An old Vietnamese man has ended his search for what he believes to be a ‘treasure’ of 4,000 metric tons of gold buried by the Japanese under a mountain in the south-central province of Binh Thuan in 1945, pursuant to a decision by Vietnamese authorities.

>> Old man’s hunt for ‘Japanese treasure’ extended, again

The provincial Party Committee has issued a notice agreeing with the local government’s policy to put an end to the long search for the ‘treasure’ by Tran Van Tiep, 101, of Ho Chi Minh City, who has spent over 20 years on the hunt but has found no gold. The new notice came after the local government offered Tiep many extensions for his search, which began in 1993, when he and his associates kicked off an ambitious plan to excavate many areas under Tau Mountain. Tiep believes that at the end of World War II, after Japan surrendered to the Allies in 1945, Japanese General Yamashita ordered his soldiers to bury about 4,000 metric tons of gold and jewelry under the mountain, next to Ca Na Bay, the boundary between Binh Thuan and Ninh Thuan Province. His confidence in the existence of the ‘treasure’ was strengthened in 1992 when Tiep found an old Japanese sword with its scabbard, a 10,000-yen coin, a broken metal hookah, and two metal Black Dragon insignias during an excavation on the east side of the mountain.

This file photo shows a path that leads to the top of Tau Mountain. The path was built by Tran Van Tiep at his expense. Photo: Tuoi Tre

The ‘treasure’ may be valued at over US$100 billion, according to Tiep, who has paid the authorities a deposit of VND500 million ($23,400) to remedy environmental damage. Provincial authorities officially approved his plan in October 2011, allowing him to conduct the first official search for nine months. The government later gave him two extensions for his search.  The latest extension lasted for a year that ended on December 31, 2014, during which Tiep’s search team used nearly 1,900kg of explosives for their excavations in their quest for the ‘treasure,’ upon approval from local authorities. During the hunt, Tiep asked a psychic for help in locating the ‘treasure’ and had a geological engineer use specialized equipment to detect it, but all the efforts have not paid off.    Tiep asked authorities to offer him one more extension, but this time, local agencies affirmed that there is no treasure buried in the mountain.  An official who has supervised the search by a team under Tiep’s direction said the ‘treasure’ appears to exist only in the old man’s mind.

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