mean, oh, yeah, sneak on shore,
or it's not on shore, it's underwater, and you just
just come back. Yeah, that's that's a possibility. Uh, this
is a this is a fine theory, and it's entirely possible,

(15:21):
but it's sure speculation and oh it's absolutely yeah, and
I'm just throwing it into waste everybody's time. Thanks. So, yeah, possible,
but based on the evidence, I've got to give it
a fail. I guess you could, um, you know that
kind of gold bribe some officials in the Philippines. Well

(15:41):
that's that's true too. I mean you could you could
go to them and just say, hey, look, I know
where there's a huge stash of gold. Yeah, let's let
let's dig it up and you can have half. Or
you don't even say that, or you just sneak in
and if you get caught sneaking out, you say, here's
some gold, have some gold. Well, yeah, and as long
as somebody melt sit down. I'm assuming, of course, that

(16:02):
it's in bar form and not in whatever original jewelry
shape it was. If it's in bar form, they're in
turn going to have to turn around and melt it
down themselves. Then whoever being bribe? Because what do they
call it when they stamp gold? I think it's called hallmarks, okay,
because it would definitely have that hallmark on it to

(16:23):
indicate where it was from. And I would be a
little and I guess if you're willing to take a bribe,
you don't really care where it came from. But that
could cause a lot of a lot of alarms to
go off if you then turn around and try and
pass that off. Do you think that was something that
was documented, Like do you think they have records in
the places that they were stolen from that these specific
gold bars were stolen they you know, it just depends.

(16:47):
I mean if the records survived the war or not.
A lot of buildings got destroyed. It seems like the
sort of thing you would destroy if you were taking stuff.
You might, yeah, but I mean if if if something
is stamped, you know, such and such bank Shanghai, China,
now then that's that's kind of a giveaway. Yeah. Yeah, Actually,
the hallmarks do do play a small part in our
story here in the future. Yeah. Yeah, well, let's let's

(17:09):
move on to our next theory. It's real and somebody
has actually found some of it. That's the Yeah, that
is the theory. Yeah, there is some evidence for this theory,
unlike our our the series and which are all kind
of like not really much evidence, not really any evidence. Yeah,
this is Roelio Rojas and we're gonna tell his story
and it's kind of interesting. There's more information on this

(17:30):
one because it was litigated in the nineteen eighties and
nineties and so there's a fair amount of information available
for this and people people testified in court and stuff
like that, so there's a legal documentation. Yeah, yeah, there was,
there was a lawsuit. Rohelio Rojas was a locksmith in
Baggio City, the Philippines, which is on the island of Luzon,
which you know, for all of you who know all

(17:51):
about the Philippines is where Middla also is. I think
it's the most populous island in the Philippines. And again
I was that was too busy research this to research
stuff like that. He besides being a locksmith, was also
a coin collector and a treasure hunter. In he met
a man named Albert Futagami in Bagio City who was

(18:13):
a fellow treasure hunter and they became friends. Fuchigami was
the son of a Filipino woman and a Japanese soldier
and uh Eventually Fuchigami took Rhelio into his confidence and
told him his father had drawn a map identifying the
location of one of the treasure trows of your Monster's gold. Yeah.

(18:34):
He also around the same time met this other guy
who has an unpronounceable name who claimed to have served
as General Yamashta's interpreter during World War two. Shibo Okuba Okubauba. Yeah,
that sounds about right. He told him that this interpreter
said that during the war he had been taken to

(18:55):
some tunnels controlled by General Yamashta in order to get
some silver to pay for food for the troops. And
he said he saw boxes of various sizes. It contained
gold and silver, and also he saw a golden Buddhist
statue which was at a convent very very close by.
And uh, so, with the clusive he got from this
guy and the map, that he got from Puchigamy. He
partnered up with Fuchigami and they hired some laborers to

(19:16):
search for the treasure. They got a permit and everything
for it. You're supposed to because it was on government lands,
they're gonna be looking. Oh yeah, that would be important. Yeah,
it kind of would be. Uh. In nineteen seventy, they
began digging in up near the Baggio General Hospital in
Bagio City, and after seven months of searching and digging,
they broke into a system of tunnels underground. You know,

(19:37):
that's a good thing, would be exciting. Yeah, And inside
that the tunnel they found wiring and radio's band at swords, rifles,
and a human skeleton wearing a Japanese army uniform. Yeah.
Not to be fair enough that that was so uncommon
for Japanese soldiers to have tunnels, right, yeah, not really

(19:57):
fairly common. Yeah yeah, so mean, yeah for hiding in
that kind of natural cave systems are great for that. Yeah.
I don't know if this was a natural cave system
or what. Okay, I presumed it was a natural cave,
even unnatural, I mean that was that was a pretty
solid part of their warfare. Strategy wasn't it was tunnels,
I think. I think a lot of armies do that. Yeah,

(20:18):
so it's not yeah yeah, just because the tunnel excess
doesn't mean treasure. It doesn't mean it was there for treasure.
But they spent about a month in this tunnel though
actually it was a whole series of tunnels, and they
explored and they didn't find any find anything. And then
Rojas got himself a metal detector and went around and
got himself a strong signal. In one place, they dug
a little bit and they hit concrete and they hammered

(20:40):
through the concrete. I'm not sure how long it take
to break through, but we probably, yeah, could. They found
a room below below the tunnel, and inside this room
they found a gold buddha, a solid gold buddha, yeah,
which according to Rojas, about three feet in height. It was.
It was really heavy. It took ten men to get

(21:00):
it to the surface. That you had to use a
chain block, hoist and ropes, and then they rolled it
on logs through the tunnels apparently, and rouse guests was
probably about a metric ton and he told his men
to take it to his house and put it in
the closet. Wait a second, I know, Wait a second.
It takes ten guys to haul this out of the cave.

