Lost Gold of WW2 (2019–…): Season 2, Episode 3 - An Explosive Discovery - full transcript
..."Lost Gold
of World War II"...
‐ I found this
inside of the tunnel
in an area where there was
a part of a collapse.
‐ This was without a doubt
an American knife.
‐ Holy...
‐ Wow.
And that could mean
there's another way
into our waterfall.
‐ There's something right here.
‐ I really want to see
what's in the bottom.
It's time to get
an excavator up here.
Keep it coming.
‐ John Casey and Rick Hurt
are back in the Philippines
with a new team,
continuing their search
for Yamashita's gold.
‐ We're gonna find a way
to get to this treasure.
‐ Like many others,
John believes
Japanese general
Tomoyuki Yamashita
took billions of dollars
in treasure
looted by Japan
during World War II
and buried it
in the Philippines,
including somewhere
in this mountain.
Following a series
of mysterious symbols
they believe were left
by Yamashita,
the team is investigating
three sites
a waterfall...
‐ This waterfall's
hiding something.
‐ ...a crater
known as Breach 6...
‐ I've never seen
anything like this.
‐ ...and a camouflaged tunnel
they uncovered last year.
‐ We are in the mountain,
boys.
‐ Can they finally discover
the...
On a remote mountain
in the Philippines,
a team of miners
led by Rick Hurt
continue excavating
at Breach 6.
‐ Ultimately,
we're trying to get
to the treasure.
Hopefully,
this is the access point.
‐ A recent
nuclear magnetic resonance,
or NMR scan,
revealed that Breach 6
is in the middle
of a line of underground
metal deposits
which the team believes
could be treasure
left in a tunnel
by the Japanese.
I've not dug in anything
that's looked like this
before.
‐ After digging
through 8 feet of soft clay,
the miners make
an unexpected discovery.
‐ Really could be
a concrete cap.
Once you find concrete,
then you know
somebody's been there
before you have.
Maybe the Japanese were
using concrete
as protection or an indicator
when they were dealing
with these treasures.
‐ Based on a study of tapes
provided
by a secret informant,
Rick thinks the concrete
could be covering a tunnel.
The tapes were made
in the 1970s and '80s
by an American mining expert
named Robert Curtis,
who worked
for Ferdinand Marcos
to recover Yamashita's gold.
‐ I've been listening
to these Bob Curtis tapes.
In the shafts
Bob Curtis was digging,
they also found concrete.
‐ Right now I'm
the most excited I've been.
I think we're the closest
to finding another way
into the mountain.
‐ Wow, that stuff's
looking soft.
It's really, really soft.
We hit a spot under there
where it was possible concrete.
We've jackhammered
through that,
and we're back
into soft material now.
‐ Brent, you're
out of that concrete?
‐ Yeah, looks like soft clay,
fine material.
‐ I was hoping
for the top of a tunnel.
‐ We're about as far
as we can go
without putting
some steel in, man.
‐ Yeah, you're getting
down there a bit now.
We were really hoping,
when we broke
through this concrete,
it was gonna uncover
a void space or a tunnel.
All's we found was more dirt.
‐ In order to continue
digging safely,
the team must build
a steel frame
to keep the shaft
from collapsing.
This is their best chance
to find what is buried
beneath Breach 6.
Rick: We really
don't have an idea
of how deep we're going,
so we'll need to get
the steel in there
and get things shored up good
so that, uh, we're not
gonna have a cave‐in
pin anybody in.
‐ Up at the waterfall site,
John's been looking
for a way to access
what he thinks
is a treasure chamber
300 feet below.
Unfortunately,
he hasn't been able
to figure out a way in.
‐ It's one thing to know
where something is.
Doesn't mean
you can always get it out.
‐ The ground
below the waterfall
is diorite, one of the hardest
rocks on Earth.
The type of equipment needed
to excavate diorite is huge
and impossible to haul
up the steep mountain terrain.
‐ Even if I could
bring it in,
the whole water supply
for the town below
comes from our waterfall.
We're not gonna be screwing
with the town's water supply.
‐ Days ago,
Rick found
a possible solution
on the Robert Curtis tapes.
‐ They found a tunnel system
connected to the waterfall.
‐ And that could mean there's
another way into our waterfall.
‐ 20 years ago,
Rick advised a mysterious
Philippine treasure seeker
known as Colonel Coriaso,
who operated
on this mountain.
‐ Coriaso always thought
the treasure was
under the waterfall.
But he never had us dig there.
I mean, he had us down over
on the side of the hill,
quite a ways
over to one side.
That's where he wanted to dig.
‐ Based on Rick's memory
and the tapes,
the tech team
scanned the area
and found a new place to dig.
‐ Colin: There's some type
of metal anomaly
in in this area.
I really want to see
what's in the bottom here.
‐ Determined to find a way
into the waterfall...
John sends in
the second excavator
with Rob and Michele.
‐ Michele: I didn't think
we'd ever get here.
I'm excited.
‐ After a tough journey
through harsh terrain,
the team finally reaches
their destination.
‐ Good.
‐ I'm stoked, man.
We're, like, 10 feet away.
Keep going till you can't.
I want to get
down to this metal target.
It certainly could be
a tunnel
leading possibly
right to the waterfall.
It's really speculation
at this point
until we find
what we're looking for.
‐ Go ahead and rotate
till your boom is almost
about at that tree next to you.
Hey, that's about as far
as you're gonna go.
We're here. That's it.
That's all we need.
‐ Whoo. Whoo‐hoo!
‐ Way to go, Michele.
‐ We made it.
It's just
a huge gamble right now.
We don't know
exactly what's down there.
I'm hoping that could be
an entrance into the tunnel.
We're just not sure.
‐ While the team goes all in
on John's theory,
miners Levi and Geo
continue exploring
the mysterious tunnel
the team discovered last year.
‐ We got to rip
some more timber sets out.
We're just gonna keep getting
in there farther and farther.
Maybe into a compartment
or something
that might hold treasure.
‐ Though they believe
this tunnel was built
by the Japanese
during World War II,
the discovery of a knife
manufactured
well after that war
has them questioning
who else has been here.
‐ It's easy to say
this knife has been down here
for 40 or 50 years,
and that puts it 1970s,
1980s, maybe.
‐ If it was '70s or '80s,
the chances are
that there have been
treasure hunters in here.
Did they find something?
Did they beat us
to the treasure?
‐ In search of answers...
‐ Those posts were in there
pretty good.
‐ ...they make their way
deeper into the tunnel.
‐ What the heck.
Hey, Levi, look at this.
‐ What do you got there?
‐ Looks like an old plate
or something.
Looks ceramic, doesn't it?
‐ I'm not sure.
Do you smell that?
‐ What is that?
‐ I'm getting an idea
what this is.
Being in the military
and being in the mines,
we do a lot of explosives.
A lot of different explosives
that you use under ground
have a distinct smell to them.
As soon as I was able
to get a whiff of this,
I knew it could possibly
be nitroglycerine.
What's scary
about this whole thing,
whether it be a Japanese
booby trap of some sort
or whether it be dynamite
that was left
inside of this tunnel,
the thing about
that old dynamite like that,
it has nitroglycerine in it.
‐ Oh, yeah.
‐ That nitro will start
sweating,
and it is highly,
highly volatile.
You drop a rock on it,
it'll blow up.
‐ Created in 1847,
nitroglycerine was widely
used in ordnance
during World War II.
The primary ingredient
is glycerol,
which is found in animal fats.
During the war,
the American
Fat Salvage Committee
rallied housewives to donate
their leftover cooking fats
to be processed
into nitroglycerine.
According to the campaign,
1 pound of fat was enough
to create
a pound of explosives.
Nitroglycerine
is highly unstable
and susceptible
to accidental detonation.
An obvious risk to anyone
excavating the tunnel.
‐ You know,
This is getting to be
a pretty scary business
we're in here.
‐ Well, that's just it.
