The Mystery of Yamashita's Map

by James McKenzie

  THE MYSTERY OF YAMASHITA’S MAP

  by

  James McKenzie

  First published in Great Britain in 2006 by Book Guild Publishing

  Pavilion View

  19 New Road

  Brighton, East Sussex

  BN1 1UF

  Copyright © James McKenzie 2006

  Paperback edition 2009

  ebook edition 24th. December 2014

  Revised Paperback edition 18th. May. 2015

  The right of James McKenzie to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real people, alive or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Typesetting in Baskerville by Keyboard Services, Luton, Bedfordshire

  Printed in Great Britain by Athenaeum Press Ltd, Gateshead

  A catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library

  ISBN-13: 978-1512260670

  ISBN-10: 1512260673

  Your book has been assigned a CreateSpace ISBN

  To Mum and Dad, my family, and to all the branches in our tree. To Helen, Steven and Ian, for their patience and forbearance and a special thanks to all my friends and family in the Philippines for their inspiration. Without them I would never have come to know about the story of Yamashita’s treasure.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Manilla, 1946

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  References

  Prologue

  The Philippines, 1945

  The broken bodies lay like hideous eruptions on the surface of the dried earth, their dull skin reflecting no light from the sun that beat down relentlessly in the midday. Of the living, there were two kinds: those that had guns, and those that had spades. Those that had guns stood on the high ground or under the shade of small beige tents which were flecked with fly droppings and particles of mud thrown up over time, time that had been harsh and unyielding. Those that had spades dug on and in the ground or occasionally, with backs bent, carried wooden boxes which weighed much more than their undernourished frames could manage. Every few minutes another body would lose its will to cling on to what little life it was allowed to have and fall to the ground where it was first beaten, to make sure of its lifelessness, and then dragged away from the mass of people to the makeshift open grave at the edge of the encampment. Those with guns knew that time was running out: they knew that the war was coming to end and things had to be taken care of before it did. This was why their guns were seldom in their holsters; this was why their whips had more ferocity these days. This was why their beatings aimed to kill rather than to reprimand. A dead worker here was better than a sick one and so the transition from one to the other was undertaken swiftly and with precision. The flies made their home in the bodies that were left for the animals and the sun to pick over. The mounds of tanned leather human skin were a testament to the worthlessness of the lives of those who once inhabited this area but had now fallen victim to slavery or greed. You might, if you glimpsed a slight percentage of this picture, think that it was, perhaps, a vision of hell, that the faces of those who dug and carried and sweated and died were those of the dammed, forever doomed to carry on as they were now for all eternity; that the relief of death would never come. Here though those who keep guard are all too human. In one of the tents, at midday, General Tomoyuki Yamashita sits and eats. The rice bowl he holds in his lap has been with him all through the war and before that was his father’s. He is a man who likes to do things correctly, with little or no fuss. Gently, he lifts the bowl to his lips and, with his fingers slightly bent, scoops the rice into his mouth, letting the pale brown sauce fall over his lips and run down his chin. His light brown uniform is stained slightly with sweat and dust but, unlike most of those around him, is in near perfect condition. He places the bowl on the small side table, pours some green tea into a cup and drinks. With thought, he shouts to his second in command who has been standing outside the tent waiting for just such a call. ‘Amichi!’ The flaps of the tent open and a young officer shuffles in apologetically. He knows also that time is running out; he knows that soon the Americans or the British will be coming through and that the questions they will ask will be hard for him to answer. This is the time, he thinks to himself, that one becomes a man again instead of a soldier; these are the times when one has to answer to oneself. He can barely believe he is thinking such things and, quickly, checks about him to make sure no one has been reading his thoughts.

  Trying to avoid eye contact, he watches Yamashita slap his open palms on to his knees.

  ‘How is the tunnelling?’

  Amichi bows. ‘Very well, General. We have eighty percent of the gold stored already, a little more to go.’

  ‘Good, good. What about the jungle, how long will it take to cover the ground?’

  ‘Not long at all, General, perhaps a year at the most. The growth around here is tremendous. They say if you stand still for an hour you will become part of the jungle.’

  Yamashita laughed, exposing his shining white teeth and blood red tongue. ‘Good, but I don’t intend to become part of the jungle. As soon as this is done I am returning to Tokyo. I have done with this place.’

  ‘Yes, General.’

  ‘However, I need you to do something. I want you to map the area. Once the jungle reclaims this land you won’t be able to tell this place from thousands of others.’

  ‘Yes, General.’

  There was a pause between the two men; a question that remained unasked seemed to disturb them both. The tunnels that hid the gold, that were being dug day and night by the Filipino workers, would surely pinpoint the location even after the jungle had grown back. The entrances to the network of underground safes would be visible from the ground. All they had to do was come back to the same area and there they would be. Amichi hesitated but Yamashita waved him away with a magisterial movement of the hand.

