The Thai army is to excavate a jungle cave next week in an attempt to verify a tale told by an elderly Buddhist monk of lost Japanese wartime gold, skeletons with rusty samurai swords and a train from the Death Railway hidden underground for more than half a century.
The tale may seem tall but the search is deadly serious. Six treasure hunters suffocated last year in the stifling Li Chia cave near the Thai-Burmese border.
Now Chaowarin Latthasaksiri, a Thai senator, has organised an official expedition, saying he will donate any gold he finds to the government to help pay off Thailand's debts.
His quest has prompted accounts from villagers of clandestine Japanese search parties which have slipped into the area several times over the past decade for unexplained excavations at sites near the Thai-Burma Death Railway.
Military historians agree there is evidence that retreating Japanese troops buried munitions and other items as they pulled back in the face of General Sir William Slim's advance through Burma in 1944 and 1945.
The senator is one of the few who is convinced by an astonishing story told by the monk Phra Apisit Thammawaro, who says he and four other Thais - one of them a wartime guide for the Japanese - found a way into the labyrinth several years ago.
"They informed the king and the monk tried to negotiate with various people to open the cave, but nobody believed him," the senator said. "I sat down and really listened to what he had to say. It didn't seem something that someone would make up."
The five said they had seen gold bars, a locomotive and trucks, stacks of Japanese bombs, weapons and skeletons - some of which appeared to be wearing samurai swords, others which they surmised were those of western prisoners or Asian slaves.
The cave's entrance, off the road between the towns of Thong Pha Phum and Sangkhlaburi, is 3ft wide.
More than 50 people, ranging from soldiers to geologists, are working at the site. "We're using heavy machinery to remove the rocks and sand - we can't use explosives because there might well be bombs in the cave left behind by the Japanese, or booby traps," the senator said. He expects the operation to take about a month.
The senator believes the gold was mined in Thailand and smelted locally.
Legends of hidden treasure have sparked fruitless gold rushes by Thais since the end of the war. The senator said some Japanese had built roads and factories in one area where five wartime camps had been identified. "I think they had ulterior motives," he said.
Rod Beattie, an Australian expert on the Death Railway, said Thai villagers spoke of secretive Japanese jungle search parties near the remains of the railway line.
In one incident near Hintok, the site of a POW camp north of the bridge on the River Kwai at Kanchanaburi, the villagers' accounts suggested the Japanese were following a map or a plan as they worked quickly and without permission.
Beattie said there was little basis for the popular supposition that a large quantity of gold bullion is hidden in the Thai jungle.
However, he added: "A Japanese engineer on the railway remembers they paid suppliers with gold leaf. He remembered sitting on a chest full of this gold leaf."
