"After Things Quiet Down"

One day last July, a line of heavily laden trucks moved through gutted Tokyo's waterfront area. A group of Jap officers barked orders to bewildered laborers, who unloaded the trucks, dumped heavy metal bars into the bay. One worker overheard the officers discussing a treasure in gold, silver and platinum worth 30,000,000,000 yen ($2,000,000,000) "for use in building up a greater Japan after things quiet down."

Later the eavesdropper took his story to a social club, a society of "wise elder" antimilitarist shopkeepers. They told a geisha girl, who told a Japanese employe of the Military Government, who told U.S. Army Lieut. Edward V. Neilsen; the laborer said he thought Jap officers had murdered his five or six companions because they "knew too much."

Last week, at the dumping scene, Neilsen plunged into six feet of water. Under the soft mud he felt "two areas--each about 20 feet square . . . paved with blocks." He brought up a 75-lb. platinum ingot (worth $42,000). Army engineers are dredging for the rest of the hoard.

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