(21:21):
And he's like, oh, yeah, then take it to my
house and put it in the closet. Yeah, how do
you get the rolling lodge through your house? This is unspecified. Yeah,
I don't know. Yeah, this whole part, this part of this,
the of his story mystifies me. Well, there's there's other
parts that mystify you and then mystify me too. But okay,

(21:42):
he did manage to persuade the persuaded jury to believe
his story. I know. But yeah, I gotta be honest
with you. The thing that mystifies me is that he
was a treasure hunter who somehow didn't have a metal detector,
Like he had to go out and say, oh, I'm
gonna go get a metal detector. Yeah, but in my mind,

(22:05):
like treasure hunters, the staple of treasure hunting is metal detector.
Indiana Jones never had a metal detector on. He wasn't
a treasure hunter. Yeah, he was, he kind of was.
He was an adventurer, he was an archaeologist. He was
an archaeologist. He had better reason to have the metal
detector and he didn't yeh. He had an interesting style

(22:26):
when it came to archaeology. Yeah, just go and steal
some stuff. Poked the walls. Yeah, sorry, we just we
just got way off on the side there. Yeah. Yeah.
Back at the back to Rojas Helio, about fifty ft
from where Buddha was, it was a big stack of boxes.
There were stacked five or six high, open area over

(22:47):
an area six ft wide and thirty ft long roughly.
And he came back the next day and opened one
of the boxes and it contained twenty four bars of gold,
and he didn't open any of the other boxes. I
got this weird. Well, yeah, and I got this from
he gave He actually died before this whole thing went
to trial, but he gave a deposition before and so

(23:07):
this is from the courts documents. So this is this
is from the mouth of Jelio. Yeah. Yeah, if that
seems a bit odd, I mean I would be if
I saw a pile of boxes, I would open them
right up. Maybe there would be snakes in one though,
that's a good point, so I wouldn't open run. You
opened one and it was like the right door, right,
it was show the right door so you just stay,
you don't open all the rest of that makes total sense.

(23:30):
I know. That's why I am the one of us
that keeps finding all the treasure and don't one gets
a bit by snakes. Yeah, I screaming like a little girl.
Yeah about him several weeks later, and they don't specify
exactly in the court documents, he returned because he wanted
to seal the tunnel closed, and so he was going
to use dynamite to plastic closed for safe keeping of

(23:53):
the treasure. Right, he returned to shut it. He took
the twenty four bars of gold then, and also some
sam restaurats and bayonets and other souvenirs. And some weeks
went by after that. This is, by the way, they
found the Buddha and the gold on January. So this
is about this is in February when he's blasting his
shut western the whole shut. And some time went by

(24:16):
and he sold seven of the gold bars, and he
was looking for a buyer for the golden Buddha, and
his plan was to raise funds to go back and
get the rest of the gold bars, which you know, okay,
that's a strategy. Yeah, I guess sell sell a small
amount of treasure to fund getting the rest. Yeah, I
got it. Could they'd be heavy, you would need a
lot of Yeah. In April sevente she he had showed

(24:38):
the Buddha to two other people, and then he showed
it to a third buyer, a guy named Joe Oyahara,
who said he was interested, and he said he would
come back in several days with the million pacos as
a down payment. After he left, Roehus got curious about
the Buddha. He took a closer look at and he
found out that the head was removable, So he got
the head off of it, and he looked inside and
there was a compartment and said inside the Buddha that

(25:01):
was filled with stones which looked like uncut diamonds. So
he scooped me out. He said, they're about two handfuls
of uncut diamonds inside the buddha. If you put the
head back on, put the diamonds I guess in a
bag and put them in the closet next to the buddha. Yeah. Yeah, Yeah,
this guy's got a great safe system. Yeah, I know.

