Buried Memories, Imagined Wealth: Yamashita Treasure as Collective Memory in Everyday Life in Mindanao

Abstract

This paper examines how Yamashita Treasure—an allegedly buried wartime hoard left by the Japanese military in the Philippines—continues to be remembered, narrated, and imagined in the everyday lives of residents in Mindanao. Based on an ethnographic methodology involving long participant observation in four field sites between 2015 and 2024, and coding of the obtained data, the study explores how ordinary people encounter and interpret traces believed to indicate the presence of the treasure—such as fragments of pottery, symbolic carvings on rocks, or cryptic maps—as well as unexpected events like sudden economic success or the rare arrival of Japanese visitors. These materials and incidents are rarely verified through historical inquiry but are instead animated by collective imagination, subaltern knowledge production, and deeply embedded wartime memories. Engaging with postcolonial theory, the paper argues that narratives surrounding the treasure do not merely reflect rumor or folklore. Rather, they serve as a grassroots form of war memory, indirectly recalling Japan’s occupation of the Philippines. While the treasure’s existence remains uncertain, its imagined presence generates a sense of possibility—a hope for future prosperity grounded in a painful past. As such, the narration of the Yamashita Treasure becomes a means of simultaneously resisting historical forgetting and producing future-oriented imaginaries. By analyzing these everyday practices and representations, this study contributes to broader discussions on postcolonial memory, hope, and the lingering effects of war.