Gold diggers: In search of hidden Japanese spoils of war…

Japanese Guards of the Railway of Death – Photo: Australian War Memorial

Thailand has its own version of the Loch Ness Monster; a persistent myth that pops up with the regularity of a clock. Although in this specific case it is not about a prehistoric aquatic creature, but about an even more imaginative enormous treasure that the retreating Japanese troops are said to have buried near the infamous Burma-Thai Railway at the end of World War II.

On April 20, 2014, forest rangers arrested the Forest Protection and Forest Fire Prevention Office four Thai men who were illegally digging in a cave in the Thong Pha Phum district of Kanchanaburi for a gold treasure hidden by the Japanese. These overzealous and enterprising adventurers had been digging for several weeks before they were caught in the act.

It is historically established that during the war, the Japanese army stole large reserves of gold and silver, as well as money and valuable art objects from the occupied territories in Southeast Asia in order to finance the Japanese war effort, among other things. A complex and large-scale operation that was co-led by Prince Yasuhito Chichibu, a brother of Emperor Hirohito. Legend has it that the Japanese Imperial Army would have used the know-how of Yakuza, the well-organized Japanese mafia to rob as much as possible. The stories of hidden treasures inspired branch of adventurers and prospectors. For example, the search continues today in the Philippines for the mythical treasure that the Japanese general Tomoyuki Yamashita is said to have hidden there in 1945. Yamashita took his secret to his grave by keeping his lips tight until February 23, 1946, the day he was executed by the Americans for war crimes in Los Banos… In February 2020, concerned residents of the Igabaras district the Philippine island of Panay to stop digging by gold miners because these busy activities had significantly increased the risk of deadly mudslides…

Some of the Japanese spoils of war are also said to have been hidden in Thailand. According to some rumors, it is said to be no less than 5000 tons of gold… An incredibly high and therefore implausible figure, but that does not prevent it from being searched for with the regularity of a clock. Since the XNUMXs, at least eight expeditions are officially known to have been organized in the inhospitable jungle in the border region between Burma and Thailand, but according to some Thai police sources there have been more than XNUMX attempts in the last half century. recover treasures.

Cave as a shelter along the Kwai river – Photo: Australian War Memorial

Are the stories about Japanese gold all bullshit? Maybe, maybe not. One of the most persistent legends is about railway carriages hidden in the limestone caves along the River Kwai. A story with a historical basis of truth. After all, it is an established and undeniable fact that, according to the Thai National Railways, nine of the forty locomotives still running in Thailand in 1945 disappeared without a trace in the summer of that year. And the Thai National Railways should know this because they collaborated unconditionally with the Japanese military administration. One locomotive was recovered in 1978 when Australian adventurers tracked down a secret siding using a Japanese military map and found the locomotive in a bricked-up cave.

A statement made on his deathbed by a Japanese war veteran in early 1981 sparked a new gold rush. He spoke of five truckloads of gold looted from Burmese banks and temples that had been hidden on the Thai-Burmese border at the end of the war on the orders of a Japanese general. A Japanese company that had previously salvaged platinum from the wreck of a Russian battleship sunk in 1905, began digging into the rugged terrain, only to suddenly stop and disappear a week later…. This abrupt departure, for which no satisfactory explanation or motive was ever given by the relevant company, once again fueled the most wild speculation…

These persistent stories even inspired the Thai government to go on the hunt in December 1995. Hundreds of workers with heavy equipment dug out sidings that led to caves, tunnels and bunkers built between 1942 and 1944 by forced laborers to shelter trains from Allied air raids. These large-scale excavations, which may have cost Thai taxpayers a lot of money, were based on the statements of an old woman who had been the sweetheart of a Japanese officer during World War II, who allegedly told her about the hidden treasures. It later turned out that she was completely senile… With the exception of some rusty rivets, the head of a pickaxe and the meager remains of a handful of spades, nothing was found…

In 2002, even then-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was tempted to search the region for Japanese war booty after Senator and former Deputy Minister for Education Chaovarin Lattasaksiti claimed to have stumbled upon such treasures in Lijia cave in Sangkhla Buri district. This not entirely uncontroversial and mythomaniacal politician had previously set up at least two completely unsuccessful expeditions in search of hidden Japanese war booty. In retrospect, this new treasure turned out to be hot air and grew into one of the many notorious Thai scam scandals.

The gold rush is not only manifesting itself along the Kwai river. Also in the north of Thailand, between say Chiang Mai and Mae Hong Son, Japanese war booty is being searched diligently; In the late spring and summer of 1945, tens of thousands of fleeing Japanese traveled the winding road that connects the two cities. Among other things, about the Tham Borichina cave in the Doi Inthanon National Park, it is said that gold has been hidden by the Japanese. Gold was never found, but Japanese weapons and military equipment were found, giving this myth new credibility among some prospectors.