(25:23):
I don't know if it took ten dudes to carry
the bood out. It's not exactly gonna walk up, but
the bag of diamonds, the bag of diamonds I would
have taken out in my backyard and buried or something. Yeah,
I think. So, you know, we've searched in your I mean,
we helped, we were digging for treasure. It's it's booby
trapped by the way, so don't go near and don't
go near it. Yeah. So four days after Joe Oihara

(25:45):
came over to look at the Buddha, at two thirty
in the morning, eight men from the Criminal Investigation Service
and the National Bureau of Investigation came pounding on the
door and demanded to be let in, and they said
they had a search warrant. So after Roejus opened the door,
these eight guys come inside. They are wearing military uniforms
and they've got Joe Oihara with them, uh, And they

(26:08):
showed him a document that they said was a search warrant.
And the soldiers were beat on Rohaus's brother with their
rifles and made the whole family get on the floor.
And then when they left, they took the buddha, also
the diamonds, the remaining seventeen bars of gold, the samurai swords,
a piggy bank belonging to the kids and and his
wife's coin collection, so that they they cleaned pretty much

(26:30):
cleaned him out. Yeah, so Roehus reported it to the
media and also the local police. He also went to
this judge who he knew was just name was Peo
Marcos and he apparently was related to Ferdinand Marcos. I
guess at one point Rojaus used to work for him
and that's how they knew each other. And also Marcos
judge Marcos was the guy that he wants to to
get the permit to dig on stay lands. I forget

(26:52):
to mention that, uh, he had noticed Marcus his signature
and the search warrant that the police had showed him,
and he asked why he had signed his search warrant,
and Marcos said they had no choice because Ferdinand Marcos
had ordered it and said he had ordered the confiscation.
The whole pretext for them coming into the house is
Joe Oi Harris companion had claimed he was seen the
illegal gun in the house, so he he filed the complaint.

(27:16):
But this guy apparently had connections to Marcos also, So
anyway we'd have gotten back to Marcos that there was
gold and a Buddha and all this stuff. We all
know who Ferdinand Marcos is, but I don't know that
all of our listeners do. She might want to want
to let some people know who we're alluding to. Yeah,
good point. Ferdinand Marcos was president of the Philippine I

(27:37):
believe from nineteen sixty nineteen eighty six. I know he
was definitely he was deposed in x Yeah. He he
eventually became, you know, supreme dictator and all that stuff.
Lots of human rights abuses. Eventually there's a revolution in
nine six and he was ousted and he and his
wife Emelda of the eight hundred shoe collection Marcos. So, yeah,

(27:58):
they want to political asylum in America and they wind
up living in Hawaii. And that's how we've got all
of this because the lawsuit that you're referencing for this
material is was filed in Hawaii. Yeah, it was. Judge
Marcus also appeared angry, according to Roja, said he had
reported the case of the police and the media and
said as a result, he would likely be killed. Yeah,

(28:21):
so Rojas interpreted that as a threat. So he went
into hiding for a little while, and then, uh, not
too long after that April ninetee, the military deposited a
buddha's statue with the city court in Baggio City, apparently
the same one this stance. So what did they do?
They put it out front or they took it they

(28:42):
turned it in that I don't know. I guess that
the court doesn't really say why, but they basically took
it in there and said, here's just here's his Buddha
back because in response to all the unwanted attention that
he'd been calling this Buddha. So, yeah, we confiscated it,
but here it is back returns. Yeah, we thought it
might be a dangerous exactly smiling Buddha. Yeah. Ten days

(29:08):
after that, Rojas went to the courthouse in Baggia City
where the Buddha was and it was accompanied by a
couple of bodyguards and a lawyer and miscellaneous reporters, and
he examined the buddha and he said it was not
the same Buddha that was in it that was taken
from his house. He claimed its color was different, he
said it had different facial features. Claimed the head was
also not detachable. And so I'm not so sure about

(29:33):
this because I've seen pictures of his brother took pictures
of him with the gold Buddha. Two pictures of their
kind of low resolution, but you can see the Buddha
pretty clearly. I don't know if you guys ever saw
those pictures, And there are also there's also one from
from the trial we'll lead up to the trial of
a Nel de Marcos looking at a Buddha. It looks
like the exact same Buddha to me. He claims that

(29:53):
the facial features are different, so it looks like the
exact same. But do you know that the one that
Amel de Marcos is in front of isn't the one
they were trying to return to him? That is that? Yeah,
so that's the one that they were trying to return
he claimed was not the same as his original one. Right,
But I I've seen the pictures from before the Buddha
was confiscated and then after, and they looked exactly the

(30:16):
same to me. Yeah, well, I mean he did, you know,
he made some claims about markings on it from tests
that were running stuff, and I know that that got
refuted and there's some there's some controversy around that itself.
But but the fact that the head doesn't come off
if he said the head comes off, that's kind of
an important thing. Now, that would be kind of an

(30:37):
important thing. But the thing about it is is, um
he could have been faking that too, because he had
a hard time getting the head offer. He originally didn't
didn't know for quite a long time that the head
came off. Yeah. Yeah, and guys are hauling it around.
I've got a guess they knocked it over at least
once by accident. You would think the head would have
popped off. Maybe I took him he had to whack

(30:59):
the head with a piece of with the like a
two by four. Yeah, okay, yeah, so he could have said, yeah,
it comes off really easy, and then oh, it didn't
come off. Okay, okay. I thought initially that the head
was just loose. No, no, no, it actually it was
hard to get off. But the I mean, the pictures
do show that the head was off in one black
and white pictures. Yeah, so that at least we know

(31:20):
it did actually come off. It did actually come off
on the original Buddha. And and again the one, the
one that they left at the courthouse, appeared to me
to be the same. Yeah, I mean, they look pretty similar.
It's hard to tell with resolution, you know photo resolution
of the time. If the color is actually different and
it's a different angle and there's like rope around the

