In 1945, at the end of the 2nd World War Japanese soldiers surrendered but some of them escaped. Others were put in prison in Palawan.
One Japanese soldier befriended one of his Filipino inmates. When the Japanese soldier knew that he will be executed he confessed to his Filipino friend about the treasure that they have buried in Negros. He passed the information and a simple map or direction to the hidden treasure.
When this Filipino inmate was finally freed after the war, he gave this map and the information about the hidden treasure to his bestfriend.
In 1953, the bestfriend of the Filipino co-inmate of the Japanese prisoner along with his close friends attemted to locate the buried treasure following the instructions on the map. They were aiming to retrieve the giveways of five gold bars hidden beside the waterfall at the depth of 6 feet.
The instructions on the map stated that once recovered these five gold bars should be utilized in retrieving the remaining of the hidden cache of gold bars buried deeper within the area. The cache was buried by bombing the sides of the waterfall to cover the treasure.
The Japanese covered it with concrete before bombing the place. The location was supposedly at the center of the area at the bottom of the 7th waterfall from the bottom of the mountain facing the east.
It was believed that over a thousand Filipino prisoners of war were forced to carry and stockpiled these the treasure. All of them were killed after theoperation. Upon the initial inspection to this place bones and skulls were still scattered around.
The first group who explored the site using the map alledgedly recovered the give-aways of five (5) gold bars each weighing approx. 6.5 kg. However, on their way down from the mountain, they were intercepted by the HUKs or HUKBALAHAP (Hukbong Bayan Laban sa mga Hapones) who sequestered the five (5) gold bars recovered from the 7th waterfall.
And one of those adventurers was a 16-year old lad who shared this information with his bestfriend. However, due to the mishap with the HUKS, all of them were traumatized and never desired to go back the place to recover theremaining of the hidden treasure.
All of this lad's companions during the retrieval were all dead by now. In 2000, the lad who was by the time 63 was invited by his best friend to revisit the site. And he could still vividly remember all the places where they had passed especially the place where they were intercepted by the armed men who confiscated their find.
They found out that this seventh waterfall had different surroundings. The stones and rocks were broken. Cut and splintered logs were all over the place making an indication of the bombing as described by the Japanese prisoner.
The group started to dig up a hole 10 by 10 feet not in accordance with the instructions given by the Japanese.
On the contrary the alledged instruction passed on by the Japanese prisoner was to move the three big rocks that held the stockpile to the lower portion of the creek, then start clearing until the concrete slab was reached. And the flooding during the rainy days would assist them to clear the stock pile and expose the concrete slab beneath.
The diggers didn’t follow the above procedures at first because they thought that by doing what they did, they could work it out more easily in a shorted time period. At 15 feet deep, they had recovered a Japanese helmet. At 27 feet theyhad finally reached the concrete slab. The alleged treasure contained the maps of the other buried treasure within the area.
Then after almost a year of operaton and having spent approx. P150,000.00 and had removed almost two-thirds (2/3) of the stockpile moved out becausethey had finally followed the right instruction.
However, on December 2002, a heavy rain struck the area and resulted to the collapse of the excavation and covered the hole with rocks once more.
The group are very willing to start the operation again, but because of insufficient funds they orginal group is now willing to work with anybody group who are willing to finace the retrieval operation.
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