Gold Warriors: America's Secret Recovery of Yamashita's Gold (editie 2003)

Note to self: If I should ever happen upon a fortune of gold, best to just sell it at the local "Cash for Gold" joint than risk putting in the bank. It's not that the bank might go under leaving you with nothing -- that would be an acceptable risk. No, the problem is their tendency to say, "gold? What gold? when you try to retrieve it. Then kick you in the stones by having you arrested for trying to negotiate "counterfeit" certificates that they themselves issued!

This is the theme woven throughout Gold Warriors: America's Secret Recovery of Yamashita's Gold. Yamashita was a Japanese general who worked alongside several crown princes to hide enormous caches of gold throughout the Philippines. The gold itself was looted from all of the nations occupied by Japan during WWII as well as the preceding Sino-Japanese War and their occupation of Korea. While movement of this gold has created something of a global shell game, occasionally a marble does appear, such as the appearance of a Ferdinand Marcos.

The movers of this gold are CIA spooks by and large, but are intricately controlled by the banks themselves. It could not work without government involvement, and indeed various governments have placed people strategically in this game. However, it a game where most of the players lose, no matter what side you are on. Those who become public liabilities on all sides have a tendency to become dead quite readily. Virtually all attempts to compensate rightful owners, or even subsequent investors in these fortunes, are at best stonewalled until the aggrieved parties are no more, by natural causes or not.

Every American president since Truman are implicated. Japan, the original thief, continues to be so involved that they've been all but excused from paying war reparations for the millions of lives they have ruined. Some of the money is used to find clandestine operations, and when they go amiss, scandals like the Iran-Contra Affair crop up. Countries and banks involved span the globe, and involve not just developing nations such as the Philippines (which are kept in a persistent state of poverty while their national wealth is siphoned away), but first-world financial giants, particularly the Swiss who have become experts at stealing other people's money.

Gold Warriors is well documented, and the Seagraves do a great job connecting the dots. They have interviewed some of the principles who can no longer speak for themselves (dead men don't talk), and have made use of recently declassified documents. The game is still being played out today -- billions and billions are in the names of people living a life of poverty, unable to even broach the subject without being threatened by imprisonment or death. The story also covers unfortunate champions who, in the process of trying to uncover the truth, have found themselves imprisoned by a network of corruption permeating law enforcement, the judicial system, and even the executive branch of the government. Our presidents are even portrayed as mere pawns of the ultra powerful: the Rockefellers, Rothschilds, and others of their ilk who created the banking system of today.

If you're into conspiracy theories, this book is a must-read for you. If you're not, well, read this and you might be. In of itself, it might seem a little over-the-top; but other books that I've read recently corroborate some of this (The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang and The Imperial Cruise by James Bradley dovetails seamlessly into what the Seagraves cover in detail). I like the ending quote by Henry Ford: "It is well enough that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system for, if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning." Indeed. ( )