(31:42):
one in the black and white pictures versus the one
in the court, there's not the rope, so it's hard
to tell. You know, lines that your eyes make without
the rope, they might not make. It's hard to tell.
I don't know. I personally think the one with the
rope that you can still see enough features, like, look
at the same they're not No, I'm can at it
right now. Um, if you look at the one that

(32:04):
he has, it's got you know, the line on your
face that runs from the corner of your nose, the
nasal labial fold. Yes, that one. I don't know how
the hell you know that. But I I actually, as
as I've looked at the photos and I had to
pull them up real quick just to double check, I
kind of think that they look different. I mean, I,

(32:26):
as we were saying, I see differences in in the face.
It's hard to tell for me just because it's I
I think the the they hit me as two different images, right,
But I can't say we'll see in this image it's
this and this issue is that because the resolution is
solo in the original two, and they're from a different
angle than any of the other way and the style

(32:48):
at the time there were there very stylistically similar. They're
from the same era. Yeah, they're very very similar, but
there's I see differences in the face. So I I, personally,
I don't through the same one just based on what
I've seen in the photos. I don't know what His brother,
Jose who was there at the house when the police
showed up and took the took it away. He's he

(33:09):
testified years later. Of course he he looked at it
and stantestified that it was the same Buddha. That's what
his brother said. So yeah, yeah, so I confused. Well
they do. They look very very similar. Yeah. Anyway, back
to Rohelio at this point, he wants to a kind
of a difficult three year period. He was arrested, beating,
tortured with electric shocks. They wanted to know, They wanted

(33:31):
to sign papers first of all, saying that the two
Buddhas were the same, and they also wanted to know
where he'd found it because obviously and the gold bars. Yeah,
and he refused to talk. They let him go, but
then he was re arrested. He managed to escape. He
wanted to hiding for a while, eventually was caught again. Uh.
In nineteen seventy three, he was convicted of possession of
an illegal gun and unlockfably firing a revolver into the air.

(33:54):
I don't know if that was true or not. I
think that the government had it in for him at
this point in time, and so it might have been
entirely bogus. But he went to jail for about a
year and a half and said that he would continue
to be beaten and interrogated in prison. When he arrived
home from prison in November in nineteen seventy four, back
to Bagio City, he went by the treasure site and
he noticed soldiers were standing outside tents near the near

(34:16):
the hospital, right at the treasure site where they had
done their excavation. Yeah, that's where they found the tunnels. Yeah.
Rohilo at this point kind of figured they probably had
found his treasure and and so he gave up on
pressing his claims and didn't do anything more about it
until after Marcos was deposed in Then he filed suit

(34:37):
in March in Hawaii against against both of the Marcus
is for theft and also for human rights abuses. A
lot of the information I'm gonna show you he comes
from that comes from the trials. As far as him
seeing soldiers at the dig site, the treasure site, there
were two witnesses that backed that up. They both worked
at the hospital and they both said that they saw

(34:58):
a lot of soldiers and laborers digging and around back there,
and they said they saw them carrying out boxes and
crates that appeared to be extremely heavy. It would be
like take like four to six guys to carry one
of these boxes. Uh. And and one of them said,
actually one time that he saw a box get dropped
in a broke open and a bunch of yellow bars
came out of it. So that kind of that's that

(35:19):
kind of backs up Julio story. Another guy named Robert
Curtis on a mining and refining business, and he said
he was brought over to the Philippines at the behest
of Marcos because because he wanted him to melt down
a bunch of gold bars to get rid of the
hold the hallmarks and cast new bars out of them.
So he actually did some work for them and building
and building a smelter. I don't know why they had

(35:41):
to call it get him. There had to be somebody
in the Philippines was capable of doing this. I'm wondering
if it was the scale. Yeah, yeah, because apparently, Yeah,
he saw he saw a room in the presidential Palace
that was like forty by forty ft that was stacked
to the ceiling with gold bars. He claims, that's a
pretty big scam. That's a nice lot. That's nice. A

(36:01):
little bit of gold there. Yeah. Although you know, if
anybody that knows about the gold market, that much gold
would flatten the economy globally, you couldn't. You couldn't just
dump it on the market all at once. You have
to dribble it out a little bit of a time. No,
I mean, we've assigned this this random figure or value

(36:22):
to gold. There is nothing special about gold. It's just
this thing we all covered so it we give it
this value, and when you flood the market with it,
it's not worth anything anymore. So you're not gonna be
you know, I'm gonna sell the gold and become super rich. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
you can. You're just gonna have to dribble it out

(36:43):
a little of the time. It's probably a good way
to attract less attention to Oh yeah. There were several
other people who testified at the trial that they had
also been shown rooms full of gold bars at both palaces.
They had a summer palace in a regular palace, and
of course, yeah, one guy said he still see this
had been taken blindfolded and taken to a warehouse and

(37:03):
then because he had questioned the existence of all the
gold and so they he saw this huge stack of
crates and and then they opened one up and it
they was pulled to gold bars. Although he said that
they were rather crudely made, so these might have been
some of the resmelted ones, and he said they were
they had finished like an orange peel. Yeah yeah, that's
not normal. Yeah yeah, I know. So between all these

(37:25):
between all these people testifying at the trial, that wasn't
not to convince the jury that Rohelio roe House was
telling the truth. And they certainly believed all the human
rights and stuff too, so they awarded there was plenty
of evidence of that. Yeah, oh yeah, I know, they
awarded the Royal House of State and the Golden Buddha Corporation.
I forgot to mention the bullet and the Golden Buddha Corporation.

