OPERATION GLADIO Exposed with COLONEL TOWNER in Gold Warriors Chapter 11

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1:02 All right, we're going to get started. We are on chapter 11. And oh my gosh, I just have to laugh sometimes. People are so stupid. So most of you realize that I haven't been spending a whole lot of time over on True Social just because I'm trying to build up a clientele for us on Twitter.

1:40 as well. And so I popped over to true social to announce that we were going to do our book review tonight. And, um, I, I just, I have to laugh, um, cause it's so stupid. Um, the person, uh, snow was going back and forth with, um, somebody that

2:14 made the comment, oh, she steals all of her information from books. And of course I had to steal Chris Paul's, you sound vaccinated comment. I'm like, it literally says in the title book review. I don't know. I don't think that's stealing. It actually says in the front cover, you can use the material for.

2:47 book reviews. So anyway, I just have to laugh at that idiocy. All right. So chapter 11 starts off called Pointing the Way. And where we left it was the predicament of Santee and Romano and all of the escapades of

3:18 him trying to protect the money that he had gotten as the steward of these big pots of money that he had collected that Marcos and several people in our government was then going to be trying to steal from him. So that's kind of where we left off. So Santee ends up dying from drinking too much in 1974.

3:48 And magazines and newspapers already were calling for President Marco. We're already calling President Marco the richest man in Asia with holdings estimated at about $10 billion to anywhere upwards of $100 billion. But curiously, no one ever talked about the source of that income. No one.

4:22 He was not from a wealthy family, so that obviously had to be an issue. But oddly enough, Marcos actually would occasionally say that he had found Yamashita's gold, and that's what made him rich. Even though the government of the Philippines was selling the gold as if it came from...

4:52 the Filipino mines. Because when he told people that, they actually thought he was joking. General John Singlib, who was obviously a CIA guy, one knew all about, of course, because he's the one that went around to some of Santee's bank deposits, like the one that was at UBS, and switched them into his names.

5:28 Marcos' $12 billion fortune actually did come from Yamashito's treasure. That's what Singleton was on record as saying. What greatly enlarged Ferdinand's assets was the reappearance of Ben Valmores.

5:50 Ben is the guy that acted as the valet for the Japanese princes that were going around creating the 175 deposits for all of their stash. Little Ben. And it was Ben that enabled a Marcos team to find and recover treasure from Teresa II from the sunken cruiser.

6:20 and other sites. We last saw Ben in June 1945, this is the author talking about it, at Tunnel 8, the underground complex near Bambang, where 175 Japanese chief engineers were given a farewell drinking party and then buried alive. That's kind of where we left him, like around chapter two of the book. And remember that

6:49 General Yamashita had tried to trap Ben in that same explosion, but Prince Takeda made sure that he got out safely. And remember that Takeda actually gave him some boxes of gold for him to use and told him to marry someone and buy a farm and blah, blah, blah.

7:20 General Yamashita eventually surrenders to the army three months after that exchange all happened. In 1949, a Manila attorney by the name of Benitez, who knew Ben's uncle, came to Bambang and said that he was looking for the Filipino boy.

7:54 who had been with the Japanese during the war. Ben's uncle said that that was his nephew. And he said that Ben was crazy, always wanting to go around digging for treasure. He would say, let's go, Papa, let's go dig here and here. He knows where they buried the treasure, but his father tells him not to mess with it because there's booby traps. So when Ben got home that day from working in the fields,

8:25 He told Benitez that he knew nothing about the treasure. Right in front of the attorney, Uncle Leno reminded Ben about the two steel trunks the prince had left for him. The attorney was excited and insisted that he and Ben go immediately to recover the trunks. Ben could keep one, and the attorney said that he would take the other. Early the next morning, they drove to...

8:55 a farm and they got some farm workers and then went to the river, which is where those two trunks that Tashita had given to Ben got buried in addition to the little one that he gave him to take home with him. So Benitez pretended that he was surprised to find the mayor waiting. You know, mayor, we have a really important business matter to discuss. The mayor says,

9:27 Ben, let's go upstairs. Ben was left downstairs with the other men to eat breakfast. When the two conspirators returned, they said, you know, a civilian like you is not allowed to hold gold in his possession. That is why the partition of 50-50 is no good. Our government does not allow that. I'll give you one bar.

9:53 as your reward for pointing out where they're at. Ben looked at the attorney who nodded his head gravely. Okay, let's go now. You don't have to give me anything. I just want to see what's in the boxes. He took them to the tree by the river. Instead, he took them to a different tree instead of the mango tree, which is where they were buried. He watched them dig all day, quietly chuckling to himself. When the sun went down, they had found nothing.

10:23 Maybe the Japs dug it up and did something with it, Ben says. Benitez looked up at the tree and said, you told me it was under a mango tree. This is a different tree. Oh, I thought it was a mango tree, Ben says. On their way back to Dulé, Ben told the attorney, it's a good thing I got to know you early because you think you are smart enough to fool me. When they got home,

10:53 ben told his uncle leno that the two men had tried what the two men had tried to do and um ben left them to it basically walking away from the two guys laughing so afraid that the mayor would capture and torture him ben did not go back for many years the river was

11:20 New people's army territory and Ben did not want to be kidnapped. When he finally went back in 1999 with a friend, they discovered that the huge typhoon had caused flash floods that swept away the bridge and the entire embankment where the two trunks were buried. Even the big mango tree was gone. Each of the trunks had weighed over one ton worth millions of dollars. Now they were at the bottom of the river buried in the muck.

11:52 Ben was still a poor rice farmer. He owned a little house smack in the midst of hundreds of Japanese hiding places, but he never had any luck finding them. When he did, he always was cheated or robbed. On quiet evenings, he sat looking at the cool mountain valleys dotted with the cone-shaped hills. The maps that Kim Soo had given him were still buried behind the house.

12:19 Ben had dug up the satchel several times to look at the maps. However, he didn't understand the coding that was on the maps and would rebury the satchel, keeping only the compass and the magnifying glass out. There were three types of maps, a white series that showed the general location of each site, a red series, like the one Ben had, coded with all of the essential information needed to make a recovery.

12:51 if you understood the coding. And then the third set was a blue set of detailed engineering drawings, all of which had the information in a technical language. Some white series maps had been found in a church and were in circulation, but they did not give the coordinates needed to pinpoint the vault or its depth. In 1953, seven young Japanese came to see Ben, offering money for his maps.

13:21 They were too young to have been in the war, but somehow they knew the maps had been left with Ben. They knew Ben lived in Duluth and that he knew that Prince, Ben thought they may have been Prince Takeda's children. They did not explain who they were. When Ben denied knowing anything about them and asked why they had come to see him, they laughed and smiled and said, we know you.

13:53 And then they went away and never came back. And you remember that the prince told Ben that he was not to give them to anybody. And so maybe that was just kind of a test for him. So after the war, gold hunting became a cottage industry because of all of the rumors that was going on. Steve, what are you doing? Kind of putting references onto my true social posts.

