24 April 2008
 
Tunnel 8

Lt. Gen. Yamashita Tomoyuki
 
Sterling and Peggy Seagrave are gold bugs, just like my Ex. The lure of gold is intoxicating, and can drive one mad. The Seagraves are convinced that huge amounts of treasure were hidden by the Imperial Family of Japan, in collusion with the yakuza leadership.
 
The Seagraves are convinced that the Japanese Army in the Philippines, commanded by Lt Gen Yamashita Tomoyuki  hid tons of looted gold bullion in 175 treasure sites in the hills north of Manila before he was forced to surrender.
 
The Seagraves claim that the program of confiscation was code-named Golden Lily. I don’t know what the Ex calls mine, but is convinced that I have a similar trove concealed behind the wall-board of the suspiciously under-utilized half-bath in rear of my unit at Big Pink.
 
Tunnel Number 8 is the name of the excavation where a lot of the gold bars were stacked, according to the Gold Bugs. The Japanese engineers drank heavily that June night in 1945 in the tunnels, and sang the songs of glory and shouted out “Love live the Emperor!”
 
The Gold Bugs say that General Yamashita Tomoyuki and members of the Royal Family slipped out of the tunnel at midnight, and dynamite charges were blasted to seal the access tunnels. The Princes escaped to Tokyo by I-Boat, and the General was left to fight it out with the advancing Americans.
 
He was not responsible for the suicidal defense of Manila that killed a hundred thousand citizens of the American colony. The responsibility for the tragedy lay elsewhere, but that fact was deemed irrelevant.
 
Yamashita surrendered his sword and a quarter million troops on the 2nd of September, 1945, and was hanged after a speedy trial in late February of 1946.
 
The Tiger of Malaya was gracious in his remarks before the trapdoor was opened and his neck was broken. He had never deigned to learn to drive an automobile, preferring to ride on horseback whenever possible. He wore spurs with his uniform, solid gold ones.
 
He presented them to his American defense attorney, Major George F. Guy, who had impressed him with his diligence and honor.
 
That is as far as the story goes with any accuracy. The Seagraves spin quite a story about the gold. They are quite mad about it. They assert that Douglas MacArthur’s men opened Tunnel 8, and that the General himself walked along the stacks of gold, four feet in height.
 
Those piles of gold became the M-Fund, administered by Maj General Bill Marquat, and a host of other secret banks accounts established around the world.
 
According to the Gold Bugs, everyone we know in public life is somehow connected to the money somehow. They contend that it became co-mingled with the plunder of the Third Riech, and was hidden in Swiss Banks under the name “Black Eagle,” a sly reference to the symbol of Hitler’s central bank.
 
I don’t know a great deal about hidden gold, Yamashita’s or mine, but I do know that the greatest resource of the Philippes aside from the beauty of its women is the quality and depth of its conspiracies.
 
Former first lady Imelda Marcos, she of he wondrous shoes, says that the Yamashita treasure fell into the hands of her late husband. Others say that her story is a convenient cover for the billions Ferdinand looted from his people.
 
I wish I could issue some important legal paper to the heirs and assigns of General Yamashita, and get to the bottom of it. Unfortunately, there is danger in that direction. The Seagraves claim there have been veiled threats against their lives for revealing that Dick Nixon traded the island of Okinawa for the fund.
 
It is a lot easier for the Ex. Her latest gift is a thick packet from her evil lawyer commanding me to itemize everything of value in my possession, cough up my tax returns, disclose the location of my overseas property and betray the contents of my Swiss bank accounts.
 
The divorce was final more than five years ago. They managed to hang Yamashita in five months. Of course, there might have been real gold in those hills.
 
As for me, I now have a name for the little apartment I own high above the pool at Big Pink.
 
It has been plain as day all along, though I did not know it.
 
Someone thinks I live in Tunnel 8.
 
Copyright 2008 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com