(37:47):
He got a friend in the US to incorporate, uh,
and then he signed his interest in the treasure over
to the Golden Buddha Corporation, and Rohelio was a shareholder
in the corporation. Yeah, and so and so maybe that
maybe that's easier to sue an American court if it's
an American corporation versus a Filipino guy. Yeah, it sounds possible.

(38:09):
In nineteen six, the jury awarded the Royal House of
State and Golden Buddha twenty two billion dollars plus interest
plus interest. Yeah, what the interest? It came to over
forty billion dollars. Largest judgment of history. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. Unfortunately,
the Hawaiian Supreme Court reverses a couple of years later.

(38:31):
On the ground set. Even though there was a stack
of boxes, nobody actually knows what was in them. It's
it's a reasonable assumption to assume that they were all
full of goals, since one was. But actually, but like
I said, it could have been snakes. It could have
been snakes, It could have been dirt, It could have
been food that had long since rotted away. It could
have been could have been, it could have been stacks
of unicorn horns. Those are actually worth more than gold, though,

(38:52):
So this that would have been. This stood. That's good,
that's a good point. Uh. So the Supreme Court ordered
a new hearing to value just the golden Buddha and
the seventeen bars of gold, and also a few other
things like the coin collection, keep a piggy bank and
stuff like that. Uh and so like And by the way,

(39:13):
I read the course, I've read the whole opinion, and
it's pretty obvious they think the claim of the solid
gold Buddha as purebs Yeah, yeah, yeah, Like when they
talk about the Buddha, they they call it the gold
Buddha in it, you know, and quotes the gold Buddha.
So it's it's yeah, they obviously are unconvinced. But the
jury it doesn't really matter. The jury was convinced, I guess,

(39:36):
so from a legal standpoint, that's all that really matters.
In the next go around, they were awarded thirteen million
in change for the Buddha and the gold bars and
and all the other stuff, and the Rohsa state was
awarded six million dollars for the human rights abuses because
because at this point Rhalio was dead. Yeah, I forgot
to mention he died in Yeah, unfortunately that kind of
really well, he there was some stress that happened, I know. Yeah,

(40:01):
two years after he died. This is this would have
been his brother. Jose commenced an action at the Regional
Truck Court in Baggies City asking for release of the
buddha since they still had it in their custody all
these years later and they wanted it to have it
back as a memento to Rohelio. And are they going
to use it as like a headstone? Yeah, yeah, I

(40:21):
don't know. I just put it in the yard and
the headstone would be kind of cool. Yeah, nobody will
ever get rid of that memo. Yeah. At the initial hearing,
he testified that he had been present when the rating
party took the buddha out of his out of the house,
and the court told him to take a look at
the Buddha that they had there and say is this
the same one? And he said it was. And then

(40:43):
at a second hearing, Jose said he test untestified under
oath that the Buddha that had been at Rohelio's house
was made of lead or copper, but reporters had added
that the Buddhas made of gold, so it might have
been the press actually puffed this up a little bit. Yeah.
He also said that Rohelio Rojas knew it was made
out of lead or something and not gold, but he

(41:03):
said that wrote Rojas had claimed it was gold because
he had been bribed by opposition politicians to do to
do this. Yexplained that to me, the opposition politician bid
yea in the Philippines. Yeah, they've been bribed by politicians
to say this, to pump the story up. Oh, to
then throw dirt at Marcos essentially, okay, okay, got it.

(41:26):
Didn't didn't make that connection right away. So that's sort
of sort of some of his other claims, I guess. Oh.
And by the way, as a counterpoint to that, that's
the same trial record also had a letter to the
judge sent by Daniel Kaskar, who was the attorney for
Golden Buddha and the Rojasa State, and his letter said
that Emelda had met with Jose Rojas and offered him

(41:46):
money to petition the court for the brass Buddha and
then false identify it as the same one as have
been taken from Roelio. I know it's yeah, and that's
that's I guess that's possible. Uh So the buddha that
was in the court custody had been brass all along,
brass or lead or something. It wasn't to me like

(42:07):
it's painted. And if it really weighed as much as
they as they said it, dude, then I'm thinking lead. Yeah. Yeah,
But so that that was the case, right, it wasn't
the one that wasn't it was in court custody, wasn't
in fact full gold. It wasn't gold. Did Rojas find
imatched his gold or at least some of it? He
might have unsolved mysteries. Did an episode about this before

