When I first heard about Yamashita’s Gold I was skeptical. The amount in tonnage and the amount in money terms were just overwhelming. However, being a fan of the Seagraves and having just been introduced to their writings on the overseas Chinese, Lords of the Rim, and on the Soong Dynasty, besides the very relevant The Marcos Dynasty, my curiosity was more than tickled. This duo did not take up a subject lightly.

Yamashita, or General Tomoyuki, “..was Japan’s top general and seen as the conqueror of Singapore, wrongly linked to plunder by the misnomer Yamashita’s Gold”, states the book Gold Warriors.

Further, “Japan’s looting of Asia, and the hiding of this war-gold in [North] American Banks, is closely linked to the issue of Holocaust gold hidden in Swiss banks. Revealing the secrets of either is dangerous business.”

Thus Jean Ziegler ended up being accused of being an accomplice of Jewish organisations that ‘extorted’ vast sums of money from Switzerland. He had been trying to prove the opposite, that Jewish assets languished in Swiss banks after the World War II, all stolen from ordinarily engaged Jewish family businesses. He was charged with treason!

Who charged him thus? Twenty-one financiers, commercial lawyers, and politicians from the Far Right, many of them major stockholders in Swiss banks.

Today the phenomenon of branding people as traitors and even terrorists when they are trying to bring to light secret misdeeds of government or major businesses – industrial espionage – is an often used ploy to silence people. This is a hoary practice!

When president Truman kept the war-gold recoveries secret, this opened the door to future clandestine acts by corrupt people who began to mis-use the resulting slush fund, which fed the growth of a global network of corruption.

“Bureaucrats, politicians, spooks, and generals, have become addicted to black money. There are indications that a lot of this war-gold has been siphoned off by [North] America’s far right, under the guise of patriotism… These people and institutions benefitting from this corruption will do everything possible to hide it, including murder.”

From the prologue we read: “In the closing months of World War II in the Philippines, while general Yamashita Tomoyuki fought a delaying action in the rugged mountains of Luzon, several of Japan’s highest-ranking imperial princes were preparing for the future. They were busy hiding tons of looted gold bullion and other stolen treasures in nearby caves and tunnels – access to Japan was by then hazardous as the sea lanes were under threat – to be recovered later. This was the stolen property of twelve Asian countries, that they had accumulated over thousands of years, and suddenly pounced upon as war loot.

Expert teams accompanying Japan’s armed forces had systematically emptied treasuries, banks, factories, private homes, pawn shops, art galleries, and stripped ordinary people, while Japan’s top gangsters looted Asia’s underworld and black economy. In this the Japanese were far more thorough than the Nazis. It was as if a giant vacuum cleaner passed across East and Southeast Asia.”

As it turned out the looting was overseen by Emperor Hirohito’s brother Prince Chichibu, under an operation code-named Golden Lily, across all of Japan’s conquered territories.

President Truman got to know about the treasure after a major site was discovered in the mountains north of Manila, and that was after General MacArthur had been briefed. However, Truman had inherited policies from the Roosevelt administration, stemming from Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War. The loot, then under Truman eventually formed a treasury for use in the fight against Communism, as a worldwide covert political action fund. This came about because by the late 1940s, capitalism was under threat, primarily from the Soviet Union, but also with the many socialist movements fermenting globally in the fight against economic injustices.

A lot of what was recovered in those years ended up in Swiss banks, largely because of that country’s neutrality during the war. “What went wrong in the longer term is that the cloak on national security created a situation ripe for abuse.”

Over ensuing decades big banks ‘played’ with the black gold in their vaults. “Now they will do whatever is necessary to keep the gold, even if it means defrauding account holders or their heirs, as happened with Holocaust gold in Swiss banks.”

Why was Japan allowed to keep it… ask the authors! Answering their own question they say… “Obsessed with the urgent need to make Japan a bulwark against communism, Washington excused its wartime leaders, imperial family, and financial elite – the zaibatsu – from any responsibility for the destruction and destitution of twelve Asian countries.”

The underworld godfather Kodama Yoshio, who was also conveniently titled a rear admiral in the Imperial Navy, was in charge of amassing the loot, also of the drugs going into China in exchange for that loot. He was also implicated in funding – much later – the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), “strongly backed to this day by Washington”.

The Kuomingtang (KMT) were also an important component part of the scheme.

The authors allude, if that’s the right word, to the unknowns in the banking world of just how much gold there is in the various vaults. Looking back as far as the Spanish adventures in the New World to see where all this warring and looting began – at least in more recent times – they retell that the loot from the New World was taken to Europe and ended up in the coffers of such as the Fuggers and Welsers.

Today, no one knows the actual wealth of the Krupps, Rothschilds, Oppenheimers, Warburgs, or Rockefellas. The U.S.A. government refuses to say how much gold is in Fort Knox, nor are the big banks of Citibank, Chase, Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC), Union Banque Suisse and others upfront about their gold.

On the Asian side the ‘modern’ looting began with Japan’s take over of Korea in 1895…

President Marcos of the Philippines got into this affair during his tenancy of the Malacanang Palace and seems to have whisked a good amount out of the Philippines in cahoots with the powers-that-were in Washington, each looking after the other in this exercise in handling the loot, after World War II ended.

Thing is, how much does this undisclosed and unaccounted for mountain of gold contribute to the instability of today’s financial markets, in all their guises of stocks and shares, commodities, currency exchanges and so on?

Those with their hands on the stolen treasures can ‘play’ the markets without real risks. Even on that ground alone this generation’s more transparent market regulations with its checks and balances, if actually done according to the book, is about the only way to practically manage and clarify this major issue and have that black gold – and other treasures – accounted for and inserted into the monetary system, to the benefit of all.

There is such a huge amount of monetary worth involved in connection with this issue that the resistance to any real investigation and to changes in regulations and to an opening up of these ‘off-shore’ accounts to public disclosure, as is obvious today, is an indicator it its import.

No wonder that Occupy Wall Street was so heavily cracked down on. The next few years should see how People Power can penetrate to the rock bottom of these affairs and reveal the untold ramifications – and just who holds so tightly onto the handles of this slush fund.

Good job well done Sterlings!