For those scratching their heads.
The legendary Yamashita treasure, said to be a collection of gold, jewels, and precious artifacts amassed by the Japanese forces during World War II mostly in the South Eastern part of Asia, is believed to be hidden by some of the remnants of the Japanese army near the end of second world war in northern parts of Luzon, central Luzon, parts of the Tagalog region, and the Mindoro island.
The treasure was named after Tomoyuki Yamashita, nicknamed the “Tiger of Malaya”. Yamashita was a prominent Japanese general of the Imperial Army of Japan and is famous for his successful invasion of the Malayan British colonial region in south East Asia as well as Singapore. He was also one of the last commanding generals of Japan assigned in the Philippines before Japan’s imminent surrender to the liberating American forces in 1945.
It is believed by some treasure hunters and war historians that General Yamashita and his commanding army acquired billions of dollars worth of treasures containing gold, jewels, and rare archeological artifacts during their stint in the Malayan region. These treasures were mostly obtained in Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia-Vietnam, and Singapore. When Yamashita was stationed in the Philippines in 1944, some of the theorists believed that he ordered the shipment of these treasure loots from the Malayan region to the Philippines in preparation for its final transport to Japan, but before the planned shipment to the land of the rising sun, Yamashita and the rest of the Japanese forces in the Philippines were defeated by the united American and Filipino soldiers. However, the remaining Japanese forces, as ordered by Yamashita before their downfall, hastily buried the legendary treasures secretly in caves and underground caverns and drew complex maps for later retrieval. The retrieval did not happened as planned because General Tomoyuki Yamashita was tried for his war crimes and was executed in Los Baños, Laguna on February 23, 1946.
During the height of treasure hunting in the Philippines in the 60′s and the 70′s, some of these treasure hunters claimed they have acquired maps from old Japanese soldiers and relatives that showed the secret location of the said treasures of Yamashita. One such hunter, named Rogelio Roxas, claimed that in 1971, he and his team found the location of the Yamashita treasure near Baguio City were he found underground chambers containing boxes of gold bullions and a golden buddha made from 20 carat solid gold.