We don't want more
to worry about
than just getting hit
with rocks at this point.
Until we know it's safe
to go back to work,
no one's going in there.
At this point,
the tunnel is shut down.
‐ After finding
a suspicious substance
in the tunnel,
the mining teams calls in
an explosives expert.
‐ Levi. Nice to meet you.
‐ Nice to meet you.
My name's Chad Higginbotham.
I am a weapons
and explosives expert.
I was on this mountain
last year
and defused some booby traps
that we found.
Hold, hold, hold.
Could have hurt somebody.
Give me that.
It's the top of
a potato masher grenade.
Every time
that I come back here,
I'm always finding
something new and exciting
about this mountain,
like this tunnel
that they found.
‐ This is
the first thing we found.
Mm‐hmm.
‐ And then inside of this
waswas a substance which we
don't know what it is.
‐ Yeah, it smells
a lot like cordite.
‐ Invented in 1889
by British chemists,
cordite is an explosive
made from nitroglycerine
and petroleum jelly.
It was used in ballistics
for rifles
and anti‐aircraft guns
during World War II
and was even part
of the detonation system
for Little Boy,
the atomic bomb
dropped on Hiroshima.
‐ A lot of these components
are 75 to 83 years old.
They're degraded,
and sometimes it's really hard
to defuse them,
and I don't know how long
you guys have been working
in here and that,
but I'd like to take a look,
look at the walls
and things
'cause this thing could be
booby trapped
from the front to back
and y'all have just been
lucky so far.
‐ Yep.
‐ Who's going?
‐ Chad: Levi and I
are gonna go in.
He's gonna show me
where they found the device.
I'm gonna take a look at it,
see if it's safe,
if I need to back them off.
As I start into the tunnel,
I'm looking
for any other booby traps
that may be around,
trip wires.
‐ To demoralize
the Allied forces,
the Japanese military
regularly deployed
explosive booby traps.
Roughly 30 tons
of World War II explosives
are still found annually,
including throughout
the Philippines,
so Chad and Levi must
exercise extreme caution
as they approach.
‐ Going into a tunnel like this
with an unknown device,
yeah, there's a little
pucker factor there,
but to me, finding a device
is like finding a bicycle
on Christmas morning
under the tree for a kid.
I love this stuff.
‐ Okay, it's right there
on the ground
and straight across
from that bar.
‐ Yeah, if you'll step back
a little bit,
let me take a look at it
and see if there's
anything else around.
Uh, I'm gonna dig
around a little bit.
If I'm gonna remove a mine
or anything
from this time period,
I take my time.
I'm very careful
with what I do,
my movements,
how much pressure
I put on the sides
because it can be
very unstable.
‐ What do you see
in there, man?
‐ I think it could be
a Japanese mine,
so I got a high‐tech
piece of equipment here
to test for that
two really sharp sticks.
‐ What are you gonna do
with those?
‐ Probe under it
and see if I can feel
another mine.
There could be
others in there.
Most of the time,
they wouldn't just set one.
This is like worm fishing.
‐ The big thing
that's spooky is,
you get into old explosives,
it's not like the explosives
we use nowadays
that are super stable.
Unless you have
a really hard concussion,
it won't set them off.
This kind of stuff here,
the most minute
bit of impact
can set this stuff off.
That's the scary thing
about the whole situation.
‐ Now, there's nothing
under it.
‐ So you see a detonator
or anything?
‐ No. The plunger
seems to be gone.
All right, Levi,
if you want to come on up.
You can see
what I'm looking at here.
I'm gonna pull the rest
of this mine out of here.
We're gonna take it outside
so I can look at it
in thein the daylight.
‐ Yeah.
‐ You brought it out, huh?
‐ This is what you were
finding pieces of.
‐ Basically,
with the pieces that I have,
you can get a pretty good idea
of how big this thing was.
‐ Mm‐hmm.
‐ This would be the top,
and the plunger would be
right here in the center.
I think it's a Japanese
A3 land mine.
It's made out of terra cotta.
It's just like
the terra cotta pavers
people use for their walkways
and their patios
and things like that.
‐ So why were they using
terra cotta?
‐ They were building
ships and tanks
and guns and everything else,
and they were running
out of metal,
so they came up with this.
‐ As the Allies advanced
in the Pacific theater,
shipments of steel
from mainland Japan
were either destroyed
by U. S. forces
or used to fortify
coastal defenses
and command posts.
Inland soldiers were forced
to improvise
with other materials,
like the terra cotta.
‐ If this thing
would have been live
and you'd have reached down
and stepped on it,
pulled it up or anything,
it could have been
a really bad day for you guys.
The kicker is,
can't find it
with a metal detector.
And you can walk past it
two or three times
and not realize what it is,
especially with the timbers
and things that are in there.
I'm calling in a K9 unit
to search this tunnel
for any other devices.
If it's in there,
they'll find them.
‐ Meanwhile, at Breach 6,
Brent and Farrell continue
constructing their steel frame.
‐ This is hard work, man.
We better find something
at the bottom of this hole.
‐ So this is a post.
We're gonna use this
to box in
the whole top of this,
and that'll keep anybody
from falling in the hole,
and it'll also keep that
up there
from coming down
on top of us.
‐ Once the site is secure,
the team can keep
digging their way
toward the metal deposits.
‐ This is the easy part,
actually.
The digging's the hard part.
So the steel's nice, actually.
It gives you
a little break from digging.
‐ Eager to see
their progress,
Rick stops by.
‐ Not half bad.
‐ You, uh, ready to go?
If this is concrete,
I'm hoping that we're
real close to something.
We don't know what,
but we're close to something.
‐ Want to tell Rick
to pull that up?
‐ Yep.
‐ We need to get things
shored up good
so that we're not gonna have
a cave‐in pin anybody in.
I am so excited to find out
what we've got down there.
‐ Another one up.
‐ Yo, guys.
You guys might want
to come look at this.
‐ What do you got there, dude?
‐ It's some dark, dark stuff.
‐ What the heck is that?
‐ That looks like a burnt
piece of wood.
‐ Oh, that's charcoal.
You can see the wood grain
in it and everything else.
That is charcoal.
‐ It looks like there's
a lot of it down here.
‐ Look at that.
‐ It's a couple inches thick
for sure.
‐ I wasn't expecting charcoal.
‐ I mean,
it's a pretty distinct layer.
It runs all the way across.
‐ That isn't natural.
That's got to be put in there
by somebody.
Well, we've gotten down below
what we thought was concrete,
and we've run
into a layer of charcoal.
It's large pieces
of charcoal,
and you can actually see
the wood grain in them.
That's really unusual.
‐ Wow. There's a lot of it.
‐ That is definitely
burnt wood.
But it does make me
more confident
that the hard layer
that we ran into a few feet up
was probably placed there
on purpose as well.
Somebody put this here.
Somebody put this here
for a reason.
I don't know
what that reason is,
but I think we can find out
with a little more
investigation.
‐ After finding
a second layer
of unusual material
in Breach 6,
Rick turns
to the Robert Curtis tapes
to see if they can shed
any light
on these bizarre discoveries.
‐ We need to take
another look
at these tapes
we've got from Bob Curtis.
I mean,
he talks about the layers
and all of this
man‐made stuff.
Six levels.
‐ According to Curtis,
the Japanese placed
specific layers of materials
above their buried vaults
to mark the pathway
to treasure.
‐ Charcoal at 10 feet.
We got charcoal at 10 feet.
Marble.
We don't have
all of the same stuff,
but we found what we thought
was a concrete layer,
and then we found
that layer of charcoal
about 3 foot down under that.
He had the same stuff.
Ahh.
My gosh.
I really don't want to get
into digging up bones.
I heard about this stuff
20 years ago.
It just didn't seem real,
and now we're here,
and we're digging,
and we're finding
some of these indicators.
We're probably gonna see
the other ones as well.