14:28 So let's see. Filipinos who claimed to know where the gold was was referred to in the local vernacular as pointers. Every barrio had pointers, gold junkies, con men, local priests, preachers, all with these secret maps or eyewitness memories of having been there when the Japanese was there. Con artists.

14:55 They had an uncanny sense of timing. And just before you were ready to give up, the pointers would vanish to find another sucker because they actually charged them too. You need a moderator. What's going on? Let's see. Okay. Yeah, Steve, that's fine. Thank you. Back to the book. So Ben had no interest in being a pointer because

16:04 He had made a promise to Kita and he planned on keeping his promise. So he remembered how he had gone with the prince to each of the sites and how he watched the prince walk around with the blue series of engineering drawings and did the final inventory. There were POWs who survived. There were Taiwanese slave laborers who escaped.

16:36 Filipinos and a few Americans like John Bollinger, who saw Japanese hiding gold. A family that owned a pasture land at the Indiana site was rumored to have made a discovery. They became VIPs in Bambang, put up a three-story building in town, and went into business providing cable TV shows.

17:04 downloaded from satellite dishes ben was the only one present at all 175 sites and he stayed poor once he dug up a small gold buddha four inches tall he could have bought a small ranch but he did not know its value and traded it for a radio he was just 22 years old then he remained a humble good-natured man

17:33 When Ferdinand Marcos began making onshore and offshore recovery deals with the Japanese, the official hostility relaxed and Japan began coming back in droves to the Philippines and basically treasure hunting themselves. Bam Bang Cemetery, where Ben had watched the prince use naked slave laborers.

18:02 digging deep pits and tunnels leading down to a very big circular vault rated as a 777 site, part of the complex that included Tunnel 8 and Tunnel 9. Ben didn't recognize anybody in, there was another group that came back. He didn't recognize anyone. And then one day they were all gone. Villagers took...

18:29 found a tree by the cemetery that had been cut down during the night with a chainsaw exposing the inside of the tree trunk. There was clearly several gold bars that had been hidden, leaving the impression in the wood as the tree grew around the bars. At the end of 1968, President Marcos sent a team to Tokyo to make a deal for joint recoveries. The team included a Lieutenant Colonel

19:00 Florentino Velicruz, a senior intelligence officer, a Brigadier General Ramos, who was the Comptroller of the Philippines Armed Services, and two other officers. Their mission was to acquire a set of the Golden Lily treasure maps in return for a share to Japan of whatever Marcos recovered. Marcos warned that he would close down Japanese countries all over the islands if they didn't give him

19:29 that set of maps. Marcos had authorized offshore recoveries by a syndicate of Japanese and Korean gangsters headed by Kodama and Machu Hisashui, head of one of the gangs. Another partner was billionaire fixer Sasakawa, another of Kodama's prison cellmates who staged speedboat races. One of Japan's favorite

20:01 betting sports was the speedboat races. So the guy was there quite often and it was a convenient way to launder money, which is very interesting because all of the speedboat races that happen in Miami, when I read this part, it kind of rang a few bells because if y'all know anything about the boat races that they have throughout Florida.

20:30 but primarily in the Miami area, it does make a lot of sense. And as a matter of fact, there was just a special on like about six months ago about one of the boat builders down there that would buy a company.

20:54 fix it up, make it profitable, build those high-speed racing boats, and then sell that company and do it again and again and again. And everything about him, the people he hung out with, and when they were telling the story, the whole time I'm thinking to myself, that guy is part of the whole mafia set down there. And then I come across this passage in here where they say,

21:22 These people in boat racing is a convenient way to money laundering. I'm like, ah, that had to have been the real business that guy was in. So this particular guy, Shashikawa, his true wealth came from secret deals with President Sukarno and President Marcos to share in the recovery of war loot in Indonesia.

21:53 and the Philippines. Sasakawa was frequently saying that he was very close to Marcos quote long before he became president unquote. He pointed to Marcos at several sites including the sunken cruiser in Manila Bay and in return was allowed to build cemeteries and memorials for Japanese war dead in the Philippines on property

22:20 property that just happened to include golden lily sites. So they think that basically he was digging in those areas, not for cemeteries at all, but to recover the gold. When Villa Cruz team arrived in Tokyo in 1968, Kodama and Sasakawa told them that the head of the golden lily, Prince Chichibu,

22:55 had died of tuberculosis in the early 1950s, but they arranged for Villa Cruz to have a private audience with another aristocrat that had worked for Prince Chichibu. According to the Villa Cruz family, this was a high-ranking Japanese officer who was a cousin of the Emperor Haruhito. This figure, high up in Japanese intelligence services, told Ramos and Villa Cruz that the Japanese had hidden over

23:27 $100 billion worth of treasure in the Philippines, and it would take more than a century to recover it all. In his records of the meeting, Villa Cruz identified this Japanese aristocrat as Lord Icavaro, I-C-H-I-B-A-R-A, which Villa Cruz said with his Spanish language background.

23:56 spelt phonetically as Lord Ikebaro. Many documents later recovered from the presidential security command after Marcos lost power refer to a secret contact in Tokyo as Lord Ikebaro. From these documents, it is evident that Lord Ikebaro was one of Prince Chichibu's key men hiding the loot in Luzon during the 1942 to 45.

24:28 time period, a walking encyclopedia of Golden Lily. He appears to have had a senior intelligence officer working with Kodama and Prince Chichibu during the war. But all of our efforts to identify who Lord Ichibaru is have failed. That's what the author's saying. They tried to do research and find out who it was. It is a common Japanese name.

24:58 That is spelled various ways. After the war, the Japanese were forced to stop using aristocratic titles. So they stopped using like Lord. He may not have been a prince, but like a count or a baron. And Lord Ikebaro may have been a pseudonym to keep the Filipinos.

25:29 from knowing who he really was. So we considered the possibility, we being the author here, that Lord Icabarro was a pseudonym for Prince Taquita, but concluded that they were two different men. Icabarro's willingness to conspire with Prince Marcos, or President Marcos, sorry, does not square with the personal loyalties of Prince Taquita. He would have,

26:04 kept Marcos away from Ben as well, but Lord Ikebaro steered him to Ben. One Japanese source told us that Lord Ikebaro might have been the notorious Colonel Masanobu. He was actually the one that people hated because he committed ethnic massacres of ethnic Chinese in Singapore and Malaysia.

