{"id":11711,"date":"2022-05-07T05:38:26","date_gmt":"2022-05-07T15:38:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/?p=11711"},"modified":"2022-05-09T16:54:09","modified_gmt":"2022-05-10T02:54:09","slug":"book-review-the-buddha-the-gold-the-myth-how-marcos-looted-the-central-bank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/2022\/05\/07\/book-review-the-buddha-the-gold-the-myth-how-marcos-looted-the-central-bank\/","title":{"rendered":"BOOK REVIEW: The Buddha, The Gold & The Myth\u2014How Marcos Looted the Central Bank"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

by Rose Churma

<\/em>In the\u00a0Rappler\u00a0<\/em>report\u00a0\u201cFrom fringe to mainstream; tracing the myth of the Marcos gold mine,\u201d reporter Pauline Macaraeg notes that the myth on the Tallano Gold associated with the Marcos family existed on Facebook as early as 2011.

Apparently the Marcoses and their supporters have spread the myths to justify the wealth of the family. They say it was earned by the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos from being a fantastic lawyer for a wealthy family called the Tallanos before he became president and\u00a0that the national hero Jose Rizal bequeathed his hard-earned gold to the late dictator.

Then there was the Yamashita gold hoax \u2013 that the late dictator\u2019s fortune came from the purported treasure left by Japanese General Yamashita after World War II. Was it\u00a0really a hoax, or was there some basis to that story?

During our regular group chat via Messenger with my extended family (most of whom live in the Philippines), I mentioned that I was going to review this book on the golden buddha reportedly found by Baguio locksmith Roger Roxas.

My youngest brother texted back: \u201cDid you know that Roger\u00a0Roxas and family rented an apartment from our parents?\u201d This was in the late 1970s and I had\u00a0already left for Hawaii.

A sister-in-law added that Roger\u00a0Roxas\u2019 wife was an aunt of one of my brothers\u2019 best\u00a0friends \u2013 probably how he got to rent the apartment\u00a0which was within the family compound.My brother relayed how Roxas would confide with my\u00a0dad about this golden buddha that he found.\u00a0One day, Roxas mentioned he was being invited to Malacanang. He never came back \u2013 leaving all his things at the apartment.

On another group\u00a0chat with former school mates from Baguio, someone mentioned that Judge Pio Marcos, then the\u00a0presiding\u00a0judge in Baguio, was another Roxas confidant who advised him to keep the treasures he unearthed at his residence, until fully armed men supposedly from the Baguio police force raided his place to confiscate his treasures.

The\u00a0search\u00a0warrant was\u00a0signed by the same judge.In Charles C. McDougald\u2019s book, he links the Golden Buddha to the Marcos family and\u00a0how it was stolen from Roger Roxas. Roxas protested the theft but was tortured and thrown into prison instead. He stayed in hiding\u00a0during most of the years Marcos was in power.

When the Marcoses were exiled in\u00a0Hawaii, Roxas, with his boyhood buddy Felix Dacanay, formed the Golden\u00a0Budha Corporation (spelled\u00a0\u201cBudha\u201d on purpose, as a backhanded reference to the\u00a0search warrant issued to search Roxas\u2019 residence\u00a0to confiscate his treasures, which included a golden Buddha) and filed on\u00a0February 1988 by his lawyer\u00a0Dan Cathcart, and came to trial in July 1996.

The trial lasted a month,\u00a0and after a day\u2019s deliberation the jury sided with the Golden Budha Corporation and awarded it $22 Billion in damages for personal injuries, for being falsely imprisoned and tortured and theft of the\u00a0treasure (Circuit\u00a0Court, First Circuit, State of Hawaii, Civil Case Number 88-0522, Roger Roxas and the Golden Budha Corporation vs. Ferdinand Marcos and Imelda Marcos).

At the end of World War II, rumors circulated that General Yamashita, commander of the Japanese forces, had buried a\u00a0treasure in the Philippines, supposedly in the mountains surrounding Baguio.

Growing up in Baguio, I\u2019ve\u00a0encountered these tales of how one family became\u00a0rich\u00a0due to a treasure hunting.\u00a0In one of our building projects in Baguio, we had to use piles to support the structure\u2019s foundation\u00a0when we discovered a maze of\u00a0tunnels underneath.

