The Mystery of Yamashita's Map
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Authors: James McKenzie
THE MYSTERY OF YAMASHITA’S MAP
by
James McKenzie
First published in Great Britain in 2006 by Book Guild Publishing
Pavilion View
19 New Road
Brighton, East Sussex
BN1 1UF
Copyright © James McKenzie 2006
Paperback edition 2009
ebook edition 24
th. December 2014
Revised Paperback edition 18
th. May. 2015
The right of James McKenzie to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real people, alive or dead, is purely coincidental.
Typesetting in Baskerville by Keyboard Services, Luton, Bedfordshire
Printed in Great Britain by Athenaeum Press Ltd, Gateshead
A catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library
ISBN-13: 978-1512260670
ISBN-10: 1512260673
Your book has been assigned a CreateSpace ISBN
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.
Table of Contents
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 tunnelling?’
Amichi bows. ‘Very well, General. We have eighty percent of the gold stored already, a little more to go.’
‘Good, good. What about the jungle, how long will it take to cover the ground?’
‘Not long at all, General, perhaps a year at the most. The growth around here is tremendous. They say if you stand still for an hour you will become part of the jungle.’
Yamashita laughed, exposing his shining white teeth and blood red tongue. ‘Good, but I don’t intend to become part of the jungle. As soon as this is done I am returning to Tokyo. I have done with this place.’
‘Yes, General.’
‘However, I need you to do something. I want you to map the area. Once the jungle reclaims this land you won’t be able to tell this place from thousands of others.’
‘Yes, General.’
There was a pause between the two men; a question that remained unasked seemed to disturb them both. The tunnels that hid the gold, that were being dug day and night by the Filipino workers, would surely pinpoint the location even after the jungle had grown back. The entrances to the network of underground safes would be visible from the ground. All they had to do was come back to the same area and there they would be. Amichi hesitated but Yamashita waved him away with a magisterial movement of the hand.
Outside, the air was hotter than he had remembered and Amichi felt it hit his skin. The sun was so bright now it hurt his eyes to look at the dry ground that would be watered by the rains of the rainy season and spring to life again. He called to a foot soldier to bring him a pencil and paper and began to scout the ground. Mapping the area was going to be difficult, it all looked so similar, but eventually he found local landmarks: the river, the hill, the pile of earth where last week’s dead were buried. Signs were etched out on boulders should the jungle swallow up everything in its unrelenting quest to assimilate everything in its path. Amichi found himself staring at the map, his mind wondered back to the good old days of the Imperial Japanese Army Academy where he had been a student. He thought about the visit last week of the Emperor’s grandson, Prince Takeda, who spent most of his time in General Yamashita’s tent studying maps and talking tactics. He found it strange that Prince Takeda should take such a personal interest in this particular tunnel. “Booby traps”, he remembered. The soldiers and the Filipino prisoners had planted mines in the tunnels, but where exactly, he had no idea. He decided to leave this information off the map, it might be better this way. Anyway, he didn’t want some treasure hunter to find the gold. Taking one last look to check that the map accurately showed the area and location of the tunnel he folded it up and called over to one of his soldiers, instructing him to take the map to General Yamashita. He hoped it would be acceptable to his General, as Yamashita had an uncanny knack of spotting his mistakes.
Hour after hour, day after day the trucks kept coming with gold. Most of it had been looted from temples and rich homes across almost the whole of South East Asia. It had been one of those spoils of war that is broken and invested by the winner but hidden and longed for by the loser. Amichi thought that, in a war, very rarely do those who own the riches ever get to keep them – eventually they will always be taken either by the victor or the vanquished. His thoughts turned to his own two daughters at home and, not for the first time that week, he wished he could see them again. Suddenly, one of the guards of the tunnel entrances rushed up to him, bringing him out of his dream with a jolt. ‘The tunnel,’ he shouted. ‘The tunnel is down.’ Amichi weighed up the situation. He knew in these moments there was protocol to be followed. He had been given orders for such occasions and these had to be adhered to, whatever the moral implications. He examined the mouth of the tunnel. ‘Any Japanese in there?’ he asked.
‘Yes, Captain.’
‘How many?’
‘Six, Captain.’
‘How many Filipinos?’
‘Thirty-eight, Captain.’
Amichi thought a moment. There were enough Japanese to warrant digging them out; no amount of Filipinos however could justify the spending of time and the endangering of Japanese lives. If the ratio was a little higher, the tunnel would just be closed up and work begun somewhere else. He ordered the tunnel to be dug out and made his way to the general’s tent.
In his tent, Yamashita studied the map. He liked its thoroughness and its complexity. He had thought very little of Amichi since he joined his unit: there was something weak about him, something untrustworthy. Yamashita decided that after this spell he would have Amichi sent to the units in Malaya, where the jungle is likely to swallow up young, irresponsible captains who look and listen too much.