26:37 and actually was accused of eating Allied pilots' livers. Sounds like a wonderful guy. That accusation, though, let me just say this. That accusation was from Malaysia, and many people believe that accusation was made as

27:06 cannibals being on that particular island because the CIA was using that island for nefarious reasons and the rumor of having cannibals on that island would keep people away so that may or may not be true um let's see so this particular colonel was sent to Manila as a troubleshooter with the rank of imperial inspector general and

27:39 He became a key figure in the Bataan Death March where many of the prisoners were murdered during that march. So bottom line, no one knows for sure who that is. Lord Ikebaro arrived in Manila around 1942 wearing a naval uniform. Japanese ships were unloaded with

28:15 the golden lily treasure on it. And there was, Ikebaro came upon a prisoner hanging by his thumbs from a flagpole and made a comment in Japanese. To his surprise, the prisoner replied in fluent Japanese. Ikebaro asked how he'd come to speak the language and the prisoner replied that his mother was Filipina.

28:45 But his father had been a Japanese officer attached to the embassy in Manila. He said, what's your name? The guy responded, Leopoldo Giga. The man answered. His friends called him Pole. Giga is a Japanese name, the Navy captain replied. In fact, Major Giga was famous for helping assassinate the main Korean warlord, Shane Taolin, in 19...

29:15 As it turns out, Paul Giga's father, Major Giga, had served as a Japanese intelligence officer in the Far East. While stationed in Manila in the early 20s, he had married a Filipino woman and had a son. The boy grew up speaking Japanese, English, and the Philippine language of Tagalog, but was left behind when his father went off to other postings in Shanghai. In 1938,

29:44 Major Giga himself was assassinated in Japanese by agents sent by the murderer warlord's son. Ikebaro ordered soldiers to untie the prisoner and had Giga released into his custody. From then on, he employed Giga as an interpreter and informant. To test Pol's loyalty and cold-bloodedness, Ikebaro had him put on a hood and review all the prisoners at the fort.

30:14 Giga and Ikebaro sat at a table while the prisoners walked by. The hooded Giga nodded whenever he spotted a man who he thought was secretly working for the Americans. All those men were executed immediately. The word for a traitor in Tagalog was makapali, but the hood hid Giga's identity. Pol Giga was Ikebaro's man in Luzon. It was Ikebaro.

30:42 who worked with the Japanese engineers to design four treasure vaults in Manila's Fort Santiago, including the booby traps. Pol arranged for the Filipino electrician from Cavite to help wire the booby traps. When Camaro moved his operations from Manila to the countryside under army control, he changed into a uniform of a colonel and arranged for Giga to be given the rank of a lieutenant in the Japanese.

31:10 Army Engineering Corps. Giga said that he was sent to Japan for six months to learn tunneling technology, but Giga proved to be such a chameleon taking on whatever color suited the occasion that his story changed constantly. In Tokyo, 45 years later, in 1968, excuse me, 25 years later, Lord Ikebaro told Colonel Valacruz,

31:41 that the best way to recover a full set of Golden Lily treasure maps from President Marcos would be finding Paul Giga. Then Velicruz could give Giga to drop down Ben. Bastard. The prince, he explained, had left a set of maps with Ben at the end of the war. He told Velicruz that Giga was employed by the Colgate toothpaste factory in the Philippines. So it was evident.

32:17 that Ikabaro had been in contact with Giga since the end of the war. Ikabaro said that Giga supplemented his Colgate income by serving as a translator, pointer, and fixer for Japanese groups digging for gold. Giga hired cars, drill rigs, generators, jackhammers, and other supplies for the Japanese so that it did not attract unwelcomed attention. Giga had found the right

32:47 Vela Cruz asked how they would know if Giga found the right Ben. Lord Icovaro said that they could put Ben on the telephone directly with Prince Taquita and they would all listen to the conversation. Vela Cruz immediately sent security men to find Giga at Colgate and had him brought to the presidential security command. Giga was scared, ready to do whatever they asked of him. Ben's family had been living

33:16 nearby, so Giga took time off from Colgate and caught a bus into the mountains. When Giga knocked on the door in January 1969, Ben had no idea who he was. Giga claimed that during the war, he and Ben had spoken often at different Golden Lily sites where Giga claimed that he had personally been involved in the inventories. Ben knew that that wasn't true because only Prince Takeda did the inventories. He was certain that this man had never

33:46 been at any of the sites. Giga said he always wore a Japanese uniform, so how could Ben remember him among all the other soldiers? Their relationship was strained from the beginning because Ben said that Paul was a devious and unreliable character. Later, Ben discovered that Paul was telling everybody that he, Giga, had been the prince's valet and not Ben. Giga claimed to have buried

34:16 the map satchel, then dug it up after the war and that only he had the true set of copies. For a retainer of $1,000 a month, Giga would show people where to dig. When our researchers tracked down Giga in 1986, this is the author, he insisted that Ben had died the previous year, that both he and Ben had been valets.

34:42 Then he recounted how he and Ben had stolen the maps from General Yamashito's headquarters and in the closing weeks of the war. It was only later that we discovered that Giga had lied to keep us from talking to Ben. That's what the author's saying. Giga sounds like a really great guy. To fend him off, Ben pretended he spoke only a local dialect, but Giga switched to Japanese. Ben had learned basic Japanese during the war.

35:13 Gigas said he came as an emissary from President Marcos and wanted Ben's maps to make gold recoveries that could permanently lift Filipinos out of poverty. Ben doubted this. And plus he knew that Marcos was evil because they all knew what Marcos had already done to stole gold from Roxas and everybody else. And of course, all of Imeldo Marcos shopping sprees was notorious throughout the entire island.

35:44 Giga, finally Giga dropped all pretenses and said if Ben refused to turn over the gold, the soldiers from the presidential palace would take him and his whole family to prison where they would be tortured. Ben's daughter would be abused and all of them would be killed. Ben still refused. He was frightened for his wife and children, but he had given his oath and he was not going back on it. Ben had never revealed.

36:14 the prince's real name to anyone. Not once had he mentioned the names of Prince Chichibu, Prince Mikasa, or Asaka. Finally, Ben decided on a compromise to protect his family. Early one morning, he dug up the satchel again. First, he set aside the blue series of maps, which were the engineered drawings. He wrapped those in plastic, placed them in a strong box, and immediately reburied them.

36:44 Next, he studied the Red Series maps. There were 175 Red Series maps in all. Ben set aside three of the biggest sites. These were the maps of Tunnel 8 and 9 near Bambang and one east of Manila. The Red Series maps were on sheets of stout paper, heavily waxed after the drawings were finished.

37:11 They provided a three-dimensional view of the terrain. Movie audience who watched the Kurashiko's classic film, Seven Samurai, saw a similar map drawn by a samurai as they prepared to defend the village. So those also had vital coded information on them. A Japanese flag flying to the right or left showed whether the map must be read from...

