By BC Cook
WHAT if you found out that someone secretly dumped millions of dollars’ worth of gold and silver off Obyan beach? It is about one hundred feet down and lying in the sand, possibly buried, so you have to use scuba gear and do some digging. Would you go looking for it? That is exactly what happened in Manila Bay in the Philippines.
The year was 1942. The Japanese invaded the islands and General Douglas MacArthur, the Philippine army, U.S. forces and heads of government fell back, first to the Bataan peninsula and finally to Corregidor island at the entrance to Manila Bay. They brought most of the money in the national treasury which was then locked in a vault on Corregidor, and when the situation seemed hopeless they burned all of the cash and started shipping out the gold by way of submarine. But gold is very heavy and the subs could only carry so much. Most of it ended up in San Francisco for safe keeping but all the silver would be left behind.
It was decided that the remainder would be thrown into Manila Bay so it would not fall into Japanese hands. The Filipinos would lose it, but at least the enemy would not get it, and perhaps when the war ended they could reclaim it. They selected a patch of rough, deep water, hand-picked a crew of U.S. Navy divers for the assignment and loaded two barges with the gold and silver. Over ten nights, April 20-30, 1942, 425 tons of pesos sank to a watery vault, all the money left in the Philippines. As the end grew closer the American divers were warned, ‘Don’t let the Japanese know you are a diver.’ They would certainly go after the loot.
Within a month the Japanese began looking for the missing silver and, overhearing prisoners bragging about it, found out about the operation. They recruited anyone who had diving experience, so ironically the men who were ordered to find the silver were the same ones who put it there.
At first the divers pretended not to find anything but that would only work for so long. If they came up empty-handed every time the Japanese would probably use their own divers and find everything, so the Americans figured the best strategy was to give the Japanese a little of the silver and hide the rest while they were at the bottom of the bay to prevent the bulk of it from ever being found.
The ruse worked. Over several months the divers would send up one box and bury two, send up one box and scatter three. Soon they developed a way to smuggle pesos in their dive suits and passed them around the Filipino prisoners. Suddenly everyone walked around with silver in their pockets and bought things with it. The Japanese paper currency became worthless as everyone wanted to be paid in silver. Though they suspected the divers to be the source of the silver they never caught them in the act.
Eventually the Japanese abandoned the recovery effort, having collected about two million pesos out of a total of 17 million. What happened to the rest?
Dr. BC Cook taught history for 30 years and is a director and Pacific historian at Sealark Exploration (sealarkexploration.org). He currently lives in Hawaii.
