COIN FROM CORRIGEDOR

[MAYO]

GOT THIS DURING ONE OF MY TRIPS TO PI

Attachments:

[leoniii]

If you read "MacArthur's Secret War", then this could be one coin out of tons of silver peso coins from the Philippine Commonwealth Treasurymentioned in the book. These were dumped into the drink by the Americans off the tail-end of Corregidor island, in order to deny the Japanese from taking the money as booty to finance their war of conquest. MacArthur and Quezon had made plans to ship the treasury gold out of the country by submarine, but could not take the more massive amount of silver out for lack of available ships that could run the Japanese blockade at the time of the Japanese invasion. The secret dumping was eventually divulged to Japanese military intelligence and the Japs immediately mounted salvage dive operations to recover the silver, pressing native divers into service. Either there were no Japanese salvage dive teams available in the islands at that time, or the Japanese Navy did not have the technology at all for underwater recovery operations. It is also possible that due to inter-service rivalries, the Japanese Army never notified the Navy of their need for divers and decided to do the job themselves.

Due to the depth of the dumpsite and unfamiliarity with navy diving equiptment, most of the Filipino divers died from the bends. They were always considered as expendable anyway, but the silver recovery was grinding to a halt due to this deadly attrition. So the Japs decided to comb the prison camps for US Navy divers, to continue the silver salvage. The American divers pressed into recovering the coins described a mountain of crates containing the coins on the bottom of Manila Bay. They hatched a scheme to surrender some coins to the Japanese to keep them happy, but also to smuggle the bulk of the coins in their diving suits. These were then squirreled in the bilge of their diving vessel with the help of Filipinos who were serving as dive tenders then eventually spirited ashore to the resistance movement. In time, the resistance had accumulated a huge amount of silver currency, and they radioed MacArthur in Australia asking for instructions as to the disposition of the silver. At first it was considered by MacArthur's high command to mount submarine missions to smuggle the cons to Australia. But MacArthur's eventual decision was to release the flood of silver coins into the Philippine black market in order to destabilize the Japanese printed peso currency system. This would certainly to lead to hyper-inflation in the Philippine economy. Filipinos who lived during the Japanese Occupation cannot forget the bags of japanese Mickey Mouse money it took to do grocery shopping. The economic hardship the hyper-inflation caused was calculated by the Americans to forment economic hardship, civil unrest and resistance to the Japanese occupiers. Filipinos would then continue to stay on America's side and hope for MacArthur's promised return.

I have close knowledge that this story is true. My lola, Milagros Avellana was a black market trader in these coins. She was able to augment the meager family income with the sale of this silver to her friends and relatives during those hard times. This ensured the pantry always had enough to feed my mother and her siblings, and for the family to survive the war. At the same time, it was striking an economic sabotage blow at the Japanese East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. However, Lola's two male townmate accomplices who supplied her the silver coins were not lucky enough to not survive the war unscathed like she did. They were picked up by the Kempetai at their Manila boarding house and just disappeared into the night. Lola was very lucky they did not sing her name out to their Japanese torturers.

Now don't go dreaming of diving into Manila bay to grab some of that silver. After the war, American Navy came back to recover the great remainder of coins that were left on the bottom. But once in a while, a few stray silver peso coins would still wash ashore after a typhoon. Just like the one my Corregidor tour bus driver showed me during my visit last year. He found the coin on the beach sand, after a storm.