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Originally Posted by Renall
Some thoughts on possible connections: - We know Kinzo played ball with the Americans. If Allied High Command thought him trustworthy for some reason he could've somehow gotten gold. "Beatrice" could have been the link there.
- The Stakes were supposedly manufactured near New York City.
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These are the strongest links towards an "M Funds" source, which would mean that the gold is initially Japanese own, appropriated by US occupation forces and not listed as proper trophies. I don't think US Army had a lot of female staff in that period, but that can be researched.
"M Funds" are
apparently frequently used in a 419-type scam in Japan these days. Amusingly, the name "William Frederick Murcutt" which is supposedly the origin of "M" in "M Funds" is completely missing from the English web, I'm not sure the gentleman actually existed or at least, his name isn't written properly. So we might be dealing with an indigenous Japanese treasure story here, which complicates research a lot.
Curiously, it is never written just what kind of services did Kinzo's business perform for Americans
before the Korean War hit. While the mansion has been completed during the Korean War itself, it is likely to have taken long enough to have started before it hit. Also, even if we assume captain Kawabata is rounding his estimates of Kuwadorian deliveries up, it is likely that he started those
before the Korean War started, it's two and a half years lead, which would imply Kuwadorian was completed before the Korean War and before the main mansion. Kinzo is actually implied to have acquired Rokkenjima before the occupation ended,
(because the process, as described, involved the occupation authorities, otherwise the island would have ended up property of Tokyo Metropolitan Area authorities even if US Army wanted a storage depot there) so this is probably the case.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Renall
- "Beatrice" has very western features, at least in the portrait. This sort of edges out the Russian prospect, but it makes it hard to say otherwise. She seems to believe she's European though.
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Mind you, Romanovs at the time were something 3/4s of German ancestry -- I'd need to look up the family tree .
Further research on the Russian Empire gold indicates that almost exactly 10 tons of that gold missed the Bank of Tokyo and ended up in possession of the 59th regiment of the 14th division of IJA
(I wish I knew what the proper Japanese terms these numbers go with are.) in Utsunomiya, not listed as registered trophies. In the 1920s, when rumours spread about the gold being stored in a warehouse, the division command supposedly set the warehouses on fire and hauled the gold off 'somewhere towards Tokyo', whereupon the trace is completely lost. The source for that particular story is a non-fiction book by a prolific Japanese writer Matsumoto Seichō (松本 清張), "Showa-shi hakkutsu",《昭和历史発掘》 so at least it's well documented and should be a relatively well known story.
That's about as far as I can get on this lead without getting off my chair. It's a bit too early for Kinzo to have attained it, though, and we know he had to have acquired it during the WWII. Whoever had that particular stash had to be an IJA officer, and how could a Western-looking Beatrice end up involved is unclear, so I suspect that is a dead end -- even though that's the only batch of gold in the entire list I'm pretty sure really existed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Renall
- The names Kinzo gave his children are, by and large, all German names (or can be).
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Except the ones his grandchildren ended up with, in particular, Battler. Which keeps reminding me of
Rhett Butler every single time I look at it. Also remember how his sprite is shortened to "BUT" in the code.
P.S: Oh, the Stakes. Almost forgot. Would you think that for a Japanese, Arkham, MA is "near New York City"?