(42:31):
he died, and he was He had a lot of
FaceTime on camera and he seemed sincere and believable. But
I still have a few problems with this story, such
as he spots a huge pile of boxes near the buddha,
but he didn't bother opening a single one until the
next day. Well, that's a lot of work to get
the boot out. Yeah, that's true, I guess. I mean,
you know, the buddha could have been blocking the way

(42:53):
to the boxes, right, They had to move it before
he get to the boxes, and by the time they
got it out, he was like, coming back tomorrow, could
be Yeah again, I would be. I would be hugely
curious about what was I would too, but you know,
I would step over the three foot tall bood. I
would think that's just me. Yeah. He left the box

(43:15):
of gold bars four gold bars sitting in the tunnels
for several weeks, so we're talking like three or four
weeks before he came back and retrieved them and then
blasted the tunnel ship. Would you do that? No, you
either continue to pull stuff out or you shut it
up right away exactly. But he might not have He
might not have known what he was going to do.

(43:36):
He may have thought, I can continue to pull this
stuff out, suddenly realized he was out of money and
selling the gold he had wasn't going as quickly as
he expected. I mean, people do this stuff in business
all the time. Oh, don't worry about it. We'll have
this totally take care of in like two days, No
big deal. Three weeks later they still have nothing done.

(43:58):
It happens, Well, yeah, I don't know. It's just I
still feel like it would have it would have driven
me crazy. I mean, I found if I found this
tunnel and I know that there's at least twenty four
gold bars sitting there, and that anybody could just one
of the people that I that one of the laborers
that I had hired, for example, knows where it's at,
he could go back there with his buddies and steal
all that gold. But he never opened the boxes in

(44:21):
front of those people. But maybe that's why he didn't
open the boxes. Maybe you wanted to. That's that's possibility. Um.
But still, if those people saw the pile of boxes,
then I wouldn't you wouldn't you? I mean, you're not
really here. They are one of the labors. You see
the pile of boxes, aren't you going to go and
probably want to open yourself? Yeah? You know most people would. Yeah.

(44:46):
So I'm just saying this is from if I were Hlio,
I would not be able to sleep knowing that this
tunnel was open and that the people that have had
seen the pile of boxes could go back at any
time and take or knowing that some random do could
just come along discover the opening and go in there
and discover and take all this stuff. I wouldn't be
able to sleep, and yet he wants several weeks just

(45:07):
leaving all the gold in there. I okay, So I think,
as we've done in the past, we're presuming that the
crew is with him and in there working the entire time,
and therefore intimately familiar with everything that's going on, when
in fact, they were hunting around at a bunch of

(45:28):
freaking caves for weeks on end. And it is possible
that once he found the concrete bit that he had
to break through, that he was like, oh, well, I
don't want to pay anybody else to do it, I'll
just swing a sledgehammer for a day and broke through
it himself and then said, you know, hired these how
were ten men or whatever it took, said hey, I

(45:49):
have this thing in this tunnel. I want you to
pull out, and they just completely different than the other crew,
maybe unawares walk in, Oh yeah, this thing is heavy
and all it out and have no idea what they're
walking into. Well, you know that's true enough, but still
there's still the possibility of some random dude could discover
the cave right there. I'm just saying that it may

(46:12):
not have been a situation where the workers knew what
was going on to then get the idea of, well,
I'm going to go back on my own and see
what it really is. Yeah. Maybe not, I don't know,
but I still I still would not have left that
pile of gold sitting there. No, I mean I don't
think anybody would. He'd have to be crazy to do that. Yeah,
pretty much, I think so. Yeah. Next, he was trying

(46:35):
to sell the Buddha to raise funds to finance the
removal of the boxes of gold bars in the tunnel.
But he sold seven gold bars. That was that should
have dedit him a big punch of money. Yeah, unless
he got swindled. Well, it didn't know the value of
the gold he was getting, or it wasn't high quality goals.
I mean, there's there's a bunch of oars here. Well

(46:56):
I'm sure, yeah, I'm sure he had to sell it
at a discounted price. I'm sure he didn't get full
gold value for it. But it may not have been
twenty two or twenty four carrot gold. It could have
been low quality gold, which therefore is worth less money. Yeah,
but still it would have been worth quite a bit.
It would have been worth charge. But then you if
if you say it's low quality, and then you're selling

(47:18):
it at a cut rate, and then you don't really
know what that cut rate should be. So your gold buyer,
who's kind of a swindly little guy, knocked you down
even more. You could be getting you know, ten or
twenty percent of what the value of what you're selling is.
I mean, it still should have been enough to fund
some more some more hauling out of stuff. Actually, since

(47:41):
you know, my question is is like why not just
do a couple of bars a day? You just walk
over to your okay, right, I mean the impression I
have is it was close to his home. You just
walk over there and throw a couple in a box
and you know, put it over your shoulder and walk
home and that, Like what's the finance need? I mean
I have to do it in one fall swoop. Of

(48:02):
course you need the financing. But yeah, you know what
I would do is what I would have done is
I would have just hired, you know, hired some laborers,
people that were trustworthy, didn't know we were't going to
kill me for the gold or anything. And they say, look,
you help me with this. I'll give you each a
couple of bars of gold. Yeah that works. Yeah, that's
what I would have done. But hey, the one thing
that I I like the idea of just going and