37:42 in a mirror or straight on. It had a clock face with two or more hands providing information about compass orientations. It had the depths and where all the booby traps were and basically where the original site started. Most important, the Red Series maps included the fulcrum point for each site. Without knowing the fulcrum point,

38:12 You would never know where to start to apply all of the different coatings. Of the remaining 172 Red Series maps, Ben selected 40 that he thought were minor or very difficult. If he was pressed and his family was in peril, he would give them this bundle of 40 to Giga and to take to Marcos. A few days later,

38:39 Colonel Velicruz himself came to Ben's house, banging on the door in the middle of the night, yelling, Ben, Ben. Ben let him in. Velicruz said that he was on a special mission for the president to get the maps. Ben said that he could not comply because of his oath to the prince. Velicruz said, we will honor your words. He would not take the maps by force, but Ben had to come with him to Manila to show the maps only to the president, and then we will give them back to you.

39:08 Ben handed Bella Cruz the map bundle of 40 sites. Bella Cruz was so fascinated that he did not even ask to see the others. Ben rode down from the mountain with Bella Cruz in his chauffeured army staff car, carrying the maps in a leather case. Instead of going to the palace, they drove to the home of another general, the army comptroller, who had gone with Bella Cruz to Tokyo to see Kodama. In the general's secure basement office, a group of

39:39 overweight cigar-smoking cronies were waiting, including Marcos's cabinet ministers. Mrs. Ramos served drinks. The next question was whether to take Ben immediately to the palace to meet Marcos. Mrs. Ramos said, if I were you, I would not surrender this Ben because you already have the key. Why are you going to give Ben to the president when you already have the key?

40:06 Unable to make up their minds and reluctant to admit that she was right, they climbed in their cars and drove to the private hideout of the defense minister in the mountainous area east of Manila. Velicruz showed him the 40 mysterious maps. Mata took the leather folder and rooted around inside like a warthog. Mata was one of the bully boys of the Marcos regime.

40:36 He examined several of the maps, comprehending nothing. Then he said to Ben, you killed the person who owned these. No, sir, I didn't kill for this. Then why is the portfolio in your hands? Because he left it to me. No, you killed him. Ben got scared and whispered to Bella Cruz that he wanted to go home. Ben asked to have the maps back as Bella Cruz had promised, but he said that President Marcos needed to see them. Bella Cruz told Ben,

41:06 that after the president saw the maps that they'd be returned to him. Yeah, right. Mata had direct lines to the switchboard at the palace. Using the secure switchboard, they placed a long-distance phone call to Lord Ekabara in Tokyo. He had the call patched through to Prince Takita at his ranch on the east side of Tokyo Bay. While the entire Marcos group listened in, the phone was handed to Ben.

41:35 The next thing Ben heard was Takita's voice out of the past. Benjamin, he said. When the prince started speaking to him in simple Japanese, Ben told us he could tell from the sound of his voice that he was choked with emotions, probably weeping. The prince reminded him of his oath never to give the maps to anyone, but an imperial prince repeating the mantra.

42:03 Benjamin, please, no Filipino, no American, no Japanese, no Chinese. Just wait for me. The defense minister grabbed the phone away from Ben and put it on the cradle. It was to be Ben's last direct contact with the prince. This was the Marcos men cheered, waved their cigars in the air and began high fiving. This was the night. This was the right Ben. They decided not to take him to Marcos.

42:32 Not now, as Mrs. Ramos had said. They had the key. All they had to do was posture. Velicruz, Ramos, and Matra never did show a single one of those Red Series plans to Marcos. Velicruz kept the bundle of 40 maps to study, given Ben the empty old leather folder. He also gave Ben some travel money. This was the only flash of kindness Velicruz displayed.

42:58 He was not as ruthless as the others. He was content with the 40 maps. If you could not understand 40, what was the point of having more? He knew he could get the rest from Ben at any time he wished because Ben was afraid for his wife and children. Ben fled back home. In this clumsy, oafish, bullying manner, many of the Big Marcos' gold recoveries of the 1970s and early 80s

43:26 were a result of this. Equipped for the first time with the real golden lily maps, which none of them could understand, Marcos and his lieutenants thought it would be easy. They were wrong. Velicruz was successful in excavating a site at Santa Mesa Rotunda, where he had recovered a mix of variety of gold bars from various Asian countries.

43:55 and a number of small small gold buddhas looted from temples all over asia president marcos put together a special unit of army engineers and set them about digging at the site in lugana where they uncovered several concrete bolts filled with gold bars marcos first really big recovery as president from the golden lily stashes was beneath the flagpole

44:27 at one of the army camps. Next, Marco sent his soldiers to the officer's club, excuse me, at Fort McKinley, where he had them dig down to General MacArthur's bomb shelter. There they discovered one end of the 35 miles of tunnels under Manila. After two years of exploring these tunnels, they found only one gold bar in the back of an abandoned army truck.

44:55 The spur tunnels in the treasure vaults, hidden golden lily was too well disguised because remember what we talked about at the beginning of the chapter, they have these 35 foot or 35 mile tunnels. And then they dug spurs off of them every so often. And all of this by compass is mapped on these maps. And then they took a special kind of colored porcelain.

45:24 and redid the walls to make them look exactly like they brought artisans in to color match this to the existing walls to put in, fill in where the alleyways went off of the main tunnel. And so when you walk down this tunnel, all of the walls look consistently the same. And yet every so many feet, there were like...

45:51 long avenues going off of it that was filled top to bottom with all kinds of treasure. So Lord Icabarro continued to help them. When Marco's protege, a Dr. Gil Gotti, ran into trouble digging in Fort Santiago, he turned to Lord Icabarro for expert advice.

46:21 Dr. Gotti says because of the difficulties he encountered at the Fort Santiago site, he wrote to Lord Ikebaro in Tokyo, and he told him to contact a man by the name of Pedro Lim from Lugana, who had worked with the colonel and the captain during the war. Lord Ikebaro's team in the hiding of the war loot on Luzon had worked with

46:51 And so that's what I find interesting about this guy, because this Ikebaro guy had to have been there during World War II. So it makes you wonder who he actually is. And maybe somebody, because we know they did this in Germany, maybe somebody that was there that was supposedly taken care of in war crime trials actually didn't die.

47:23 So they did find, Dr. Gotti referred them to one of the Filipino electrical engineers who installed and rigged the explosives, the traps in some of these vaults. For Ben, who knew where all of the gold vaults were, life continued to be in cycle patterns of wet rice planting and harvest.

47:51 One exception was when Ben became friends with Roger Roxas, the locksmith who came to Bambang periodically to hunt for buried loot. Over the years, Roxas and Ben became friends, and one day Ben agreed to give Roxas a golden lily map showing the location of...

48:18 the tunnels beneath the hospital, which is the one that he dug out. Because remember, Roxas is the guy that had the Buddha that they stole from him, threw him in jail for illegal possession of a gun, took all the diamonds, blah, blah, blah. When Roxas discovered the golden Buddha, he also found a magnificent gold model of the famous Cathedral of Rheims in France and gave it to Ben as his share of the recovery.

48:50 The cathedral was nearly half a meter tall, as big as a wedding cake, beautifully handcrafted, correct in every detail of the original medieval church. Except that in place of the big round stained glass window over the main entrance, the gold model had a finely made clock. Nobody knew of its providence, except that it came from Vietnam. Such treasures.

