Gold Warriors: America's Secret Recovery of Yamashita's Gold [Paperback]

Sterling Seagrave (Author), Peggy Seagrave (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 26, 2005

Drawing on a vast range of original documents and thousands of hours of interviews, Gold Warrior exposes one of the great state secrets of the twentieth century.

In 1945, US intelligence officers in manila discovered that the Japanese had hidden large quantities of gold bullion and other looted treasure in the Philippines. President Truman decided to recover the gold but to keep its riches secret. These, combined with Japanese treasure recovered during the US occupation, and with recovered Nazi loot, would create a worldwide American political action fund to fight communism. This 'Black Gold' gave Washington virtually limitless, unaccountable funds, providing an asset base to reinforce the treasuries of America's allies, to bribe political and military leaders, and to manipulate elections in foreign countries for more than fifty years.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The Seagraves, bestselling authors (Lords of the Rim, etc.), contend that Japan systematically looted the entire continent of Asia during WWII, seizing billions in precious metals, gems and artworks. Further, according to the authors, from war's end to the present, the looted treasure, used by President Truman to create a secret slush fund to fight communism, has had a malignant effect on American and Asian politics. The Seagraves assert that the Japanese imperial family, along with Ferdinand Marcos, every American president from Harry Truman to George W. Bush, and numerous sinister figures on the American hard right have been tainted and in many cases utterly corrupted by the loot. Postwar efforts to recover and exploit the treasure, according to the Seagraves, involved murders, dishonest deals and cover-ups. Readers who want to examine the full range of sources for this controversial account are referred in the book to the authors' Web site, where two CDs containing "more than 900 megabytes" of supporting documentation are available. But a paradox affecting conspiracy histories such as this one is the authors' frequent insistence that the malefactors have suppressed relevant evidence. Conceptual difficulties of this sort make it impossible for the lay reader to judge this book's credibility, even while one is swept up in the high-intensity story the Seagraves tell. FYI: The authors claim that in consequence of their revealing the existence of the slush fund and its resulting "global network of corruption," they have received "veiled death threats."
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Announcing they might be murdered for writing this book, the Seagraves proceed to tell an involved story about Japanese plunder from World War II that, never returned to its rightful owners, underwrites political slush funds and other financial legerdemain conducted by American and Japanese power brokers. According to the cognoscenti, some of the boodle is called the M-Fund, after the initial of a Douglas MacArthur crony who set it up; the gold behind it, in turn, was secreted in the Philippines under the supervision of the imperial Japanese family. The Seagraves, reputable authors of East Asian histories, advance considerable sourcing for their claims, some of which, however, rely precariously on the word of single individuals, while others are anonymous. It is, therefore, a challenge for the reader to decide what's true here, such as the authors' explosive assertion that Richard Nixon exchanged a political promise (returning Okinawa to Japan) for money from the M-Fund. In any event, the Seagraves' tale of treasure hunting, war crimes, and skulduggery will prompt some head scratching. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 365 pages
• Publisher: Verso; Revised edition (December 26, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1844675319
• ISBN-13: 978-1844675319
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #116,093 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sterling Seagrave (born 1937) is the author of eleven non-fiction histories and biographies, many co-authored with his wife, Peggy Seagrave. He grew up in Asia, in the remote Golden Triangle opium country on the Burma-China border, when Burma was still part of British India. He is in the 5th generation of American medical missionaries and teachers who came to Burma in 1832. He was in Burma when it was invaded by Japan in 1942, but with other family members were aboard the last refugee ship to India. His father, bestselling author of Burma Surgeon and Burma Surgeon Returns, was General Stilwell's chief medical officer in the CBI Theater. In 1947-8 when Britain gave Burma its independence, multiple civil wars broke out that continue today, and led to a military dictatorship still in power now. He was educated at a boarding school in India, then later in North and South America. In 1958, he dropped out of college and went to Cuba, age 21, as a stringer for the Chicago Daily News, instead helping Fidelistas in Pinar del Rio move ammunition and medicines brought by smuggling boats from the Florida Everglades. Since age 18, he has been a journalist at various newspapers including four years at The Washington Post. In 1965 he resigned to freelance throughout Asia for magazines including TIME, LIFE, Newsweek, Esquire, GEO, Atlantic, and Smithsonian. In 1979, he began writing investigative books, about the secret use of chemical and biological weapons, followed by a series of books on the powerful dynastic families of Asia, revealing their true histories disguised by propaganda and hagiographies. Death threats from Taiwan followed publication of The Soong Dynasty, a nationwide bestseller and top choice of the Book of the Month Club. The film option was purchased by George Roy Hill and Paul Newman. Next came books about Japan's looting of Asia in WW2, and how the treasure "vanished" when it was secretly recovered by the CIA to bribe foreign dictators and oligarchs. More death threats caused him to move to Europe in 1985 with Peggy Seagrave. They are now French citizens, writing their twelfth book. Many have been bestsellers in multiple languages, including Mongol. In France Seagrave has published three French editions in Paris, and has had long interviews in Paris Match, Nouvel Observateur, and Valeurs Actuel. They lived on a sailboat for ten years, then moved ashore to restore a 13th C stone wine-cave first built by the Knights Templar. It is surrounded by vineyards, with fine views of the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean. They have spent 17 years restoring it, while continuing to research and write books.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