‐ Thnext morning,
John continues searching
for a tunnel entrance
into the waterfall,
but 30 feet down,
Michele has uncovered
nothing but dirt.
‐ We should be hitting it
pretty quick here,
but getting
a little nervous.
‐ To safely excavate
the area,
Michele removes the dirt
in a stairstep pattern,
reducing the possibility
of collapse.
‐ I'm ready to go down there
and have a
have a look‐see.
‐ How's the signal?
‐ It's pretty loud.
It's definitely in there.
You're gonna have to keep
going deeper,
which means we're gonna keep
having to go wider, too.
‐ Deeper and wider it is.
Now I'm starting
to get worried.
We should have seen it
by now.
I don't know. She's scratching
on something hard down there.
‐ Rob: What's happening,
Michele?
‐ I've run into bedrock.
I can't dig any deeper.
‐ If we're hitting bedrock
already,
there's no way we're gonna
be able to get in this way.
Bedrock's not something
that I can just get through.
I was hoping
there's a tunnel down there,
but it's not promising it.
‐ Back at basecamp,
John gathers the team
to discuss other options.
‐ I can't drill
straight down
right at the waterfall,
and that's because
that waterfall feeds
a water supply
to the village down below.
I don't have
many options there.
I mean, I have no options.
‐ What if we made
our own tunnel
from the side of the mountain?
‐ How far from the site is it
to the void space?
‐ 930 feet
to the target
under the waterfall.
‐ Wow.
That's aThat's a long way.
‐ Mm‐hmm.
‐ 930 feet
of digging a tunnel,
we would be here forever.
‐ I can't see just digging
a tunnel 930 feet.
There's got to be
an easier way.
There's lots
of borehole cameras
that will make it 930 feet
to see exactly
what we've hit.
‐ Once you know
it's 100% in there,
then digging a 930‐foot tunnel
makes a whole lot more sense.
‐ What about
a horizontal drill?
They're often used
to run pipeline
from one side of a mountain
to another,
and I know
they're well capable
of drilling
over a thousand feet.
‐ A horizontal drill
will allow the team
to run a borehole camera
through 930 feet of hard rock
to see directly
into the waterfall void.
‐ You're still gonna have
a lot of problems
getting through there,
but I think
it's your best bet.
‐ It's the best bet
we've got right now.
It's the only thing
we've got right now.
‐ In the U. S.,
head researcher Bingo Minerva
is searching
for Yamashita treasure maps.
Since the tapes
Rick's been looking through
suggest Robert Curtis had
access to them...
...Bingo reaches out
to a source
familiar with Curtis.
‐ So right now
I'm in Las Vegas
on my way to meet
Brian Greenspun,
who's currently
the editor‐in‐chief
of the Las Vegas Sun,
the Pulitzer Prize‐winning
newspaper.
Brian Greenspun had
a lot of interactions
with Robert Curtis.
I want to see if he remembers
anything specifically,
see if he gave him any maps,
any details.
It would be really great
to see one of these maps.
Hey, Brian.
‐ Hey. Good morning.
‐ Bingo.
‐ How are you?
‐ Good to finally meet you, sir.
‐ Nice to see you.
Welcome to the Las Vegas Sun.
My parents started it in 1950,
so it's been in my life
almost my entire lifetime,
you know,
so I guess I'm the
I'm the keeper of the flame,
let's say, right?
‐ That'sThat's my story.
We've been around a long time,
and we've had
a lot of headlines,
but since you mention...
‐ Over its 70‐year history,
the Las Vegas Sun has won
numerous journalism awards,
including a Pulitzer.
Well known
for their in‐depth reporting,
they've covered the search
for Yamashita's treasure
at length.
‐ So the reason I'm here today
is that I currently have
a team in the Philippines
that's treasure hunting
for gold.
We believe we're on a site
that is a Yamashita
treasure site.
We've actually found evidence
of Americans being
on the property
in what we believe
is a Japanese tunnel.
‐ Okay.
‐ Now, through my research,
I found out that you wrote
about Robert Curtis
back in the '70s
and that spanned
for about three decades.
So really the question
I have is,
how did you meet
Robert Curtis?
What was it about his story
that, you know,
convinced you
to even start writing this?
‐ That's a simple question,
but it's
a very complex answer.
So here comes a guy
who walks into the office
noticeably frightened.
He wanted to talk in the car.
This was a guy
who didn't trust anybody.
It felt to me like he was
running for his life,
and then he starts
telling this story
about that treasure
somewhere,
hidden deep somewhere.
And so I had to figure out
whether it was real,
so I spent a lot of time
with Bob.
Why is he so afraid?
Remember, this is 1978.
Marcos was at the height
of his power.
He was in control.
‐ President Ferdinand Marcos
was reportedly brutal
in his obsession to find
Yamashita's treasure.
After treasure hunter
Roger Roxas claimed
he found a cache
of Yamashita's gold,
Marcos allegedly
imprisoned Roxas
and seized his treasure.
Roxas later filed a suit
against Marcos
to try and recover
his stolen goods.
Roxas died under
suspicious circumstances
the night before
the trial began.
‐ And, of course,
as it came out,
Bob Curtis was afraid
because he'd got
out of the Philippines
10 seconds
ahead of being killed,
so he thought,
and he needed this story told
in a most credible way,
believing that,
once the story is out,
there's no reason to kill him.
‐ Robert Curtis first went
to the Philippines
to assist in President
Ferdinand Marcos' quest
to find Yamashita's gold.
After several months
of working for him,
Curtis reportedly learned
that Marcos had grown
suspicious of him
and ordered
his assassination.
Curtis immediately fled
the Philippines
and came directly
to the Las Vegas Sun
to share his story.
‐ You have to be skeptical
about it.
So even then, I mean, really,
first impressions with you,
you didn't really
believe this story.
‐ How could you believe
this story?
‐ Yeah.
‐ Who's Bob Curtis?
He was a mining engineer
from northern Nevada.
How did he get in the middle
of Ferdinand Marcos'
hunt for a treasure?
But there's no doubt
in my mind
that Bob Curtis knew
that he had gotten himself
in the middle
of something really huge
and very dangerous,
that someone could kill him.
‐ In a deposition
made in 1993,
during the Roger Roxas trial,
Curtis claims
he was recruited by Marcos
to process recovered gold,
removing identifying marks
that could tie it
to countries looted by Japan.
‐ President Marcos
wished to talk to me
about the possibility
of handling
the re‐melting of bars.
‐ Eventually,
Curtis was given access
to Marcos' maps,
which supposedly led
to Yamashita treasure sites.
‐ I was skeptical
about his story,
and my job was to find out
if this guy was real
and his story was real.
But...
Bob had tapes,
and Bob had memos,
and Bob had maps.
Well, we happened to have
the ability at the time
to get it authenticated,
and I did.
‐ So you're saying
he's brought you actual
Yamashita treasure maps.
‐ I'm saying I saw maps
that he claimed were maps
to where the treasures were.
And then
he showed me pictures...
deep in these caverns
of things that purported
to be boxes
that he said gold was in.
I don't doubt that the maps,
whatever the documents were,
the conversations
that were taped were real.
We never would have printed it
in our paper
if we didn't believe
it was true.
In his head,
printing the story meant
that he was no longer
vulnerable to being killed
because of what he knew
'cause now everybody knew it.
‐ Did he think in his mind,
by printing that story,
it offered him a bit
of a cloud of protection
for himself?
‐ Yes. Oh, absolutely.
That's why he came here.
He said, "Let's make it
as public as possible."
‐ Bingo Minerva is meeting
with a journalist
who investigated
Robert Curtis.
‐ So these are the newspapers,
the actual newspapers
from Curtis
and all the information
and whoever else
we talked to.
It's all in these stories.
This was our first story...
‐ This is the very first story
you printed from...
‐ That's the very first story.
Yes.
Everything we learned
that we believed was accurate
came from Bob Curtis.