49:20 have their own secret lives, but it is clearly a work of a master goldsmith made for a wealthy patron of the Catholic Church in Hanoi. As a work of art at auction in London or New York, its value would have been doubtless exceeding its gold content. When he saw what was happening to Roxas and the gold Buddha, Ben reburied the cathedral in a box in the yard in his house.

49:51 Later, when the general heard from Polgiga that Ben had recovered a solid gold cathedral, Burr sent thugs to Ben's house and threatened to terrorize his wife and children if Ben did not give it up. Ben complied. Ten years later, the only thing Ben still possessed given to him by the prince was a Japanese campaign medal showing an airplane, a caribou-thatched roof hut.

50:20 a coconut tree, and a paddy field. Everything else had been stolen, confiscated, or lost. All they ever gave me, Ben said about Marcos and his cronies, was cigarettes. Children were born. Treasure hunters came and went. Ben remained poor. In 1972, Ben heard that a group of Japanese had arrived in Bam Bang and were working with bulldozers and backhoes in the area of General Yamashito's camp.

50:50 That had been more than half a mile from the prince's camp in San Fernando. Ben laughed that they were digging in the wrong place. He was mistaken. When Ben had toured the underground complex, they had gone down through Tunnel 8 entrance. But Ben thought that was the only one. He didn't know that there was a separate entrance for Tunnel 9. In 1945, the connecting tunnels were blown up.

51:17 but the main bolts lined with the steel-reinforced concrete remained intact. These Japanese reopened Tunnel 9 entrance leading down to Yamashito's bomb-proof command center. In daylight hours, they stayed out of sight below ground. A neighboring farmer said that at night, empty trunks arrived, left loaded before dawn. When Marcos making moves on other Golden Lily sites,

51:43 Prince Taquita's may have authorized the recovery of part of the Bambang complex. It was unlikely that they recovered all because they would have had to involve reopening the connecting tunnels to Tunnel 8 and at the cemetery site. So we do know that Taquita personally returned to Manila two years later in 1974, by which time Tunnel 9 recovery had been complete.

52:11 Since leaving Ben and returning to Japanese by submarine in 1945, Takeda had been warmly received by his cousin, Hirohito, for having successfully completed his mission. He was then sent to Manchuria as the chief financial officer of the Imperial Army for the last several months of the war. At war's end, he was given an assignment of ensuring that the army

52:38 complied with Hirohito's order to surrender. Takito went home to his wife and children in Tokyo. In the peerage system, while the peerage system had ended, Takita forfeited his hereditary title and became Mr. Takita Tsuyoshi. This brought an end to one of Japanese greatest princely houses, Takita Nomura, founded in

53:07 1906, at the wish of the Mijing Emperor, Takita's grandfather. Like other former princes, to avoid having his property seized by the allies, Takita sold his estates to the wealthy Shusumi family, to whom he remained closely allied for the rest of his life. He kept only one estate, a sprawling ranch, on the eastern side of Tokyo Bay.

53:36 Like other princes, he tried to become a businessman starting the Takeda Knitting Machines Company, but it soon went under. When the Americans went home, Takeda quietly returned his life as one of the Japanese top aristocrats. Money was never a problem. After all, he had helped enrich the entire Japanese establishment, a debt that could never be repaid. Tiring of the ugly Tokyo, he spent most of his time at his ranch, where he raised thoroughbred horses.

54:06 one of the world's most expensive hobbies. He became president of the Japanese Olympic Committee in 1962. He was part of the International Olympic Committee in 67 and 81. His son continues to be on the International Olympic Committee. A profile of Takeda in the Japanese Times in 64 concluded with, quote, if it were possible to sum up Takeda in a single word, the adjective for him would be relaxed.

54:35 Completely free of self-consciousness and tension, he breathes genuine warmth and generous friendliness, unquote. In 74, Taquita flew to the Philippines when a Japanese straggler, Second Lieutenant Harrow, was discovered hiding on a 74-square-mile island, 70 miles off Manila Bay.

55:08 Back in 1945, all but three Japanese soldiers on Lubang had been killed or surrendered during the four-day battle with the Americans. This guy and two comrades fled into the jungle and for 30 years kept up sporadic guerrilla warfare. God love them. Both of his companions eventually died, but he had been declared legally dead in Japan.

55:39 but he was still alive. When a young Japanese named Suzuki Norio tracked Onoda down in the jungle in 1974, he still carried his rifle, 500 rounds of ammunition and several hand grenades. Once a soldier, always a soldier. Onoda refused to surrender unless released from duty by his commanding officer.

56:09 Ben heard all about him from television news. He knew him personally, having spent weeks on Lubang during the war with Prince Takeda. Ben knew it was Takeda who had ordered Onoda to guard the site at Lubang, so only the prince himself could rescind the command. A few weeks later, a group of Japanese officials arrived in the Philippines to get him to surrender.

56:38 Attention was focused on Major Yashima, who had presented to TV audience as his commanding officer. But among the Japanese delegation in the background, Ben saw Prince Takeda, unforgettable face, and knew that he had come personally to release him from his oath. Onoda returned to Japan, claiming that he could not adjust to life in modern Japan. He was then sent to Brazil.

57:07 to a big Japanese-owned ranch called Mata Grosso. Their bodyguards made sure nobody came to quiz him about the Lubang treasures until they were recovered. The Lubang recovery was done by Sasakawa under the guise of developing Lubang into a resort for wealthy Japanese tourists. Sasakawa said he was doing this at the request of Marcos. Eventually,

57:37 When hotels and golf courses had been built, the resort was stocked with African wild game, exotic birds, and rich Japanese hunters who were provided with young males and females, private companions for sexual sport. At the same time, President Marcos made Sasakawa an honorary citizen of the Philippines in recognition of his many donations to Imelda's...

58:06 highly publicized relief projects, which probably was just her, and his efforts to pave all residual ill feelings of the war by establishing the Japanese-Filipino Friendship Society, nothing was said of Sasakawa's sharing war loot with Marcos. Although Prince Takita did not go back to see Ben after the war, he did send an emissary. In 1984, when Ben was living temporarily in Manila,

58:36 A Japanese resembling a sumo wrestler got off the bus in Bambang one morning, lugging a heavy suitcase. It was Colonel Kasabashi, one of Takeda's staff officers during the war. Now an old man with white hair, he was suffering from the heat, wiping the sweat from his face. In a small town like Bambang, there were no taxis, just motorized trikes. The only trike at the bus stop was owned by Rag Ho.

59:05 who made his living hauling people and goods. So they basically took him to San Fernando, where they tried to help with the suitcase, but he wouldn't let it go. He held it on his lap all the way, and he told him that he was looking for Benjamin, which is what a taquita always called him. So Kabashi could not remember Ben's last name.