98 of 107 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Earth-Shattering, Faith-Shaking, Well-Documented Deceit, September 25, 2003

By 

Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Gold Warriors: America's Secret Recovery of Yamashita's Gold (Hardcover)

This book is earth-shattering and faith-shaking, a well-documented tale of deceit at the highest levels of the US government. So controversial and potentially explosive are the findings of this book, to wit, that the White House recovered most of the Nazi and Japanese loot and created a secret slush fund for covert political operations world-wide, that the authors go the extra mile and offer, at a nominal price, two CD-ROMS containing 60,000 pages of supporting documentation including the Japanese treasure maps used by the US to recover the gold and other valuables.

Major players include Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, and Nixon, both Allen and John Foster Dulles, Douglas MacArthur, John McCloy, and the famous unconventional warrior Edward Lansdale. What we learn from this book is that those writing about "blowback" (the consequences of unwise US actions) have barely scratched the surface. What we learn is that rather than truly seeking to help the Japanese, Chinese, and other looted nations recover in the aftermath of WWII, the most senior leaders of the US government, no doubt with the best of intentions, actually conspired with Nazi bankers and the Japanese imperial family to create a Black Eagle Trust controlled by a very select hand-picked cabal in Washington.

Originally used to fight communism, the Black Eagle Trust, according to the authors and as thoroughly documented by the book and the two CD-ROMS (which I am happy to have in hand), quickly became a global slush fund used to bribe national leaders and manipulate elections around the world. This fund remains in existence today, making the Swiss Holocaust funds seem like loose-change. According to the authors, major banks are "addicted" to the funds and would face collapse if public investigations resulted in a forced return of this gold and related certificates to the rightful owners.

The authors have produced a magnificent work of both scholarship and investigative journalism. They document the extent of Japanese looting of Korea (beginning in 1895) and China as well as the other countries in the "co-prosperity sphere." They document the manner in which Japan hid most of the gold in the Philippines (some in Indonesia), and were forced to leave it there from 1943 onwards, when US submarine interdiction became too effective to risk shipments homeward.

I found the level of detail in this book to be quite gripping. The ingenious nature of the Japanese burial sites, with caverns below the more obvious tunnels, with sea-water protection, with maps created in reverse--and the in-bred cruelty of the Japanese, thinking nothing of burying all of the US and other national slave labor *and the Japanese engineers* alive as the final stage of protecting the looted treasure, leave one stunned.

The authors document the central role played by Lansdale in recognizing the opportunity and then briefing MacArthur and then President Truman. According to the authors, the architects of the Black Eagle Trust were three advisors to President's Roosevelt's Secretary of War, Henry Stimson: John McCloy (later head of the World Bank), Robert Lovett (later Secretary of Defense), and Robert Anderson (later Secretary of the Treasury). They made the case to Roosevelt, and presumably to Truman after Roosevelt died, that it would be impractical to return the looted gold to the rightful owners, in part because many of the looted countries were now under Soviet control.