‐ There's actually something
I would like to show you
and get your thoughts on.
‐ Okay.
‐ I have, uh, these tapes,
and this is Bob Curtis'
dying declaration.
‐ Wow.
‐ So is that
Bob Curtis' voice?
‐ I've got chills.
I mean, I have chills
up and down my arms.
Yeah, of course
that's Bob Curtis.
It's the same guy,
and it's the same voice.
I heard this fear
in this man's voice.
He was scared.
This confirms
everything that we believe
at the time
we first met Bob Curtis
and what we proved
to ourselves was true.
‐ On January 24th, 2004,
the Las Vegas Sun printed
an obituary
announcing the death
of Robert Curtis
at 74 years old.
His exact cause of death
was never publicly revealed.
‐ Are you aware
of any other leads,
any information
that will lead me
to any Americans
treasure hunting
in the Philippines?
‐ Well, in our stories,
we didwe did write
about a fellow
by the name
of Chuck McDougald.
He's one of those experts
on this whole
Yamashita gold story.
‐ According to Greenspun,
Chuck McDougald was
close to Curtis
and knew his secrets.
‐ He could tell you firsthand
probably a lot of what
Bob Curtis could tell you.
‐ Talking to Brian,
and the fact that he believed
Robert Curtis,
I mean, that's further
confirmation
that there is truth
in Robert Curtis' story.
So unfortunately, Curtis
is not with us anymore.
I really need to find
somebody still alive
that knows more
about this story,
and hopefully that person's
Chuck McDougald.
If I can track down Chuck,
maybe he has the information
for us
that can help us on our search.
‐ Back in the Philippines,
a K9 unit arrives
to investigate the possibility
the explosive booby traps
are in the tunnel.
‐ There he is.
‐ Chad just called in Paul.
He's a K9 handler.
His dog's been trained
to smell for explosives.
We need to get
this tunnel cleared
and get back to work.
We got to get
to the end of this tunnel.
‐ So is this
some type of shepherd,
or what kind of dog is this?
‐ Belgian Malinois.
These dogs are used
in special forces,
special operations.
These are the top dogs
of detection, of detention,
of personal protection,
everything.
They can pick up
drugs and explosives
hidden in places
you'd never think.
If there's explosives
in this tunnel,
this dog will find them.
The best way to explain
the sense of smell of a dog
is if you walk in a house
and somebody's cooking
chicken noodle soup,
you smell chicken noodle soup.
When a dog walks in the house,
he smells every ingredient
in that chicken noodle soup.
‐ While dogs were used
in combat
as early as 600 B. C.,
they were not a major part
of U. S. military operations
until World War II.
Over 10,000 dogs were donated
to the war effort
and specifically trained
by American forces
to patrol Pacific theater
beaches,
detect land mines,
and deliver messages.
‐ Sit.
‐ This is what we've found
so far.
Um, I want to see
if he'll hit on it.
‐ Okay.
Sit.
Okay.
‐ Good Drago.
‐ Good boy. Good boy.
Good boy.
‐ Yeah. He can smell it.
‐ So if there's more of those
inside of the tunnel,
he should be able
to pick up on those.
‐ He'll find it.
When he walks in that cave,
he's gonna search everywhere,
and when his nose hits,
he's either gonna sit
like he did here,
or he birddogs
and his tail goes straight up
and he stops,
and that'll tell us
where it is.
‐ Okay. Well,
let's get some gear,
and we'll head down
into the tunnel.
‐ All right.
‐ You ready?
‐ Yes, sir.
‐ Levi: Okay.
The Japanese,
them burying mines
into the ground like this,
they didn't want them
to be found,
and they didn't want
to hurt you.
They wanted to kill you.
That's what scared me
the most.
Here, put that on, Paul.
This is a total
different element
than what we're
used to dealing with.
Usually when you go
into these old tunnels,
you know, we have the potential
of getting smashed by rocks
but not something
where somebody put a bomb there
intentionally trying
to wipe you out.
This is a whole
different world.
This here, this is as far
as I'm gonna go.
Don't touch
any of that old timber.
It's all rotted.
‐ Paul, the mound
was found right here,
uh, so we're gonna try
to detect from here back.
‐ Levi: I hope they're
real careful back there.
I don't want
something to happen
and me have to dig them
out of here.
‐ Levi: It's hard saying
where the Japanese can put
these booby traps.
There's so much
different material
inside of this tunnel.
They can put it in the floor.
They can put it on top
of the timbers.
They can put it
behind the timbers.
‐ Where's the bomb?
Find the bomb.
‐ Clear?
‐ Not yet.
‐ The dog has cleared
the area
where the terra cotta mine
was found.
‐ All right, Levi,
we're going on ahead.
Y'all wait here.
‐ Well, those guys just
went out of sight.
I hope the ground's
okay back there.
We haven't been
this far in there.
They took the dog in.
They're seeing
if they can smell
any other explosive devices.
I told them, if it gets
too dangerous back there,
if it looks too shaky,
just to back out
and get out of there.
We can always
bring them back later.
I hope they don't find
anything,
but chances are,
if they found one,
there's probably a chance
of them finding another one.
I certainly hope they don't,
and I personally don't want
to get my legs
blown off in here.
I'd much rather be pulling
treasure out of here
than somebody gets hurt.
‐ While the K9 team checks
the rest of the tunnel,
Rick comes to check
on the site.
‐ Well, what's the verdict?
‐ You got a clean
bill of health in there.
‐ Well, that's great.
‐ That's good news.
‐ We cleared it
as far as we could.
‐ How far did we
make it in there?
‐ Couple of hundred yards
past the mine
wherethat we found.
‐ We checked the whole thing
out, then, huh?
‐ Ground started
getting shaky.
I didn't want them going
way, way back in there,
but at least we know we're clear
up to a certain point.
If we have to,
we'll bring somebody back.
‐ Rick: So now we've got
a Japanese land mine
in a Japanese tunnel.
Something
needed to be guarded.
What were they trying
to protect?
I don't think we're gonna know
until we find
where this tunnel goes.
‐ Thanks again, man.
‐ Absolutely.
‐ Thank you, man.
Appreciate it.
‐ Yeah.
‐ The next morning,
Bingo calls
to update the team.
So, guys,
I met with Brian Greenspun.
He's one of the editors
at the Las Vegas Sun.
Now, he published
a number of articles
on Bob Curtis
and Yamashita's treasure
over the span
of about three decades.
Bob Curtis, he provided
a lot of evidence
to the Las Vegas Sun
and Brian over there,
and unfortunately
they don't have any more
of that archival evidence
or documents left over.
What Brian did reveal was
potentially a huge clue
with the name Chuck McDougald.
Chuck McDougald,
I did some digging on him,
and I found out he was
actually working
with Bob Curtis.
He was working with him
on a site
called Fort Santiago,
and I found some archival
news footage of him,
and I want you guys
to check it out
and see what you think.
I've already sent it to you.
‐ Okay.
‐ Wow. That was
pretty interesting.
‐ He talked about maps.
It makes me wonder if he
actually has those maps still.
‐ If he has those maps still,
then maybe
maybe he has a map
of our mountain.
Is there any way
that we can get
to talk to Charles McDougald?
‐ Well,
I tracked this guy down.
He's still alive.
He's living in the Bay Area
currently.
Uh, he's my next meeting.
If I can get
any information at all,
I'll let you guys know.
I'll see what I can find out.
The key that will lead us
to finding this treasure
could be just one person.
Hopefully that person
is Chuck McDougald.
On the next
"Lost Gold of World War II"...
This horizontal drill
may be our best bet
to see inside this mountain.
It's not looking too good.
‐ Geo: Hey, Levi,
what is that?
‐ Is that a tooth?
You think it could possibly
be a human?
‐ I had two original maps
of the treasure
found in Marcos' office.
‐ Do you still have the maps?
‐ Yes, I do.
‐ Wow.
I've never seen
anything like this.
