Fortune Hunters Seek Japanese War Gold Along The River Kwai
KANCHANABURI, Thailand - Legend has it that in the dying days of World War II, Imperial Japanese Army trains loaded with booty steamed into the jungle down the infamous "Death Railway," never to be seen again.
In the past two decades, the tale of lost Japanese gold has sparked at least six major treasure hunts in the dense bush along the Thai-Myanmar border where the line once ran. Each failure only added glitter to the tale.
Now, another search is being proposed - by a former government deputy minister, Chaovarin Latthasaksiri, who says finding the treasure would be a boon for Thailand's shattered economy.
"It could pay off the country's massive debt," says Latthasaksiri, who also led an unsuccessful search three years ago.
Latthasaksiri believes Japanese soldiers retreating in 1945 buried 5,000 tons of gold in a cave.
A Japanese veteran who periodically visits the notorious "Bridge on the River Kwai," which was part of the Death Railway and inspired a Hollywood film about the torture, disease and death inflicted on the Allied prisoners of war who built it, insists the tales are true.
`Long gone by now'
"But I'm certain the treasure is long gone by now," adds Takashi Nagase, 80, of Krushika City, Japan. "The veterans have had 50 years to retrieve it."
Some former Allied POWs have suggested Nagase may be a treasure hunter himself. Nagase denies it and is supported by a local member of Parliament whose father was the local police chief during the Japanese occupation.
Maj. Gen. Sornchai Montriwat calls the treasure legend "baloney," but says even if it is true, Nagase is simply "too old to go into the jungle and carry out the gold rumored to be buried in the Kwai valley."
Younger men are trying. None wants to be identified, fearing legal action by Thai authorities for what might be seen as stealing and trespassing on government land.
But their presence is evident. Kendall Forbes, a Canadian businessman based in Bangkok, says he has seen signs of heavy digging along sections of the railway, which was abandoned after the war and has largely been reclaimed by the jungle.
"Whether it's treasure hunters or collectors digging up old spikes is anyone's guess," he says.
The Thai government conducted a two-month official hunt starting in December 1995. It began with great expectations of finding tons of gold ingots loaded on hidden trains near the border.
The inspiration for the search was an old woman - later declared mentally unstable - who said her Japanese boyfriend had told her the secret location of the treasure at war's end.
Hundreds of workers using excavation machines dug up branch lines leading from the railway to caves and air raid shelters. The government posted policemen with assault rifles along the line at night to prevent villagers from digging on their own. The effort unearthed many war relics, but no gold.
The search was not the first.
In 1978, Australian treasure hunters using a Japanese map of the railway followed a secret branch line and discovered a wartime steam locomotive hidden in a cave near a dam.
Though they found no gold, their discovery prompted Thailand's national railway authority to disclose that nine of the 40 steam engines used by the Japanese on the railway had inexplicably vanished in 1945.
Multiple gold rushes
For treasure-seekers, that means eight locomotives and their trains could still be out there - maybe loaded with gold.
In 1981, a former Japanese soldier on his death bed triggered a gold rush when he said he had helped bury five truckloads of war booty where the Death Railway crosses the border.
He said the bullion and gold statues plundered from banks and temples in Burma belonged to a Japanese general. Rather than surrender it, Japanese soldiers buried it and hoped to come back for it some day.
Based on his story, treasure hunters from a Japanese company that had salvaged platinum ingots from a Russian battleship sunk in the Sea of Japan in 1905 dug at the border for a week before hastily returning home. They released no information about their dig.
Like any good legend, this one has a curse. A dozen people are said to have died looking for gold ingots in the caves, including a Frenchman in the 1970s tortured to death by hill-tribe people.
Local people believe the treasure is protected by the anguished spirits of the 16,000 Allied POWs and 100,000 Asian slave laborers who died building the Death Railway.