(48:24):
packing out a couple of bars a day, except that
gold bars, even when they're little ones, they're freaking heavy. Yeah,
I think, and I'm I don't know the exact number,
but I'm gonna ballpark it between fifty two seventy pounds
is what I want to say. A bar of gold wayspack.
But that means you can carry one or two, maybe three,

(48:49):
not three in a backpack. A very physically fit person
could pack three a day. But you pack that for
five ten miles, that's a that's a workout and a half. Yeah,
So that that would be better shut in daunting task
while you're gaining money for you're not you know, it's

(49:09):
like the best gym workout, except for free. I mean,
actually you're getting paid a lot of money for it.
Because that was the other thing, right, is that the
cost of gold per ounce was like almost nine hundred
bucks at that point, right something. It was more than
it had climbed up away. So there I think it
might have been. It might have been more like five
or six hundred even back. But even then, if you

(49:31):
if we're saying it's fifty or seventy pounds, right, we're
saying it's like four hundred ish ounces you're getting. I mean,
if you're if you're getting even five hundred dollars per ounce,
that's incredible. And even if you're only making of that,
you should be able to easily finance with one bar

(49:53):
getting the rest of that stuff out of it, especially
since labor of the Philippines is really pretty cheap. Yeah,
and then you just say you know, or again you
just they here's a bar. Yeah, everybody way. Yeah. The
next thing I want to know is who do you
sell the bars too? He sold seven bars, supposedly, his
lawyers never asked him. They've never asked him because, after all,

(50:14):
that guy would have been a great witness, because it
would have established that that Rohalio did indeed have some
gold bars in his possession. Also, they couldn't find somebody
to lie about it, even if not much of a lawyer.
Uh yeah, So evidence regarding the gold bars, it's really
pretty thin when you come down to it. Another thing

(50:34):
that I was I really kind of scratched my head
over is that his partner and friend, al Albert Fusugami
was never heard from. They didn't track him down, They
didn't track down any of the hired laborers. Perhaps that
helped out in their little dig and had them testify. Well,
it may have been that they didn't know who the
labors were. Well, possibly because they're just guys he hires,
and maybe Albert's dead by now. I don't know. Still,

(50:57):
I'm kind of I'm kind of surprised that they were
not to find any of those people and that they
would have been That would have been something that they
would have been able to just do, like a deposition
in the Philippines for right. I mean, the trials are
happening in Hawaii. It's not cheap to fly people places.
It's not not everybody wants to fly places, So that
would have been right. That's what we're saying is we

(51:18):
could have just gone, could have gone in the Philippine
and just done some positions. Okay, I want to be
clear statement on the record, So long story short, I
am I really don't think Rohlio found anything other than
a lead Buddha because the people, the people who actually
saw the boxes, and we don't know how many people

(51:40):
other than saw the boxes, But any of those people
that saw it were never never part of this whole thing.
They never testified, So we only have Rohelio's word that
there were this there was a huge pile of boxes,
and so I'm kind of thinking maybe he only found
the lead Buddha and nothing else. Well, and furthermore, there
were there were a lot of people who testified that
they saw the boxes, but at Marcos's palaces, right, Yeah,

(52:04):
some people said they saw boxes, not necessarily also saw
just stacks and stacks, right, So there's really no evidence
to suggest that Marcos stole that stuff, right that at
the hospital, yeah, yeah, which seems to be supported. Yeah,
But also in fairness, if you just kind of figured

(52:25):
out that this guy who's been claiming all this stuff,
that's where he claimed to have been digging, it might
warrant a dig just to see even if it was
a lie, you know, you wouldn't know. You just say, oh, yeah,
this guy said he found a bunch of gold here,
so we'll go dig there. Yeah, right, what's the harm
you have a lot of military Yeah, send those guys. Well,
I mean, there were other other people involved. Two besides

(52:48):
Roelio so somebody else might have might have squealed. Yeah, yeah,
that's why you didn't hear from them. Yeah, I could be.
Let's move on to our last series. So then, do
you guys have anything more to say about Rohelio? Do
you think you found it? Do you think he do
you think he didn't find it? No? But I can't
believe this is our last theory. You've left one out.
Oh oh, Mr Gold, Yeah, I can talk about Mr Gold. Well,

(53:10):
we'll talk to Mr We'll talk about Mr Gold after this,
because Mr Gold is mostly just for fun. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
back there last day, Mster's Gold is just an urban legend.
In favor of this, I have to say a lot
of people have been looking for the treasure for decades
now and you haven't found a trace of it, and
so you would think somebody would have found something by now.
It does seem suspicious. And also, why would the Japanese

(53:32):
send everything to the Philippines. It would have made it
more really, it would really would have made more sense
to ship at overland, say that Shanghai or Korea, which
are much closer to Japan, and go from there. Um.
And if it did wind up and it was too,
if it was too risky to take to Japan on
ships from the Philippines, assuming it had wound up in
the Philippines, and why not just use submarines. Well, the
other the other thing that I wonder is if if