Subtitled by Diego Moraes
www.oakisland.tk
of World War II"...
‐ I found this
inside of the tunnel
in an area where there was
a part of a collapse.
‐ This was without a doubt
an American knife.
‐ Holy...
‐ Wow.
And that could mean
there's another way
into our waterfall.
‐ There's something right here.
‐ I really want to see
what's in the bottom.
It's time to get
an excavator up here.
Keep it coming.
‐ John Casey and Rick Hurt
are back in the Philippines
with a new team,
continuing their search
for Yamashita's gold.
‐ We're gonna find a way
to get to this treasure.
‐ Like many others,
John believes
Japanese general
Tomoyuki Yamashita
took billions of dollars
in treasure
looted by Japan
during World War II
and buried it
in the Philippines,
including somewhere
in this mountain.
Following a series
of mysterious symbols
they believe were left
by Yamashita,
the team is investigating
three sites
a waterfall...
‐ This waterfall's
hiding something.
‐ ...a crater
known as Breach 6...
‐ I've never seen
anything like this.
‐ ...and a camouflaged tunnel
they uncovered last year.
‐ We are in the mountain,
boys.
‐ Can they finally discover
the...
On a remote mountain
in the Philippines,
a team of miners
led by Rick Hurt
continue excavating
at Breach 6.
‐ Ultimately,
we're trying to get
to the treasure.
Hopefully,
this is the access point.
‐ A recent
nuclear magnetic resonance,
or NMR scan,
revealed that Breach 6
is in the middle
of a line of underground
metal deposits
which the team believes
could be treasure
left in a tunnel
by the Japanese.
I've not dug in anything
that's looked like this
before.
‐ After digging
through 8 feet of soft clay,
the miners make
an unexpected discovery.
‐ Really could be
a concrete cap.
Once you find concrete,
then you know
somebody's been there
before you have.
Maybe the Japanese were
using concrete
as protection or an indicator
when they were dealing
with these treasures.
‐ Based on a study of tapes
provided
by a secret informant,
Rick thinks the concrete
could be covering a tunnel.
The tapes were made
in the 1970s and '80s
by an American mining expert
named Robert Curtis,
who worked
for Ferdinand Marcos
to recover Yamashita's gold.
‐ I've been listening
to these Bob Curtis tapes.
In the shafts
Bob Curtis was digging,
they also found concrete.
‐ Right now I'm
the most excited I've been.
I think we're the closest
to finding another way
into the mountain.
‐ Wow, that stuff's
looking soft.
It's really, really soft.
We hit a spot under there
where it was possible concrete.
We've jackhammered
through that,
and we're back
into soft material now.
‐ Brent, you're
out of that concrete?
‐ Yeah, looks like soft clay,
fine material.
‐ I was hoping
for the top of a tunnel.
‐ We're about as far
as we can go
without putting
some steel in, man.
‐ Yeah, you're getting
down there a bit now.
We were really hoping,
when we broke
through this concrete,
it was gonna uncover
a void space or a tunnel.
All's we found was more dirt.
‐ In order to continue
digging safely,
the team must build
a steel frame
to keep the shaft
from collapsing.
This is their best chance
to find what is buried
beneath Breach 6.
Rick: We really
don't have an idea
of how deep we're going,
so we'll need to get
the steel in there
and get things shored up good
so that, uh, we're not
gonna have a cave‐in
pin anybody in.
‐ Up at the waterfall site,
John's been looking
for a way to access
what he thinks
is a treasure chamber
300 feet below.
Unfortunately,
he hasn't been able
to figure out a way in.
‐ It's one thing to know
where something is.
Doesn't mean
you can always get it out.
‐ The ground
below the waterfall
is diorite, one of the hardest
rocks on Earth.
The type of equipment needed
to excavate diorite is huge
and impossible to haul
up the steep mountain terrain.
‐ Even if I could
bring it in,
the whole water supply
for the town below
comes from our waterfall.
We're not gonna be screwing
with the town's water supply.
‐ Days ago,
Rick found
a possible solution
on the Robert Curtis tapes.
‐ They found a tunnel system
connected to the waterfall.
‐ And that could mean there's
another way into our waterfall.
‐ 20 years ago,
Rick advised a mysterious
Philippine treasure seeker
known as Colonel Coriaso,
who operated
on this mountain.
‐ Coriaso always thought
the treasure was
under the waterfall.
But he never had us dig there.
I mean, he had us down over
on the side of the hill,
quite a ways
over to one side.
That's where he wanted to dig.
‐ Based on Rick's memory
and the tapes,
the tech team
scanned the area
and found a new place to dig.
‐ Colin: There's some type
of metal anomaly
in in this area.
I really want to see
what's in the bottom here.
‐ Determined to find a way
into the waterfall...
John sends in
the second excavator
with Rob and Michele.
‐ Michele: I didn't think
we'd ever get here.
I'm excited.
‐ After a tough journey
through harsh terrain,
the team finally reaches
their destination.
‐ Good.
‐ I'm stoked, man.
We're, like, 10 feet away.
Keep going till you can't.
I want to get
down to this metal target.
It certainly could be
a tunnel
leading possibly
right to the waterfall.
It's really speculation
at this point
until we find
what we're looking for.
‐ Go ahead and rotate
till your boom is almost
about at that tree next to you.
Hey, that's about as far
as you're gonna go.
We're here. That's it.
That's all we need.
‐ Whoo. Whoo‐hoo!
‐ Way to go, Michele.
‐ We made it.
It's just
a huge gamble right now.
We don't know
exactly what's down there.
I'm hoping that could be
an entrance into the tunnel.
We're just not sure.
‐ While the team goes all in
on John's theory,
miners Levi and Geo
continue exploring
the mysterious tunnel
the team discovered last year.
‐ We got to rip
some more timber sets out.
We're just gonna keep getting
in there farther and farther.
Maybe into a compartment
or something
that might hold treasure.
‐ Though they believe
this tunnel was built
by the Japanese
during World War II,
the discovery of a knife
manufactured
well after that war
has them questioning
who else has been here.
‐ It's easy to say
this knife has been down here
for 40 or 50 years,
and that puts it 1970s,
1980s, maybe.
‐ If it was '70s or '80s,
the chances are
that there have been
treasure hunters in here.
Did they find something?
Did they beat us
to the treasure?
‐ In search of answers...
‐ Those posts were in there
pretty good.
‐ ...they make their way
deeper into the tunnel.
‐ What the heck.
Hey, Levi, look at this.
‐ What do you got there?
‐ Looks like an old plate
or something.
Looks ceramic, doesn't it?
‐ I'm not sure.
Do you smell that?
‐ What is that?
‐ I'm getting an idea
what this is.
Being in the military
and being in the mines,
we do a lot of explosives.
A lot of different explosives
that you use under ground
have a distinct smell to them.
As soon as I was able
to get a whiff of this,
I knew it could possibly
be nitroglycerine.
What's scary
about this whole thing,
whether it be a Japanese
booby trap of some sort
or whether it be dynamite
that was left
inside of this tunnel,
the thing about
that old dynamite like that,
it has nitroglycerine in it.
‐ Oh, yeah.
‐ That nitro will start
sweating,
and it is highly,
highly volatile.
You drop a rock on it,
it'll blow up.
‐ Created in 1847,
nitroglycerine was widely
used in ordnance
during World War II.
The primary ingredient
is glycerol,
which is found in animal fats.
During the war,
the American
Fat Salvage Committee
rallied housewives to donate
their leftover cooking fats
to be processed
into nitroglycerine.
According to the campaign,
1 pound of fat was enough
to create
a pound of explosives.
Nitroglycerine
is highly unstable
and susceptible
to accidental detonation.
An obvious risk to anyone
excavating the tunnel.
‐ You know,
This is getting to be
a pretty scary business
we're in here.
‐ Well, that's just it.
We don't want more
to worry about
than just getting hit
with rocks at this point.