The\u00a0project site was close to the Baguio Post Office; so perhaps there was truth to that rumor about the\u00a0treasures the Japanese buried during the WWII.

Roger Roxas started\u00a0treasure hunting in 1962\u00a0during his spare time. He recalls that a Japanese named\u00a0Albert Fushugami gave him a sketch showing a treasure location.

Fushugami claims that he was part of a\u00a0group of engineers\u00a0that buried some treasures during Yamashita\u2019s retreat. The book includes a detailed description of how the excavation was conducted as told by Roxas.

Aside from the Golden Buddha, the book reveals further details of Marcos\u2019 greed and his quest for wealth and exposed the\u00a0shadowy world of the\u00a0Central Bank.

The book starts with the exile in Hawaii and proceeds to look back on how the Philippines and its financial institutions were plundered.

\u201cFast-paced and scintillating, the book reads like\u00a0an adventure novel\u201d is how the author\u00a0describes his book.Charles C. McDougald lived for 10 years\u00a0during Martial Law in the Philippines,\u00a0where he obtained a masters degree from the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) and a\u00a0doctoral degree from the University of the Philippines (UP).

A former captain of the Green Berets in Vietnam, he credits that experience in helping him\u00a0tremendously in his research for his various books which exposed the corruption and excesses of the Marcos regime.

One of his professors at the UP (Emmanuel V. Soriano) asked McDougald to find the\u00a0truth about the legendary Yamashita\u00a0treasure,\u00a0which led to his writing of this, and other books.

The\u00a0section \u201cNotes” at the end of the book contains a wealth of data detailing his sources of information \u2013 crucial for those\u00a0wanting to understand the extent of the\u00a0thievery, and having all the documentation to prove it, that was perpetrated during the Marcos years.

This book was\u00a0published 25 years ago, but its contents is as relevant as ever.

In the book\u2019s back cover, the author writes: \u201cA nation that does not know its past, does not know itself.\u201d

At that time when the\u00a0author wrote it, he wouldn\u2019t have known that the dictator\u2019s family would attempt to revise the nation\u2019s history, or at least use social media to prove that their wealth came from legitimate sources, and not from outright plunder.

ROSE CHURMA<\/strong> established a career in architecture 40 years ago, specializing in judicial facilities planning. As a retired architect, she now has the time to do the things she always wanted to do: read books and write about them, as well as encourage others to write.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Rose Churma In the\u00a0Rappler\u00a0report\u00a0\u201cFrom fringe to mainstream; tracing the myth of the Marcos gold…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11708,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/BuddhaGoldMyth.jpg?fit=424%2C637",424,637,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/BuddhaGoldMyth.jpg?resize=150%2C150",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/BuddhaGoldMyth.jpg?fit=200%2C300",200,300,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/BuddhaGoldMyth.jpg?fit=424%2C637",424,637,true],"large":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/BuddhaGoldMyth.jpg?fit=424%2C637",424,637,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/BuddhaGoldMyth.jpg?fit=424%2C637",424,637,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/BuddhaGoldMyth.jpg?fit=424%2C637",424,637,true],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/BuddhaGoldMyth.jpg?resize=424%2C637",424,637,true],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/BuddhaGoldMyth.jpg?resize=424%2C570",424,570,true],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/BuddhaGoldMyth.jpg?resize=424%2C637",424,637,true],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/BuddhaGoldMyth.jpg?resize=424%2C600",424,600,true],"covernews-slider-full":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/BuddhaGoldMyth.jpg?resize=424%2C637",424,637,true],"covernews-slider-center":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/BuddhaGoldMyth.jpg?resize=424%2C500",424,500,true],"covernews-featured":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/BuddhaGoldMyth.jpg?fit=424%2C637",424,637,true],"covernews-medium":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/BuddhaGoldMyth.jpg?resize=379%2C340",379,340,true],"covernews-medium-square":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/BuddhaGoldMyth.jpg?resize=236%2C250",236,250,true]},"author_info":{"info":["admin"]},"category_info":"Features<\/a> Philippines<\/a>","tag_info":"Philippines","comment_count":"0","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/BuddhaGoldMyth.jpg?fit=424%2C637","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11711"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11711"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11782,"href":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11711\/revisions\/11782"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}