59:36 Nor could he remember which barrio Ben came from originally. He told Rang Ho that Ben had been a valet for a Japanese prince during the war here in San Fernando. Kasabachi had come all the way from Tokyo to bring Ben a gift from the prince. Several times Rang Ho offered to carry the suitcase, but the colonel would not let him touch it. They spent the day riding around on the trike trying to find anyone who knew Ben.

1:00:05 If they had gone to the barrio of Dulé, only a kilometer and a half away, everyone would have known Ben, and they would have told the colonel exactly where to find him in Manila. At the end of the day, they decided they were all exhausted of all the possibilities, and Kashibashi reluctantly got aboard the last bus back to Manila, taking the suitcase of gifts, and Ben stayed poor. Sensing a theme?

1:00:36 that's what we got for chapter 11 chapter 12. um this is where it gets crazy it kind of goes not that everything else hasn't been crazy that we've learned in this book but everything goes south in chapter 12. because it's it's a hot mess um so let's let's go back and see what we can find um of what y'all

1:01:08 have gotten um all right i want to see what steve um um i've got two audio interviews okay great steve i'm gonna i've listened to one of pole grain i will see if you've got two i obviously haven't listened to one of those so i will go back and listen to those thank you for finding them y'all are such good sleuths um all right um

1:01:42 And I will share with you guys, I did share on the spaces last night. My son-in-law runs our local rugby team. He's the president. And we have a school with a rugby team, a college. And a lot of the college students from all over the world plays when they're here at school on his team. So he has friends now everywhere. He contacted one of his friends in Australia.

1:02:12 and they are ordering the book for us from wherever they are ordering it because that guy was a professor down there in Australia. And so supposedly we're going to get the book. They're going to send it up here. So I'll let you know how that goes. I don't know if he's actually ordered it, but I will keep you advised because I can't wait to get that book. All right.

1:02:42 My grandfather was killed at Ossewitz. Let's see. Just finished watching Man in the High Tower. Some disclosures. Odd. The Colonel's intel. I rewatched a few and now you see stuff you never did. That's so true, Bridget. And C.N. Stewart.

1:03:12 literally going back through everything that you've ever read, everything that you've ever seen, because now things make so much more sense. But we were just saying yesterday, rereading some of the things previously. Yeah, absolutely. I'm mostly ignorant on Japan and the Far East in general with these dragon families in Japan and China. I'm curious now.

1:03:44 Will Ford's talking about the right dragon family. It is definitely a different culture, which is why I think doing these books, because when we get done with this one, we're going to kind of do a deep dive into Korea as well. So we're going to know a lot more about it. Did you see the recent Taiwan gold smuggling arrest? Oh, no. That's very interesting.

1:04:12 I'll have to go look for that, Steve. If you have a reference for that, Steve, if you'll put it on my social, I'd really appreciate it. Let's see. What else we got? Yep. GE, everyone. Oh, good evening. Hello, Minnesota Patriot. So we're not going to go through a book necessarily on Korea. What we are going to do is present to you.

1:04:54 the real history of Korea, which isn't anything that we've been taught. Kind of a very brief overview. And again, we are still trying to put all the pieces together because like everything else we've been lied to. So it appears that when the Japanese left their colony, because they had colonized Korea over several decades,

1:05:24 um it was a cohesive group of people the power center of korea was up north not unlike the way america was back in the day where you had the industrial base in the north and the agriculture in the south that's pretty much the way korea was set up so you had lots of kind of tribal um cliquish people in the south and big

1:05:52 as big as you could get, industrial cities where the Japanese had built armament manufacturers, all kinds of industry. And the leadership in the North wanted to have a single election after the Japanese left. Well, for some reason, the UK and America did not want that to happen. And so

1:06:22 What they did was basically intervene. And there was some Gladio-ish operations that went on in the South that kept them from voting in the election. And then there was some instigation that went on in the South that was not organic that then.

1:06:52 The West had to come to the rescue and create this dividing line. And then once they created the dividing line, they created the false flag to get the North to attack the South by having people masquerading as the South attack the North. But that went unreported. And again, we're still putting all these pieces together. And that is what kicked off the Korean War. It wasn't.

1:07:22 communist expansion. It had nothing to do with communism whatsoever. As a matter of fact, if you go back and you look at what was going on in Korea at the time, they had been occupied forever. They did not want a dictator. They wanted to have an election. They wanted to have their freedom and they wanted to begin living as an independent country for the first time in like five decades. There was nothing to do with communism at all. That was all made up garbage.

1:07:52 And so, again, I want to present the entire story with details and names. And if y'all thought I had with European names and Japanese names, wait till we get to the Korean names. So anyway, nobody has Smith as their name, just as a heads up. So y'all have to stick with me on that one. All right. So that's what I got. Did Japan know?

1:08:23 that there were going to be hijacked by MacArthur for the gold. So I have heard things about that. I've not read what I would consider well-sourced documents on the provocation of Pearl Harbor.

1:08:55 So I haven't come across that. There is lots of information about the U.S. almost being in collusion with the Japanese making the entire thing happen.

1:09:19 There's actually lots of evidence of that, especially when you look at who the ambassador was during that time and his connection to the Japanese royalty. There's a lot there. But again, I've not seen any actual like State Department cables or anything that I could pin down as no kidding the truth. So, okay. Blessed to spend two weeks in Minnesota out back fishing.

1:09:48 I was 10 in heaven. Oh, I bet. All right. Let's see what else we got. My dad's last assignment was being dragged behind boats in a glass bell, fishing out dead bodies of every kind. Oh, that's gross. Okay. Anyway, that's it for tonight. We will be back here on Thursday night. I was hoping to get one more in. I'm not sure I'm going to do that because tomorrow is kind of slam packed.

1:10:23 But we will definitely be back here on Thursday at seven. And like I said, we've only got three more chapters to do. So we're going to get this done. Thanks for being here. And I will see y'all soon.