Until we know it's safe
to go back to work,
no one's going in there.
At this point,
the tunnel is shut down.
‐ After finding
a suspicious substance
in the tunnel,
the mining teams calls in
an explosives expert.
‐ Levi. Nice to meet you.
‐ Nice to meet you.
My name's Chad Higginbotham.
I am a weapons
and explosives expert.
I was on this mountain
last year
and defused some booby traps
that we found.
Hold, hold, hold.
Could have hurt somebody.
Give me that.
It's the top of
a potato masher grenade.
Every time
that I come back here,
I'm always finding
something new and exciting
about this mountain,
like this tunnel
that they found.
‐ This is
the first thing we found.
Mm‐hmm.
‐ And then inside of this
waswas a substance which we
don't know what it is.
‐ Yeah, it smells
a lot like cordite.
‐ Invented in 1889
by British chemists,
cordite is an explosive
made from nitroglycerine
and petroleum jelly.
It was used in ballistics
for rifles
and anti‐aircraft guns
during World War II
and was even part
of the detonation system
for Little Boy,
the atomic bomb
dropped on Hiroshima.
‐ A lot of these components
are 75 to 83 years old.
They're degraded,
and sometimes it's really hard
to defuse them,
and I don't know how long
you guys have been working
in here and that,
but I'd like to take a look,
look at the walls
and things
'cause this thing could be
booby trapped
from the front to back
and y'all have just been
lucky so far.
‐ Yep.
‐ Who's going?
‐ Chad: Levi and I
are gonna go in.
He's gonna show me
where they found the device.
I'm gonna take a look at it,
see if it's safe,
if I need to back them off.
As I start into the tunnel,
I'm looking
for any other booby traps
that may be around,
trip wires.
‐ To demoralize
the Allied forces,
the Japanese military
regularly deployed
explosive booby traps.
Roughly 30 tons
of World War II explosives
are still found annually,
including throughout
the Philippines,
so Chad and Levi must
exercise extreme caution
as they approach.
‐ Going into a tunnel like this
with an unknown device,
yeah, there's a little
pucker factor there,
but to me, finding a device
is like finding a bicycle
on Christmas morning
under the tree for a kid.
I love this stuff.
‐ Okay, it's right there
on the ground
and straight across
from that bar.
‐ Yeah, if you'll step back
a little bit,
let me take a look at it
and see if there's
anything else around.
Uh, I'm gonna dig
around a little bit.
If I'm gonna remove a mine
or anything
from this time period,
I take my time.
I'm very careful
with what I do,
my movements,
how much pressure
I put on the sides
because it can be
very unstable.
‐ What do you see
in there, man?
‐ I think it could be
a Japanese mine,
so I got a high‐tech
piece of equipment here
to test for that
two really sharp sticks.
‐ What are you gonna do
with those?
‐ Probe under it
and see if I can feel
another mine.
There could be
others in there.
Most of the time,
they wouldn't just set one.
This is like worm fishing.
‐ The big thing
that's spooky is,
you get into old explosives,
it's not like the explosives
we use nowadays
that are super stable.
Unless you have
a really hard concussion,
it won't set them off.
This kind of stuff here,
the most minute
bit of impact
can set this stuff off.
That's the scary thing
about the whole situation.
‐ Now, there's nothing
under it.
‐ So you see a detonator
or anything?
‐ No. The plunger
seems to be gone.
All right, Levi,
if you want to come on up.
You can see
what I'm looking at here.
I'm gonna pull the rest
of this mine out of here.
We're gonna take it outside
so I can look at it
in thein the daylight.
‐ Yeah.
‐ You brought it out, huh?
‐ This is what you were
finding pieces of.
‐ Basically,
with the pieces that I have,
you can get a pretty good idea
of how big this thing was.
‐ Mm‐hmm.
‐ This would be the top,
and the plunger would be
right here in the center.
I think it's a Japanese
A3 land mine.
It's made out of terra cotta.
It's just like
the terra cotta pavers
people use for their walkways
and their patios
and things like that.
‐ So why were they using
terra cotta?
‐ They were building
ships and tanks
and guns and everything else,
and they were running
out of metal,
so they came up with this.
‐ As the Allies advanced
in the Pacific theater,
shipments of steel
from mainland Japan
were either destroyed
by U. S. forces
or used to fortify
coastal defenses
and command posts.
Inland soldiers were forced
to improvise
with other materials,
like the terra cotta.
‐ If this thing
would have been live
and you'd have reached down
and stepped on it,
pulled it up or anything,
it could have been
a really bad day for you guys.
The kicker is,
can't find it
with a metal detector.
And you can walk past it
two or three times
and not realize what it is,
especially with the timbers
and things that are in there.
I'm calling in a K9 unit
to search this tunnel
for any other devices.
If it's in there,
they'll find them.
‐ Meanwhile, at Breach 6,
Brent and Farrell continue
constructing their steel frame.
‐ This is hard work, man.
We better find something
at the bottom of this hole.
‐ So this is a post.
We're gonna use this
to box in
the whole top of this,
and that'll keep anybody
from falling in the hole,
and it'll also keep that
up there
from coming down
on top of us.
‐ Once the site is secure,
the team can keep
digging their way
toward the metal deposits.
‐ This is the easy part,
actually.
The digging's the hard part.
So the steel's nice, actually.
It gives you
a little break from digging.
‐ Eager to see
their progress,
Rick stops by.
‐ Not half bad.
‐ You, uh, ready to go?
If this is concrete,
I'm hoping that we're
real close to something.
We don't know what,
but we're close to something.
‐ Want to tell Rick
to pull that up?
‐ Yep.
‐ We need to get things
shored up good
so that we're not gonna have
a cave‐in pin anybody in.
I am so excited to find out
what we've got down there.
‐ Another one up.
‐ Yo, guys.
You guys might want
to come look at this.
‐ What do you got there, dude?
‐ It's some dark, dark stuff.
‐ What the heck is that?
‐ That looks like a burnt
piece of wood.
‐ Oh, that's charcoal.
You can see the wood grain
in it and everything else.
That is charcoal.
‐ It looks like there's
a lot of it down here.
‐ Look at that.
‐ It's a couple inches thick
for sure.
‐ I wasn't expecting charcoal.
‐ I mean,
it's a pretty distinct layer.
It runs all the way across.
‐ That isn't natural.
That's got to be put in there
by somebody.
Well, we've gotten down below
what we thought was concrete,
and we've run
into a layer of charcoal.
It's large pieces
of charcoal,
and you can actually see
the wood grain in them.
That's really unusual.
‐ Wow. There's a lot of it.
‐ That is definitely
burnt wood.
But it does make me
more confident
that the hard layer
that we ran into a few feet up
was probably placed there
on purpose as well.
Somebody put this here.
Somebody put this here
for a reason.
I don't know
what that reason is,
but I think we can find out
with a little more
investigation.
‐ After finding
a second layer
of unusual material
in Breach 6,
Rick turns
to the Robert Curtis tapes
to see if they can shed
any light
on these bizarre discoveries.
‐ We need to take
another look
at these tapes
we've got from Bob Curtis.
I mean,
he talks about the layers
and all of this
man‐made stuff.
Six levels.
‐ According to Curtis,
the Japanese placed
specific layers of materials
above their buried vaults
to mark the pathway
to treasure.
‐ Charcoal at 10 feet.
We got charcoal at 10 feet.
Marble.
We don't have
all of the same stuff,
but we found what we thought
was a concrete layer,
and then we found
that layer of charcoal
about 3 foot down under that.
He had the same stuff.
Ahh.
My gosh.
I really don't want to get
into digging up bones.
I heard about this stuff
20 years ago.
It just didn't seem real,
and now we're here,
and we're digging,
and we're finding
some of these indicators.
We're probably gonna see
the other ones as well.
‐ Thnext morning,
John continues searching
for a tunnel entrance
into the waterfall,
but 30 feet down,
Michele has uncovered
nothing but dirt.