  Outside, the air was hotter than he had remembered and Amichi felt it hit his skin. The sun was so bright now it hurt his eyes to look at the dry ground that would be watered by the rains of the rainy season and spring to life again. He called to a foot soldier to bring him a pencil and paper and began to scout the ground. Mapping the area was going to be difficult, it all looked so similar, but eventually he found local landmarks: the river, the hill, the pile of earth where last week’s dead were buried. Signs were etched out on boulders should the jungle swallow up everything in its unrelenting quest to assimilate everything in its path. Amichi found himself staring at the map, his mind wondered back to the good old days of the Imperial Japanese Army Academy where he had been a student. He thought about the visit last week of the Emperor’s grandson, Prince Takeda, who spent most of his time in General Yamashita’s tent studying maps and talking tactics. He found it strange that Princ
e Takeda should take such a personal interest in this particular tunnel. “Booby traps”, he remembered. The soldiers and the Filipino prisoners had planted mines in the tunnels, but where exactly, he had no idea. He decided to leave this information off the map, it might be better this way. Anyway, he didn’t want some treasure hunter to find the gold. Taking one last look to check that the map accurately showed the area and location of the tunnel he folded it up and called over to one of his soldiers, instructing him to take the map to General Yamashita. He hoped it would be acceptable to his General, as Yamashita had an uncanny knack of spotting his mistakes.

  Hour after hour, day after day the trucks kept coming with gold. Most of it had been looted from temples and rich homes across almost the whole of South East Asia. It had been one of those spoils of war that is broken and invested by the winner but hidden and longed for by the loser. Amichi thought that, in a war, very rarely do those who own the riches ever get to keep them – eventually they will always be taken either by the victor or the vanquished. His thoughts turned to his own two daughters at home and, not for the first time that week, he wished he could see them again. Suddenly, one of the guards of the tunnel entrances rushed up to him, bringing him out of his dream with a jolt. ‘The tunnel,’ he shouted. ‘The tunnel is down.’ Amichi weighed up the situation. He knew in these moments there was protocol to be followed. He had been given orders for such occasions and these had to be adhered to, whatever the moral implications. He examined the mouth of the tunnel. ‘Any Japanese in there?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, Captain.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Six, Captain.’

  ‘How many Filipinos?’

  ‘Thirty-eight, Captain.’

  Amichi thought a moment. There were enough Japanese to warrant digging them out; no amount of Filipinos however could justify the spending of time and the endangering of Japanese lives. If the ratio was a little higher, the tunnel would just be closed up and work begun somewhere else. He ordered the tunnel to be dug out and made his way to the general’s tent.

  In his tent, Yamashita studied the map. He liked its thoroughness and its complexity. He had thought very little of Amichi since he joined his unit: there was something weak about him, something untrustworthy. Yamashita decided that after this spell he would have Amichi sent to the units in Malaya, where the jungle is likely to swallow up young, irresponsible captains who look and listen too much.

  He examined the map again. He recognised its contours and its landmarks. He carefully folded it up, flattening the folds with his strong stubby fingers. He leaned across his desk and picked up a small leather volume concerning the Buddhist temples of China; he smiled to himself at the aptness of his choice. Taking the folded piece of paper he eased it gently into the space between the spine and the binding, making sure it could not be seen from the outside. He opened and closed the book a few times to make sure it was safe and then replaced the book back on the shelf where it belonged.

  For all his military history, for all his pride, for all his ruthlessness, Yamashita was a lacklustre man. Throughout all this his heart and mind raced with the thought of returning after the war and opening up the tunnels to find the gold that was waiting for him. One could live easily on a general’s salary, but easy only. He had felt to himself that he was owed greater things by the Empire – the Empire that had taken his father and his grandfather, that had harried him round from place to place, never letting him rest, never allowing him any peace.

  He thought about the time in the future when he could afford the lifestyle he knew he was born for. He thought of the faces of those who had ridiculed him in the past. He thought of their jealousy and of their hatred for him. In fact, he thought so hard of these things that he failed to notice, across the other side of the tent through a hole in the fabric, the eyes that had been staring at him for the last five minutes. The eyes of Amichi, which blinked once and then disappeared.

  In one of the sweltering tunnels Bayani sat with his back against the cool wall of earth. He had been digging all day and the blisters on his palms began to ache with the pressure. The scarf tied tightly around his forehead was soaked with sweat and with the blood that dripped from the wound in his head. But he was a strong one; he had been born nearby and only just been captured by the Japanese. He could stand more of this; he could stand more than they could ever give out.

