davidlhyde63366
Forum Supporter
Recovery of stuff in the bay there
Really great pictures there , bet you wish you knew then ,what you do now about the history of the place. No telling how many more tunnel additions the Japanese added and sealed up that weren't on the diagram, they had a unlimited supply of slave labor to build them. No telling what is hid behind some of those caved in entrances to keep it out of American hands. I am sure at the time the Americans didn't think anything they found would be worth recovering. From accounts I have read General Mac Author ordered his personal car pushed over the pier to keep the Japanese from recovering it. Might still be there but wouldn't look like much at this point. How many prized articles were hid or thrown in the water to keep them out of Japanese hands knowing they were ordered to surrender and having time to do it. As to the coins that were brought there they were boxed up in wooden crates and put on barges and taken out to a deeper part of Manila Bay and sank. The Japanese found out about this and used captured American Divers to recover some of the coins , After the war the American government sent navy divers to recover more of it. They recovered as much as was worth it at the time. The wood crates had rotted away and the diving suits we had then were crude by todays standards with the old metal dive helmets .Still a lot of them down there but would take a major recovery effort to get them with all the years of silt and mud covering them.
Those were some beautiful coins mostly 1903-1912 silver pesos , but also rare issued commerative coins called Wilson dollars , and a rare issues set of 3 coins from 1936 and some go for big bucks today. Here is a article that tells about the recovery of some of the coins and pictures of some of them.http://corregidor.org/chs_trident/salvage/medina_02.htm It also mentions much of the silver the Japanese recovered was lost again when the ships were sunk waiting to be found again.
Really great pictures there , bet you wish you knew then ,what you do now about the history of the place. No telling how many more tunnel additions the Japanese added and sealed up that weren't on the diagram, they had a unlimited supply of slave labor to build them. No telling what is hid behind some of those caved in entrances to keep it out of American hands. I am sure at the time the Americans didn't think anything they found would be worth recovering. From accounts I have read General Mac Author ordered his personal car pushed over the pier to keep the Japanese from recovering it. Might still be there but wouldn't look like much at this point. How many prized articles were hid or thrown in the water to keep them out of Japanese hands knowing they were ordered to surrender and having time to do it. As to the coins that were brought there they were boxed up in wooden crates and put on barges and taken out to a deeper part of Manila Bay and sank. The Japanese found out about this and used captured American Divers to recover some of the coins , After the war the American government sent navy divers to recover more of it. They recovered as much as was worth it at the time. The wood crates had rotted away and the diving suits we had then were crude by todays standards with the old metal dive helmets .Still a lot of them down there but would take a major recovery effort to get them with all the years of silt and mud covering them.
Those were some beautiful coins mostly 1903-1912 silver pesos , but also rare issued commerative coins called Wilson dollars , and a rare issues set of 3 coins from 1936 and some go for big bucks today. Here is a article that tells about the recovery of some of the coins and pictures of some of them.http://corregidor.org/chs_trident/salvage/medina_02.htm It also mentions much of the silver the Japanese recovered was lost again when the ships were sunk waiting to be found again.
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