Entities here

Claims made here

Ferdinand Marcos funded Yamashita's Gold book_quoted ▶ 5:28

“Marcos' $12 billion fortune actually did come from Yamashito's treasure. That's what Singleton was on record as saying. What greatly enlarged Ferdinand's assets was the reappearance of Ben Valmores.…”

Ben Valmores did_business_with Prince Chikahisa Takeda book_quoted ▶ 5:50

“Ben is the guy that acted as the valet for the Japanese princes that were going around creating the 175 deposits for all of their stash. Little Ben. And it was Ben that enabled a Marcos team to find a…”

Ben Valmores operated_in Bambang book_quoted ▶ 6:20

“and other sites. We last saw Ben in June 1945, this is the author talking about it, at Tunnel 8, the underground complex near Bambang, where 175 Japanese chief engineers were given a farewell drinking…”

Ben Valmores lived_in Philippines book_quoted ▶ 11:52

“Ben was still a poor rice farmer. He owned a little house smack in the midst of hundreds of Japanese hiding places, but he never had any luck finding them. When he did, he always was cheated or robbed…”

Ferdinand Marcos appointed Florentino Velacruz book_quoted ▶ 18:29

“found a tree by the cemetery that had been cut down during the night with a chainsaw exposing the inside of the tree trunk. There was clearly several gold bars that had been hidden, leaving the impres…”

Ferdinand Marcos operated_in Philippines book_quoted ▶ 18:29

Ferdinand Marcos appointed Brigadier General Parton book_quoted ▶ 18:29

Ferdinand Marcos did_business_with Yoshio Kodama book_quoted ▶ 19:29

“that set of maps. Marcos had authorized offshore recoveries by a syndicate of Japanese and Korean gangsters headed by Kodama and Machu Hisashui, head of one of the gangs. Another partner was billionai…”

Ferdinand Marcos did_business_with Masayoshi Akashi book_quoted ▶ 19:29

Masayoshi Akashi laundered_money_for Ferdinand Marcos book_quoted ▶ 20:01

“betting sports was the speedboat races. So the guy was there quite often and it was a convenient way to launder money, which is very interesting because all of the speedboat races that happen in Miami…”

Masayoshi Akashi did_business_with Sukarno book_quoted ▶ 21:22

“These people in boat racing is a convenient way to money laundering. I'm like, ah, that had to have been the real business that guy was in. So this particular guy, Shashikawa, his true wealth came fro…”

Lord Ichibara member_of Japan book_quoted ▶ 22:55

“had died of tuberculosis in the early 1950s, but they arranged for Villa Cruz to have a private audience with another aristocrat that had worked for Prince Chichibu. According to the Villa Cruz family…”

Lord Ichibara did_business_with Ferdinand Marcos book_quoted ▶ 25:29

“from knowing who he really was. So we considered the possibility, we being the author here, that Lord Icabarro was a pseudonym for Prince Taquita, but concluded that they were two different men. Icaba…”

Lord Ichibara operated_in Manila book_quoted ▶ 27:39

“He became a key figure in the Bataan Death March where many of the prisoners were murdered during that march. So bottom line, no one knows for sure who that is. Lord Ikebaro arrived in Manila around 1…”

Major Giga assassinated Shan Taolin book_quoted ▶ 28:45

“But his father had been a Japanese officer attached to the embassy in Manila. He said, what's your name? The guy responded, Leopoldo Giga. The man answered. His friends called him Pole. Giga is a Japa…”

Lord Ichibara recruited Leopoldo Giga book_quoted ▶ 29:44

“Major Giga himself was assassinated in Japanese by agents sent by the murderer warlord's son. Ikebaro ordered soldiers to untie the prisoner and had Giga released into his custody. From then on, he em…”

Shan Taolin ordered_assassination_of Major Giga book_quoted ▶ 29:44

Leopoldo Giga operated_in Santiago book_quoted ▶ 30:42

“who worked with the Japanese engineers to design four treasure vaults in Manila's Fort Santiago, including the booby traps. Pol arranged for the Filipino electrician from Cavite to help wire the booby…”

Leopoldo Giga member_of Colgate-Palmolive book_quoted ▶ 31:41

“that the best way to recover a full set of Golden Lily treasure maps from President Marcos would be finding Paul Giga. Then Velicruz could give Giga to drop down Ben. Bastard. The prince, he explained…”

Leopoldo Giga did_business_with Ben Valmores book_quoted ▶ 33:16

“nearby, so Giga took time off from Colgate and caught a bus into the mountains. When Giga knocked on the door in January 1969, Ben had no idea who he was. Giga claimed that during the war, he and Ben …”

Benjamin Netanyahu member_of Operation Golden Lily book_quoted ▶ 37:42

“in a mirror or straight on. It had a clock face with two or more hands providing information about compass orientations. It had the depths and where all the booby traps were and basically where the or…”

Benjamin Netanyahu did_business_with Colonel Velicruz book_quoted ▶ 39:08

“Ben handed Bella Cruz the map bundle of 40 sites. Bella Cruz was so fascinated that he did not even ask to see the others. Ben rode down from the mountain with Bella Cruz in his chauffeured army staff…”

Colonel Velicruz member_of Japanese Army book_quoted ▶ 39:08

Imelda Marcos member_of Ferdinand Marcos book_quoted ▶ 39:39

“overweight cigar-smoking cronies were waiting, including Marcos's cabinet ministers. Mrs. Ramos served drinks. The next question was whether to take Ben immediately to the palace to meet Marcos. Mrs. …”

Hideki Tojo did_business_with Prince Takita Tsuyoshi book_quoted ▶ 41:06

“that after the president saw the maps that they'd be returned to him. Yeah, right. Mata had direct lines to the switchboard at the palace. Using the secure switchboard, they placed a long-distance pho…”

Prince Takita Tsuyoshi ordered_assassination_of Benjamin Netanyahu book_quoted ▶ 41:35

“The next thing Ben heard was Takita's voice out of the past. Benjamin, he said. When the prince started speaking to him in simple Japanese, Ben told us he could tell from the sound of his voice that h…”

Colonel Velicruz did_business_with Ferdinand Marcos book_quoted ▶ 42:32

“Not now, as Mrs. Ramos had said. They had the key. All they had to do was posture. Velicruz, Ramos, and Matra never did show a single one of those Red Series plans to Marcos. Velicruz kept the bundle …”

Ferdinand Marcos carried_out_attack Operation Golden Lily book_quoted ▶ 43:26

“were a result of this. Equipped for the first time with the real golden lily maps, which none of them could understand, Marcos and his lieutenants thought it would be easy. They were wrong. Velicruz w…”

Colonel Velicruz carried_out_attack Operation Golden Lily book_quoted ▶ 43:26

Ferdinand Marcos carried_out_attack Operation Golden Lily book_quoted ▶ 43:55

“and a number of small small gold buddhas looted from temples all over asia president marcos put together a special unit of army engineers and set them about digging at the site in lugana where they un…”

Ferdinand Marcos carried_out_attack Operation Golden Lily book_quoted ▶ 44:27

“at one of the army camps. Next, Marco sent his soldiers to the officer's club, excuse me, at Fort McKinley, where he had them dig down to General MacArthur's bomb shelter. There they discovered one en…”

Dr. Gil Gotti did_business_with Hideki Tojo book_quoted ▶ 45:51

“long avenues going off of it that was filled top to bottom with all kinds of treasure. So Lord Icabarro continued to help them. When Marco's protege, a Dr. Gil Gotti, ran into trouble digging in Fort …”

Dr. Gil Gotti did_business_with Pedro Lim book_quoted ▶ 46:21

“Dr. Gotti says because of the difficulties he encountered at the Fort Santiago site, he wrote to Lord Ikebaro in Tokyo, and he told him to contact a man by the name of Pedro Lim from Lugana, who had w…”

