Where is Manila's gold Buddha?
In Southeast Asia during World War II, Japanese forces under the command of General Tomoyuki Yamashita stole a treasure worth ten’s of billions of dollars. This booty was hidden in underground complexes, tunnels, and caves located in the Philippines according to Rogelio (Roger) Roxas.
In 1961 Roxas, a coins collector and Filipino treasure hunter, met a man whose name was Fuchugami. He identified Baguio City, about 150 miles north of Manila, as the place that his father, a former Japanese soldier, had drawn a map after the Japanese troops finished to hide a treasure with the help of a local interpreter named Eusebio Ocubo.
Fascinated with this story, Roger Roxas met Eusebio, who confirmed the existence of such treasure because during the war he was taken into some of those tunnels every time the Japanese needed silver to pay for the troops' food. However, what really caught Eusebio's eyes was a golden Buddha statue with a belly filled with diamonds that the Japanese kept in a convent near the complex.
Roger Roxas, Eusebio Ocubo, and a group of friends began to dig the area drawn on the map in 1970. One year later, the splendorous 2000-pound solid gold statue appeared along with several wooden boxes holding countless gold bars. Roxas took home the 1-meter Buddha, but Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos was informed of such discovery and ordered his agents raid Roxas' house.
From 1971 to 1974, Roxas was tortured to reveal the location of Yamashita Treasure. Roger Roxas escaped several times and eventually became a public celebrity, but he was finally jailed and found mysteriously dead in 1993, one week before his trial to sue the Marcos State was to begin. By then, the 22-karat gold Buddha was valued at $460 million dollars.
After the death of Roger Roxas at age 49, his brother Jose asked the court for billions of dollars to compensate Roxas' extreme suffering while imprisoned and treated like an animal by Marcos and his agents. He argued that the Buddha statue and the boxes of gold found by his brother never were seen again.
Today, the lost treasure worth $5.3 trillion dollars and, in accordance with the Filipino law, if someone finds gold on state land, as Roxas did, he or she is entitled to half of it.