  He glanced over and saw an old man he recognised from that morning. The old man looked in trouble – he was breathing heavily and his eyes were closed. Bayani noticed that there was a thin stream of spittle running from his lip, almost ready to hit the ground. The old man had been carrying boxes all day and was already broken by the weight. Someone, somewhere, thought Bayani to himself, must know about the things that are going on here. Someone must be able to help. He slowly stood up and crossed the tunnel to where the old man sat. He put his arm around the old man’s shoulders and wiped his mouth with his shirt. The man rested his head on Bayani’s shoulder and, as he gently stroked his head he felt the old man weeping.

  Suddenly, there was a noise; a Japanese guard was pushing through the bodies in the tunnel. He reached the spot where the two sat and prodded Bayani with his rifle. Bayani did nothing, just continued to look after the old man. Again the guard pushed his rifle into the ribs of Bayani but again he did nothing. Quickly the guard raised his rifle as far as he could in the tunnel and brought it down squarely on the head of the old man, splitting it open and causing the blood to gush out over Bayani’s chest. The old man fell forward and lay in the dust and the earth of the tunnel floor. Bayani shot up and stood facing the Japanese guard.

  For a moment there was silence: all digging stopped, all movement ceased. The Japanese guard was shaking slightly, with fear or with anger, neither were really sure. Bayani picked up his spade and the guard flinched, holding and cocking his rifle at Bayani. For the briefest of moments the tunnel seemed to fill up with the breathing of the two men. There was nothing to choose between them; Bayani knew he had death on his side – here in the hell of the tunnel he owned death. He had no family to speak of now, no home to miss, no position to think of. Here, in this tunnel, he had all that he would ever have. Bayani swung the shovel and felt it come crashing down into the wall of the tunnel. He began digging as he had that morning and all the others like it since he had been taken captive. The Japanese guard smiled slightly and lowered his gun. Deep inside him he knew he had had a lucky escape; there is a fear that only an oppressor can feel – it is the fear of knowing you are pushing someone who has nowhere else to go.

  Outside, Amichi was overseeing the digging of the collapsed tunnel. Diligently he ordered the earth to be removed with hands rather than spades to avoid further collapse. As the tunnel was freed, men clambered out with their faces and bodies covered in black dusty earth. They looked for all the world as if they were crawling from their graves on judgement day – their eyes blinking in the sun as they crawled through the ever-widening gap that had been opened up in the side of the mound. From the tunnel he worked in Bayani could hear the commotion. He had felt the tunnel implode and guessed it was only a few hundred feet away, perhaps even the tunnel next to the one where he was working. He had got used to collapses, either of his tunnel or the surrounding ones. Some days there would be as many as three or four right after each other. The earth would shake and rumble and then there would be silence. The awful silence of men trapped. Amichi dragged a comrade out of the hole in the ground. The man coughed and spluttered and his spittle made dark patches around his mouth. Amichi cleared his throat and poured some water over his face to wash it. He could see the fear on the man’s face. Whoever works underground, whether they are miners or tunnel diggers or those who oversee them, gradually comes to accept the danger, but it is ever present. There is a constant fear of a collapse, a constant notion that the walls are beginning to move and the roof is beginning to cave in. Amichi himself had had friends who had entered the mouth of the tunnel in the morning a
nd not come out again.

  The tunnels were freezing cold in the morning, but as the day and the bodies in them heated up they became ovens which slowly cooked those inside until they thought they would rather die than last another day. All the time, there was the moving of the boxes, all the same size, all made of strong Japanese oak, each one containing gold, stolen and melted down into perfectly-sized ingots, for after the war. Of course, Amichi knew that the Filipinos knew nothing about the gold. They were merely told to dig and carry and they dug and carried. They were expendable in this operation and they were the one commodity that was cheaper during war than at any other time. Slowly, all of the Japanese were removed from the tunnel and, one by one most of the diggers came out also. Had there been a head count, it would have revealed that six were missing, lying dead by the portion of the tunnel which had seen the heaviest collapse. But there were no head counts anymore; there was not the time and besides, one never counts that which is useless.

  In his tent Yamashita was writing his report. This whole operation, of course, was sanctioned by the Imperial Army and, because of that, he had to document everything. Of course, what was the harm if a few details here and there went missing, like the location of a certain tunnel, the full map of the area, the number of boxes stored or the exact contents of each box? Yamashita smiled at his creativity as he managed to weave all four of these lies into his report, which concluded that a great many of the Filipino captives were, even now, cheating the Imperial Army out of many of the gold bars by storing them in tunnels dug under the cover of darkness. He wrote of his suspicions regarding Captain Amichi, thinking that perhaps the young officer would be better utilised if he were to be offered a desk job in Manila, ordering supplies or seeing to everyday logistics. He thought that he should be sent word of his family and wished for leave to see them.