(53:54):
they're putting everything on a boat and they're taking it somewhere,
why wouldn't they take it to the main land, Because
they controlled huge chunks of the mainland at that time,
they could have taken it to Korea, which is kind
of in a straight line. It's one of the shortest
water distances to Japan from the mainland, and then you
make the run from there, because that's that's your narrow

(54:17):
one that that's what I'm saying, that would have been
more sense. Okay, yeah, uh yeah. Shanghai is actually it's
it's probably it's it's a little further away, but still
it's a lot hell of a lot closer than than
the Philippines. Yeah, so I don't I don't really see
why they would ship all that stuff to the Philippines
to begin with. It also seems to me that if

(54:38):
it did wind up in the Philippines, getting on that
loop back to Japan would have been a very high priority.
Don't you think that would have been a and said
they would have found a way to do at submarines whatever,
you know, it would have been something. Yeah. Against this
seria is it's been proven that the existence sub urban
legends is itself an urban legend. Really, people don't just

(55:00):
make stuff up. No, No, they never happened. Never happened.
So you guys have any favorites. What's what's your favorite
theory to talk about. We're gonna talk about Mr Gold
for a second because I came across this one and
when I when I saw your notes, I was laughing
that you had intentionally left out Mr Gold because he
loves gold. Because his name is Mr Gold, which is

(55:24):
a pseudonym, would assume him be the right word. It's yeah,
because we don't know who this guy is. He's the
American Free Press dot net I believe it is, has
been putting out his story. They put it out over
the course of like six months or a year. Some
guy who is an American citizen says he went down
there and he found all the gold, and he hired

(55:48):
a company to to excavate it and pack it out,
and that company never showed. Years later, he gets some
of it, and then suddenly the FED show up at
his door because his name is on record with this
other company, the one that never showed up, which, by
the way, the name of the company is B I

(56:08):
AM Incorporated, which the B I M is in capital letters,
but if you look at it and you flip it around,
because I do word jumbles all the time, it's M
I B as in men and black men and black incorporated.
And uh so, now he's been detained by the US
government because he's got, you know, a hundred trillion dollars

(56:31):
worth of gold and he's on these trumped up mail
fraud charges. Is why he's still in jail. And it's
in it's a it's a fun tale, and I'll leave
it at that. Is it's just it's a really fun tale.
But nothing of its even smells remotely of truth. No,

(56:51):
not even slightly. Yeah, work of fiction is what I
would say on that one. But it's it's it's one
of the things that you find, it's one of the
initial things you find when you start ching for this story.
So that's why. Yeah, yeah, it does kind of out,
but yeah, it's obviously nonsense. So yeah, what do you
guys think how many favorite theories. I don't think it

(57:12):
actually exists. Yeah, I mean either, I don't think they
would have taken the time. If they're looting jewelry and
everything from everyone and it's full of precious gems, that's
a lot of work to separate everything and then melted
down and then pack that out instead of just chucking
it in a box and packing it all out. I

(57:32):
also think that, um, if soldiers are looting, they're probably
gonna keep that stuff, a fair amount of it. Maybe
not all right, They're they're gonna keep a cat. I
think that supposedly this whole thing was was organized from
the highest levels and so so it was like they

(57:52):
did a fairly decent job supposedly. But again, you know,
Steve's point is is totally right. You you just have jewelry, right,
If you jewelry, you just toss it in a box
or you know whatever, and it's it's even it's harder
to trace at that point. I mean, you know, the
number of super unique pieces of jewelry out there is

(58:13):
because you don't you don't want to, you don't want
to spend the time and effort It takes too for
your people who you're employing to sit down and separate
all of this. I mean, the Germans did this when
they looted everybody, but they use slave labor to do
that separation process. The Japanese didn't have a whole huge

(58:34):
swath of that available, so that's a lot of effort
on their part. Well, also, it just doesn't I mean,
it just doesn't make sense that you would do that
in the middle of a war. You Yeah, well, especially
when you're in these small areas. Yeah, they did, and
they would have. They would have probably actually not all
of it would have been melted down into gold bars,
but they would would have come across gold bars and
banks and like that. Yeah. But yeah, I just can't

(58:56):
see it. I'm shipping into the Philippines. It makes no sense,
I agree. Yeah, alright, sorry everybody. I guess it doesn't exist.
Well that's about it for this week, unless you guys
have anything more you want to say about your Muson's gold.
Yeah all right. Well, if you guys, if you have
any thoughts about it out there, listener person, you can
call person. You know. I like that designation. They are

(59:19):
now not listeners there. Listener Person's right. If you want
to find a place to download our episodes because obviously,
since you're listening you obviously I don't have a clue
head of downloader episodes, but you can find it. You
find every episode on our our website, which is Thinking
Sideways podcast dot com. You can leave comments, you can
check our links because we have links to a lot
of these mysteries, and of course you can listen to episodes. Uh.

(59:41):
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(01:00:02):
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(01:00:25):
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(01:00:50):
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there's a wink. They're all winks. We have lots and

(01:01:31):
lots of winks on the website. Okay, guys, Yeah, well
this one done. All Right's see you next week folks. Later, guys. Bye, guys,