The Mystery of Yamashita's Map

THE MYSTERY OF YAMASHITA'S MAP

by

James McKenzie

To Mum and Dad, my family, and to all the branches in our tree. To Helen, Steven and Ian, for their patience and forbearance and a special thanks to all my friends and family in the Philippines for their inspiration. Without them I would never have come to know about the story of Yamashita's treasure.

Prologue

The Philippines, 1945

The broken bodies lay like hideous eruptions on the surface of the dried earth, their dull skin reflecting no light from the sun that beat down relentlessly in the midday. Of the living, there were two kinds: those that had guns, and those that had spades. Those that had guns stood on the high ground or under the shade of small beige tents which were flecked with fly droppings and particles of mud thrown up over time, time that had been harsh and unyielding. Those that had spades dug on and in the ground or occasionally, with backs bent, carried wooden boxes which weighed much more than their undernourished frames could manage. Every few minutes another body would lose its will to cling on to what little life it was allowed to have and fall to the ground where it was first beaten, to make sure of its lifelessness, and then dragged away from the mass of people to the makeshift open grave at the edge of the encampment. Those with guns knew that time was running out: they knew that the war was coming to end and things had to be taken care of before it did. This was why their guns were seldom in their holsters; this was why their whips had more ferocity these days. This was why their beatings aimed to kill rather than to reprimand. A dead worker here was better than a sick one and so the transition from one to the other was undertaken swiftly and with precision. The flies made their home in the bodies that were left for the animals and the sun to pick over. The mounds of tanned leather human skin were a testament to the worthlessness of the lives of those who once inhabited this area but had now fallen victim to slavery or greed. You might, if you glimpsed a slight percentage of this picture, think that it was, perhaps, a vision of hell, that the faces of those who dug and carried and sweated and died were those of the dammed, forever doomed to carry on as they were now for all eternity; that the relief of death would never come. Here though those who keep guard are all too human. In one of the tents, at midday, General Tomoyuki Yamashita sits and eats. The rice bowl he holds in his lap has been with him all through the war and before that was his father's. He is a man who likes to do things correctly, with little or no fuss. Gently, he lifts the bowl to his lips and, with his fingers slightly bent, scoops the rice into his mouth, letting the pale brown sauce fall over his lips and run down his chin. His light brown uniform is stained slightly with sweat and dust but, unlike most of those around him, is in near perfect condition. He places the bowl on the small side table, pours some green tea into a cup and drinks. With thought, he shouts to his second in command who has been standing outside the tent waiting for just such a call. 'Amichi!' The flaps of the tent open and a young officer shuffles in apologetically. He knows also that time is running out; he knows that soon the Americans or the British will be coming through and that the questions they will ask will be hard for him to answer. This is the time, he thinks to himself, that one becomes a man again instead of a soldier; these are the times when one has to answer to oneself. He can barely believe he is thinking such things and, quickly, checks about him to make sure no one has been reading his thoughts.

Trying to avoid eye contact, he watches Yamashita slap his open palms on to his knees.

'How is the tunneling?'