‐ We should be hitting it
pretty quick here,
but getting
a little nervous.
‐ To safely excavate
the area,
Michele removes the dirt
in a stairstep pattern,
reducing the possibility
of collapse.
‐ I'm ready to go down there
and have a
have a look‐see.
‐ How's the signal?
‐ It's pretty loud.
It's definitely in there.
You're gonna have to keep
going deeper,
which means we're gonna keep
having to go wider, too.
‐ Deeper and wider it is.
Now I'm starting
to get worried.
We should have seen it
by now.
I don't know. She's scratching
on something hard down there.
‐ Rob: What's happening,
Michele?
‐ I've run into bedrock.
I can't dig any deeper.
‐ If we're hitting bedrock
already,
there's no way we're gonna
be able to get in this way.
Bedrock's not something
that I can just get through.
I was hoping
there's a tunnel down there,
but it's not promising it.
‐ Back at basecamp,
John gathers the team
to discuss other options.
‐ I can't drill
straight down
right at the waterfall,
and that's because
that waterfall feeds
a water supply
to the village down below.
I don't have
many options there.
I mean, I have no options.
‐ What if we made
our own tunnel
from the side of the mountain?
‐ How far from the site is it
to the void space?
‐ 930 feet
to the target
under the waterfall.
‐ Wow.
That's aThat's a long way.
‐ Mm‐hmm.
‐ 930 feet
of digging a tunnel,
we would be here forever.
‐ I can't see just digging
a tunnel 930 feet.
There's got to be
an easier way.
There's lots
of borehole cameras
that will make it 930 feet
to see exactly
what we've hit.
‐ Once you know
it's 100% in there,
then digging a 930‐foot tunnel
makes a whole lot more sense.
‐ What about
a horizontal drill?
They're often used
to run pipeline
from one side of a mountain
to another,
and I know
they're well capable
of drilling
over a thousand feet.
‐ A horizontal drill
will allow the team
to run a borehole camera
through 930 feet of hard rock
to see directly
into the waterfall void.
‐ You're still gonna have
a lot of problems
getting through there,
but I think
it's your best bet.
‐ It's the best bet
we've got right now.
It's the only thing
we've got right now.
‐ In the U. S.,
head researcher Bingo Minerva
is searching
for Yamashita treasure maps.
Since the tapes
Rick's been looking through
suggest Robert Curtis had
access to them...
...Bingo reaches out
to a source
familiar with Curtis.
‐ So right now
I'm in Las Vegas
on my way to meet
Brian Greenspun,
who's currently
the editor‐in‐chief
of the Las Vegas Sun,
the Pulitzer Prize‐winning
newspaper.
Brian Greenspun had
a lot of interactions
with Robert Curtis.
I want to see if he remembers
anything specifically,
see if he gave him any maps,
any details.
It would be really great
to see one of these maps.
Hey, Brian.
‐ Hey. Good morning.
‐ Bingo.
‐ How are you?
‐ Good to finally meet you, sir.
‐ Nice to see you.
Welcome to the Las Vegas Sun.
My parents started it in 1950,
so it's been in my life
almost my entire lifetime,
you know,
so I guess I'm the
I'm the keeper of the flame,
let's say, right?
‐ That'sThat's my story.
We've been around a long time,
and we've had
a lot of headlines,
but since you mention...
‐ Over its 70‐year history,
the Las Vegas Sun has won
numerous journalism awards,
including a Pulitzer.
Well known
for their in‐depth reporting,
they've covered the search
for Yamashita's treasure
at length.
‐ So the reason I'm here today
is that I currently have
a team in the Philippines
that's treasure hunting
for gold.
We believe we're on a site
that is a Yamashita
treasure site.
We've actually found evidence
of Americans being
on the property
in what we believe
is a Japanese tunnel.
‐ Okay.
‐ Now, through my research,
I found out that you wrote
about Robert Curtis
back in the '70s
and that spanned
for about three decades.
So really the question
I have is,
how did you meet
Robert Curtis?
What was it about his story
that, you know,
convinced you
to even start writing this?
‐ That's a simple question,
but it's
a very complex answer.
So here comes a guy
who walks into the office
noticeably frightened.
He wanted to talk in the car.
This was a guy
who didn't trust anybody.
It felt to me like he was
running for his life,
and then he starts
telling this story
about that treasure
somewhere,
hidden deep somewhere.
And so I had to figure out
whether it was real,
so I spent a lot of time
with Bob.
Why is he so afraid?
Remember, this is 1978.
Marcos was at the height
of his power.
He was in control.
‐ President Ferdinand Marcos
was reportedly brutal
in his obsession to find
Yamashita's treasure.
After treasure hunter
Roger Roxas claimed
he found a cache
of Yamashita's gold,
Marcos allegedly
imprisoned Roxas
and seized his treasure.
Roxas later filed a suit
against Marcos
to try and recover
his stolen goods.
Roxas died under
suspicious circumstances
the night before
the trial began.
‐ And, of course,
as it came out,
Bob Curtis was afraid
because he'd got
out of the Philippines
10 seconds
ahead of being killed,
so he thought,
and he needed this story told
in a most credible way,
believing that,
once the story is out,
there's no reason to kill him.
‐ Robert Curtis first went
to the Philippines
to assist in President
Ferdinand Marcos' quest
to find Yamashita's gold.
After several months
of working for him,
Curtis reportedly learned
that Marcos had grown
suspicious of him
and ordered
his assassination.
Curtis immediately fled
the Philippines
and came directly
to the Las Vegas Sun
to share his story.
‐ You have to be skeptical
about it.
So even then, I mean, really,
first impressions with you,
you didn't really
believe this story.
‐ How could you believe
this story?
‐ Yeah.
‐ Who's Bob Curtis?
He was a mining engineer
from northern Nevada.
How did he get in the middle
of Ferdinand Marcos'
hunt for a treasure?
But there's no doubt
in my mind
that Bob Curtis knew
that he had gotten himself
in the middle
of something really huge
and very dangerous,
that someone could kill him.
‐ In a deposition
made in 1993,
during the Roger Roxas trial,
Curtis claims
he was recruited by Marcos
to process recovered gold,
removing identifying marks
that could tie it
to countries looted by Japan.
‐ President Marcos
wished to talk to me
about the possibility
of handling
the re‐melting of bars.
‐ Eventually,
Curtis was given access
to Marcos' maps,
which supposedly led
to Yamashita treasure sites.
‐ I was skeptical
about his story,
and my job was to find out
if this guy was real
and his story was real.
But...
Bob had tapes,
and Bob had memos,
and Bob had maps.
Well, we happened to have
the ability at the time
to get it authenticated,
and I did.
‐ So you're saying
he's brought you actual
Yamashita treasure maps.
‐ I'm saying I saw maps
that he claimed were maps
to where the treasures were.
And then
he showed me pictures...
deep in these caverns
of things that purported
to be boxes
that he said gold was in.
I don't doubt that the maps,
whatever the documents were,
the conversations
that were taped were real.
We never would have printed it
in our paper
if we didn't believe
it was true.
In his head,
printing the story meant
that he was no longer
vulnerable to being killed
because of what he knew
'cause now everybody knew it.
‐ Did he think in his mind,
by printing that story,
it offered him a bit
of a cloud of protection
for himself?
‐ Yes. Oh, absolutely.
That's why he came here.
He said, "Let's make it
as public as possible."
‐ Bingo Minerva is meeting
with a journalist
who investigated
Robert Curtis.
‐ So these are the newspapers,
the actual newspapers
from Curtis
and all the information
and whoever else
we talked to.
It's all in these stories.
This was our first story...
‐ This is the very first story
you printed from...
‐ That's the very first story.
Yes.
Everything we learned
that we believed was accurate
came from Bob Curtis.
‐ There's actually something
I would like to show you
and get your thoughts on.
‐ Okay.