Roger Roxas did_business_with Benjamin Netanyahu book_quoted ▶ 47:51

“One exception was when Ben became friends with Roger Roxas, the locksmith who came to Bambang periodically to hunt for buried loot. Over the years, Roxas and Ben became friends, and one day Ben agreed…”

Roger Roxas acquired Cathedral of Rheims book_quoted ▶ 48:18

“the tunnels beneath the hospital, which is the one that he dug out. Because remember, Roxas is the guy that had the Buddha that they stole from him, threw him in jail for illegal possession of a gun, …”

Ferdinand Marcos acquired Cathedral of Rheims book_quoted ▶ 49:51

“Later, when the general heard from Polgiga that Ben had recovered a solid gold cathedral, Burr sent thugs to Ben's house and threatened to terrorize his wife and children if Ben did not give it up. Be…”

Japan carried_out_attack Operation Golden Lily book_quoted ▶ 50:20

“a coconut tree, and a paddy field. Everything else had been stolen, confiscated, or lost. All they ever gave me, Ben said about Marcos and his cronies, was cigarettes. Children were born. Treasure hun…”

Japan carried_out_attack Operation Golden Lily book_quoted ▶ 51:17

“but the main bolts lined with the steel-reinforced concrete remained intact. These Japanese reopened Tunnel 9 entrance leading down to Yamashito's bomb-proof command center. In daylight hours, they st…”

Prince Takita Tsuyoshi carried_out_attack Operation Golden Lily book_quoted ▶ 51:43

“Prince Taquita's may have authorized the recovery of part of the Bambang complex. It was unlikely that they recovered all because they would have had to involve reopening the connecting tunnels to Tun…”

Hirohito member_of Japan book_quoted ▶ 52:11

“Since leaving Ben and returning to Japanese by submarine in 1945, Takeda had been warmly received by his cousin, Hirohito, for having successfully completed his mission. He was then sent to Manchuria …”

Prince Takita Tsuyoshi member_of Takita Nomura book_quoted ▶ 52:38

“complied with Hirohito's order to surrender. Takito went home to his wife and children in Tokyo. In the peerage system, while the peerage system had ended, Takita forfeited his hereditary title and be…”

Prince Takita Tsuyoshi sold_to Shusumi family book_quoted ▶ 53:07

“1906, at the wish of the Mijing Emperor, Takita's grandfather. Like other former princes, to avoid having his property seized by the allies, Takita sold his estates to the wealthy Shusumi family, to w…”

Prince Takita Tsuyoshi founded Takeda Knitting Machines Company book_quoted ▶ 53:36

“Like other princes, he tried to become a businessman starting the Takeda Knitting Machines Company, but it soon went under. When the Americans went home, Takeda quietly returned his life as one of the…”

Prince Takita Tsuyoshi member_of International Olympic Committee book_quoted ▶ 54:06

“one of the world's most expensive hobbies. He became president of the Japanese Olympic Committee in 1962. He was part of the International Olympic Committee in 67 and 81. His son continues to be on th…”

Prince Takita Tsuyoshi member_of Japanese Olympic Committee book_quoted ▶ 54:06

Hiro Onoda member_of Japanese Army book_quoted ▶ 55:39

“but he was still alive. When a young Japanese named Suzuki Norio tracked Onoda down in the jungle in 1974, he still carried his rifle, 500 rounds of ammunition and several hand grenades. Once a soldie…”

Suzuki Norio did_business_with Hiro Onoda book_quoted ▶ 55:39

Prince Takita Tsuyoshi ordered_assassination_of Hiro Onoda book_quoted ▶ 56:09

“Ben heard all about him from television news. He knew him personally, having spent weeks on Lubang during the war with Prince Takeda. Ben knew it was Takeda who had ordered Onoda to guard the site at …”

Major Yashima did_business_with Hiro Onoda book_quoted ▶ 56:38

“Attention was focused on Major Yashima, who had presented to TV audience as his commanding officer. But among the Japanese delegation in the background, Ben saw Prince Takeda, unforgettable face, and …”

Prince Takita Tsuyoshi did_business_with Hiro Onoda book_quoted ▶ 56:38

Hiro Onoda moved_to Brazil book_quoted ▶ 56:38

Hiro Onoda lived_in Mato Grosso book_quoted ▶ 57:07

“to a big Japanese-owned ranch called Mata Grosso. Their bodyguards made sure nobody came to quiz him about the Lubang treasures until they were recovered. The Lubang recovery was done by Sasakawa unde…”

Motoo Sasakawa did_business_with Ferdinand Marcos book_quoted ▶ 57:07

Motoo Sasakawa carried_out_attack Operation Golden Lily book_quoted ▶ 57:07

Ferdinand Marcos appointed Motoo Sasakawa book_quoted ▶ 57:37

“When hotels and golf courses had been built, the resort was stocked with African wild game, exotic birds, and rich Japanese hunters who were provided with young males and females, private companions f…”

Motoo Sasakawa founded Japanese-Filipino Friendship Society book_quoted ▶ 58:06

“highly publicized relief projects, which probably was just her, and his efforts to pave all residual ill feelings of the war by establishing the Japanese-Filipino Friendship Society, nothing was said …”

Colonel Kasabashi member_of Prince Takita Tsuyoshi book_quoted ▶ 58:36

“A Japanese resembling a sumo wrestler got off the bus in Bambang one morning, lugging a heavy suitcase. It was Colonel Kasabashi, one of Takeda's staff officers during the war. Now an old man with whi…”

Colonel Kasabashi did_business_with Rag Ho book_quoted ▶ 58:36

Colonel Kasabashi did_business_with Benjamin Netanyahu book_quoted ▶ 59:36

“Nor could he remember which barrio Ben came from originally. He told Rang Ho that Ben had been a valet for a Japanese prince during the war here in San Fernando. Kasabachi had come all the way from To…”

United States targeted_for_regime_change Korea host_asserted ▶ 1:05:52

“as big as you could get, industrial cities where the Japanese had built armament manufacturers, all kinds of industry. And the leadership in the North wanted to have a single election after the Japane…”

United States carried_out_attack Korea host_asserted ▶ 1:06:22

“What they did was basically intervene. And there was some Gladio-ish operations that went on in the South that kept them from voting in the election. And then there was some instigation that went on i…”

United States carried_out_attack Korea host_asserted ▶ 1:06:52

“The West had to come to the rescue and create this dividing line. And then once they created the dividing line, they created the false flag to get the North to attack the South by having people masque…”

United States carried_out_attack Japan host_asserted ▶ 1:08:23

“that there were going to be hijacked by MacArthur for the gold. So I have heard things about that. I've not read what I would consider well-sourced documents on the provocation of Pearl Harbor.…”

United States did_business_with Japan host_asserted ▶ 1:08:55

“So I haven't come across that. There is lots of information about the U.S. almost being in collusion with the Japanese making the entire thing happen.…”