David Miller
Singapore: Monsoon Books, 2012
ISBN: 9789814358897
During World War II, the Imperial Japanese Army looted untold amounts of gold and other valuables from across its occupied colonies in Southeast Asia to finance the empire’s ongoing military expansion. But when the tide of war turned against Japan in 1943, much of this treasure had to be buried in secret. Over the decades thousands have searched in vain for the legendary Yamashita’s Gold, until now.
A group of foreign workers digging a tunnel under the Padang in present-day Singapore stumbles across a forgotten underground vault and inadvertently triggers a biological booby trap set by the Japanese a generation earlier to protect Yamashita’s Gold. An unknown strain of anthrax is released that threatens a global holocaust. To stop this biological disaster, it is up to Inspector Gerald Loh of the Singapore Police Force to decipher a cryptic clue left behind with the loot by General Yamashita’s men.
Year of the Tiger takes readers on a roller-coaster journey of political wrangling, murky history and secret organisations, from World War II Singapore to the present day, to discover the elusive cure for a seemingly unstoppable anthrax pandemic.
This story, a work of fiction, is based on well-researched historical facts. A sizeable amount of the loot seized by Golden Lily – a secret arm of the Japanese Government during World War II – was stashed underground in Singapore, Malaya and the Philippines. Obscure Japanese shrines and forgotten tunnels which still exist in Singapore, continue to fuel speculation over the location of these treasure troves none of which have been found. However a test archaeological excavation of the Padang in 2009 uncovered amongst other things, a trench dating back to World War II as well as the remains of several gas masks.
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