‐ I have, uh, these tapes,
and this is Bob Curtis'
dying declaration.
‐ Wow.
‐ So is that
Bob Curtis' voice?
‐ I've got chills.
I mean, I have chills
up and down my arms.
Yeah, of course
that's Bob Curtis.
It's the same guy,
and it's the same voice.
I heard this fear
in this man's voice.
He was scared.
This confirms
everything that we believe
at the time
we first met Bob Curtis
and what we proved
to ourselves was true.
‐ On January 24th, 2004,
the Las Vegas Sun printed
an obituary
announcing the death
of Robert Curtis
at 74 years old.
His exact cause of death
was never publicly revealed.
‐ Are you aware
of any other leads,
any information
that will lead me
to any Americans
treasure hunting
in the Philippines?
‐ Well, in our stories,
we didwe did write
about a fellow
by the name
of Chuck McDougald.
He's one of those experts
on this whole
Yamashita gold story.
‐ According to Greenspun,
Chuck McDougald was
close to Curtis
and knew his secrets.
‐ He could tell you firsthand
probably a lot of what
Bob Curtis could tell you.
‐ Talking to Brian,
and the fact that he believed
Robert Curtis,
I mean, that's further
confirmation
that there is truth
in Robert Curtis' story.
So unfortunately, Curtis
is not with us anymore.
I really need to find
somebody still alive
that knows more
about this story,
and hopefully that person's
Chuck McDougald.
If I can track down Chuck,
maybe he has the information
for us
that can help us on our search.
‐ Back in the Philippines,
a K9 unit arrives
to investigate the possibility
the explosive booby traps
are in the tunnel.
‐ There he is.
‐ Chad just called in Paul.
He's a K9 handler.
His dog's been trained
to smell for explosives.
We need to get
this tunnel cleared
and get back to work.
We got to get
to the end of this tunnel.
‐ So is this
some type of shepherd,
or what kind of dog is this?
‐ Belgian Malinois.
These dogs are used
in special forces,
special operations.
These are the top dogs
of detection, of detention,
of personal protection,
everything.
They can pick up
drugs and explosives
hidden in places
you'd never think.
If there's explosives
in this tunnel,
this dog will find them.
The best way to explain
the sense of smell of a dog
is if you walk in a house
and somebody's cooking
chicken noodle soup,
you smell chicken noodle soup.
When a dog walks in the house,
he smells every ingredient
in that chicken noodle soup.
‐ While dogs were used
in combat
as early as 600 B. C.,
they were not a major part
of U. S. military operations
until World War II.
Over 10,000 dogs were donated
to the war effort
and specifically trained
by American forces
to patrol Pacific theater
beaches,
detect land mines,
and deliver messages.
‐ Sit.
‐ This is what we've found
so far.
Um, I want to see
if he'll hit on it.
‐ Okay.
Sit.
Okay.
‐ Good Drago.
‐ Good boy. Good boy.
Good boy.
‐ Yeah. He can smell it.
‐ So if there's more of those
inside of the tunnel,
he should be able
to pick up on those.
‐ He'll find it.
When he walks in that cave,
he's gonna search everywhere,
and when his nose hits,
he's either gonna sit
like he did here,
or he birddogs
and his tail goes straight up
and he stops,
and that'll tell us
where it is.
‐ Okay. Well,
let's get some gear,
and we'll head down
into the tunnel.
‐ All right.
‐ You ready?
‐ Yes, sir.
‐ Levi: Okay.
The Japanese,
them burying mines
into the ground like this,
they didn't want them
to be found,
and they didn't want
to hurt you.
They wanted to kill you.
That's what scared me
the most.
Here, put that on, Paul.
This is a total
different element
than what we're
used to dealing with.
Usually when you go
into these old tunnels,
you know, we have the potential
of getting smashed by rocks
but not something
where somebody put a bomb there
intentionally trying
to wipe you out.
This is a whole
different world.
This here, this is as far
as I'm gonna go.
Don't touch
any of that old timber.
It's all rotted.
‐ Paul, the mound
was found right here,
uh, so we're gonna try
to detect from here back.
‐ Levi: I hope they're
real careful back there.
I don't want
something to happen
and me have to dig them
out of here.
‐ Levi: It's hard saying
where the Japanese can put
these booby traps.
There's so much
different material
inside of this tunnel.
They can put it in the floor.
They can put it on top
of the timbers.
They can put it
behind the timbers.
‐ Where's the bomb?
Find the bomb.
‐ Clear?
‐ Not yet.
‐ The dog has cleared
the area
where the terra cotta mine
was found.
‐ All right, Levi,
we're going on ahead.
Y'all wait here.
‐ Well, those guys just
went out of sight.
I hope the ground's
okay back there.
We haven't been
this far in there.
They took the dog in.
They're seeing
if they can smell
any other explosive devices.
I told them, if it gets
too dangerous back there,
if it looks too shaky,
just to back out
and get out of there.
We can always
bring them back later.
I hope they don't find
anything,
but chances are,
if they found one,
there's probably a chance
of them finding another one.
I certainly hope they don't,
and I personally don't want
to get my legs
blown off in here.
I'd much rather be pulling
treasure out of here
than somebody gets hurt.
‐ While the K9 team checks
the rest of the tunnel,
Rick comes to check
on the site.
‐ Well, what's the verdict?
‐ You got a clean
bill of health in there.
‐ Well, that's great.
‐ That's good news.
‐ We cleared it
as far as we could.
‐ How far did we
make it in there?
‐ Couple of hundred yards
past the mine
wherethat we found.
‐ We checked the whole thing
out, then, huh?
‐ Ground started
getting shaky.
I didn't want them going
way, way back in there,
but at least we know we're clear
up to a certain point.
If we have to,
we'll bring somebody back.
‐ Rick: So now we've got
a Japanese land mine
in a Japanese tunnel.
Something
needed to be guarded.
What were they trying
to protect?
I don't think we're gonna know
until we find
where this tunnel goes.
‐ Thanks again, man.
‐ Absolutely.
‐ Thank you, man.
Appreciate it.
‐ Yeah.
‐ The next morning,
Bingo calls
to update the team.
So, guys,
I met with Brian Greenspun.
He's one of the editors
at the Las Vegas Sun.
Now, he published
a number of articles
on Bob Curtis
and Yamashita's treasure
over the span
of about three decades.
Bob Curtis, he provided
a lot of evidence
to the Las Vegas Sun
and Brian over there,
and unfortunately
they don't have any more
of that archival evidence
or documents left over.
What Brian did reveal was
potentially a huge clue
with the name Chuck McDougald.
Chuck McDougald,
I did some digging on him,
and I found out he was
actually working
with Bob Curtis.
He was working with him
on a site
called Fort Santiago,
and I found some archival
news footage of him,
and I want you guys
to check it out
and see what you think.
I've already sent it to you.
‐ Okay.
‐ Wow. That was
pretty interesting.
‐ He talked about maps.
It makes me wonder if he
actually has those maps still.
‐ If he has those maps still,
then maybe
maybe he has a map
of our mountain.
Is there any way
that we can get
to talk to Charles McDougald?
‐ Well,
I tracked this guy down.
He's still alive.
He's living in the Bay Area
currently.
Uh, he's my next meeting.
If I can get
any information at all,
I'll let you guys know.
I'll see what I can find out.
The key that will lead us
to finding this treasure
could be just one person.
Hopefully that person
is Chuck McDougald.
On the next
"Lost Gold of World War II"...
This horizontal drill
may be our best bet
to see inside this mountain.
It's not looking too good.
‐ Geo: Hey, Levi,
what is that?
‐ Is that a tooth?
You think it could possibly
be a human?
‐ I had two original maps
of the treasure
found in Marcos' office.
‐ Do you still have the maps?
‐ Yes, I do.
‐ Wow.
I've never seen
anything like this.
Subtitled by Diego Moraes
www.oakisland.tk