The authors, who conducted many interviews in support of the work, including interviews of former CIA deputy director Ray Cline, who they say was involved with Lansdale and the gold in the 1940's and remained involved with the black gold through the 1980's, provide copies of documents showing the redirection of the looted gold to 176 bank accounts in 42 countries. The gold was then used to support the creation of gold bearer certificates that were in turned used to bribe the most senior officials around the world.

The authors tell a shocking tale of how quickly MacArthur chose to collaborate with the very leadership of Japan that declared war on the USA and was responsible for genocide and looting in Asia on a scale rarely achieved by anyone else. Bringing the story up to date, the authors show how prior attempts to investigate the Black Eagle Trust have led to the ruin of individuals such as Norbert Schlei, at one time deputy attorney general to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. While I have no direct knowledge and cannot be certain myself, I believe the authors have provided a sufficiently compelling case to warrant an international investigation concurrently with a General Accounting Office investigation to be chartered by Congress with unlimited supeona powers specifically directed against classified personalities and archives.

If this story is true, and I personally think that it is, then the US government, in active collusion with the very people the American people fought to defeat in WWII, has been guilty of fraud and depravity on a global scale and against the best interests of both the American people, and the against the rightful owners of the looted gold and other treasures. The authors may well have uncovered the last really big secret of the post-WW II era, and in so doing, opened the way for a restoration of the balance of power among diverse nations, and a sharp delimitation of the abuses that appear to characterize American leadership when it thinks it can rely on secret gold and stolen oil to engage in imperial adventures and domestic improprieties. As an American citizen and voter, and as a person of faith who believes that we must do unto others as we would have them do unto us, I find this book to be shocking, credible, and a basis for popular outrage and demands for truth and reconciliation.

28 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ASTOUNDING RESEARCH., February 28, 2004

By 

Shashank Tripathi (Gadabout) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Gold Warriors: America's Secret Recovery of Yamashita's Gold (Hardcover)

I don't know what angers me more: the absolutely startling facts unraveled in this book, or the sad reality that such jaw-dropping research is at a sub-15000 ranking in terms of sales on Amazon and has garnered only 3 reviews.

I happened to buy this book perchance while casually browsing the non-fic section at an airport. Now I recall my hair standing on its end as I read it on my flight. The only other book I recall seething with anger with while reading was "The Rape of Nanking".

"Gold Warriors" is more than a nail in the coffin of Japan's "serious, sober and deliberate" plundering of Asia's treasure from 1895 until 1945, and its collusion after the war with American officials to recover and use the loot as a secret political action slush fund to denounce communism. It is in fact a journey into the darkest recesses of history and the human soul.

The authors are not afraid to name names, and the excruciatingly detailed research is a marvel. The sheer scale and limits of the underlying deceit are mind blowing.

Some very minor observations. The authors may know their Philippines well, but their statements on Japan could be corrected. The book has some minor errors (that I could figure out) --

(1) The Japanese ship they repeatedly call the "Huzi" should actually be "Fuji"
(2) The important Japanese Sea port is "Maizuru" not "Maisaru"
(3) "Tairiki" is not a Japanese word: they probably meant "Tairiku Ronin", i.e., a Continental adventurer (in reference to Chinese carpetbaggers)
(4) Their mysterious "Lord Ichivara" should most likely be "Ishihara" (Ichivara is somewhat implausible)

Anyway, these are minor cavils. I highly recommend this book for any one interested in the shenanigans of power, it will leave you aghast. If this piques your interest, click over to the website bowstring.net and download two CD full of documents etc.

44 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gold Warriors: Why the POWs in Asia were Betrayed!, October 15, 2003

By 

Federico Baldassarre (Hayward, California United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Gold Warriors: America's Secret Recovery of Yamashita's Gold (Hardcover)

In 1947, Gen. Douglas MacArthur ordered the immediate termination of all investigations of Japanese war crimes and the immediate suspension of the arrest of any suspected war criminals.

In June 2000, Sen. Orrin Hatch (Utah) said, "You mean our federal government can just say, 'To hell with you, Bataan Death Marchers, and you people who were mistreated (by the Japanese), we are just going to waive all your rights.'"

As disturbing and painful as it may be to read, this is a book all victims of the Japanese, and their next of kins, must read. It's documentation and research is beyond reproach. For many of us, this book will be our 'fall from innocence', if that is still possible.

Fred Baldassarre
Son of a Bataan Survivor