In the summer of 1920, an old locomotive pulled several railroad cars right to the station located on the Russian-Chinese border in Manchuria, in northeastern part of China, occupied by the Japanese army at the time. The train was guarded by two dozen resentful soldiers commanded by a stocky man whose tunic was wet with sweat. A pair of protective goggles was attached to his dusty service cap.

The man changed his clothes before going to the commandant’s office. Gold shone dimly on the shoulder straps of his general’s jacket. He said to the Japanese officers: “We hereby request the Allies to grant us permission to stay temporarily at the territory occupied by the troops of the Japanese Empire. My name is General Petrov, I’m a commander of the rear services under the Supreme Governor of Russia recognized by your government.

Remnants of the defeated Russian army of Admiral Kolchak were flocking around that Manchuria railroad station at the time. The majority of the servicemen used to belong to the officer regiments of General Kappel, the most trained and disciplined units of the White army. The Japanese put forth strict conditions: only those Russians who agreed to transfer their arms and state treasures to the Japanese authorities could be guaranteed against the Bolshevik persecution. The last part of the requirements referred directly to General Petrov and the goods loaded on his train. The railroad cars contained part of Russia’s gold reserves. The general tried to wrangle over the deal with Japanese but to no avail. He ended up getting a somewhat plain receipt issued by the Japanese. It said that the boxed bars of gold were temporarily transferred to the Allies for safety reasons.

The gold disappeared without a trace afterwards. Along with a few other larger consignments of Russian gold that happened to come into possession of our Far East neighbors at the beginning of the 20th century. It’s hard to say how long the Russians have been talking about “chances and ways to get back what we lost”. The issue came to light again this year. In April it’s reported to have been discussed at the first meeting of the Russian-Japanese Council of wise men where 7 “ prominent representatives of the public” from each country got together in an attempt to break the stalemate.

“We don’t have any documents whatsoever”

After the meeting behind the closed doors, Georgy Boos, a vice speaker of the Russian Duma who’s one of the domestic “wise men” of the council, indicated that Russia could urge Japan to return the treasures. Tokyo interpreted the statement as a sign of light blackmail i.e. they may claim back their gold if we keep raising the issue of the South Kuriles. The Japanese government’s opinion on the subject is cut and dried: Japan keeps no Russian items of value that need to be returned to Russia, how an official with Japan’s Foreign Ministry put it while commenting the situation around the lost gold at my request.

According to him, in 1991 and 1995 Moscow requested Tokyo to clear up the problem.
A report on the results of the inquiry conducted by the Japanese foreign ministry was sent to Moscow in October of 1996. Neither Russian, nor Japanese authorities have made it public so far. My requests for a copy of the document came back from the Japanese foreign ministry with an invariably polite “Your request in under consideration.”

Issay Nomura, Japanese Ambassador to Russia, speaking at a press conference in Moscow, outlined the basics of the report for the first time in public. According to him, the archives of a Japanese bank called Yokogama Sekin (a precursor of today’s Tokyo-Mistubishi bank, one of Japan’s largest) were studied during the research. The Russian gold reportedly went to the above bank. Other documents relating to the issue were obtained from the archives of now defunct Ministry of Army, and Parliament. The foreign ministry ascertained that 55 boxes of gold in bars and coins were delivered from Russia to Japan from 1916 through 1920. First the czarist government then the White army paid in gold for the Japanese military supplies.

The Ambassador said that part of those funds was spent on arms and equipment while the remainder was returned to anti-Bolshevik forces by means of gold or cash at the exchange rate effective those days. He also informed that experts also looked into the state bonds placed by the Russian government in Japan during WWI to pay for military supplies. As at today’s exchange rate, the bonds are worth about 70 billion yens or more than $650 million. Some of the above funds were also spent as required while part of them was seized by the Japan government due to the expiry of loan maturity and the disappearance of the czarist government.

The Ambassador pointed out that the Japanese government arrived at the following conclusion in 1996: “All the items of value were either returned or entered in the books and therefore Japan is under no obligation to return anything.” Moscow doesn’t appear to have anything to object this point of view. So far the Russian foreign ministry have made no attempts to kick off the official talks on the whereabouts of the missing gold. “No, we don’t have any documents whatsoever,” told me a Russian diplomat, a wry smile on his face. “A few sheets of paper with no legal effect plus some confusing stories of the elderly –that’s all we’ve got.”

I’ve heard some of those stories myself. Sergei Pavlovich Petrov, a 69-year-old businessman from California, arrived in Moscow in August 1991 to attend the Congress of compatriots. It’s he who spilled the beans for first time about his father handing over part of Russia’s gold reserves to the Japanese for safekeeping. His story stirred up quite a fuss back then, numerous publications with incredible twists and turns followed. I had to pay a visit to California. My Japanese partner Kodzi Obaysi, the owner of the news agency Kokusai Tokyo Press, paid for my airfare. He got really excited about the lost treasure story. He located in San Francisco the son of the very man who arrived on that train in the Manchuria station in the summer of 1920.

“No way, it’s not that I said! I said nothing about the gold hidden in the boxes covered with hay or that those boxes read ‘dynamite’ on the side,” Sergei Petrov sounded extremely amazed as he looked through the cutouts from the Moscow press with details of his story. “I never said that it would be easy to get the treasures back. That gold played such a twist of fate on every member of our family.”

The last train story: true or fake?

In 1915, one year after the beginning of World War I, the Russian government decided to move the national gold reserves deeper into the country as the front lines were getting closer to the capital. About 500 tons of gold in bullion and coins were loaded in 28 railroad cars and shipped to Kazan. The estimated value of gold was twice as much as that of the state budget the Japanese Empire had at that period.

As the Russian government was busy relocating its gold in Kazan, Pavel Petrov, the father of Sergei Petrov, was at the front fighting the war. He was first stationed in East Germany , then transferred to Poland and later to Galicia where he became known for his combat performance during the Brusilov breakthrough. He was 35 years old and an army colonel at a time when the Bolshevist revolution took place. Along with a few other officers he was detained by the Bolsheviks in the town of Samara in the spring of 1918. He was thrown in a holding cell and thought his days were numbered but after a short while his fate took a dramatic turn for the first time and it wasn’t the last twist of fate he was to experience.

On June 8, 1918, the Bolsheviks were kicked out of Samara by the Czech corps who rose against them. As a result, Petrov was released from captivity. He soon joined the supporters of General Vladimir Kappel who made a pledge to give power back to the Constituent Assembly that had been disbanded by Lenin’s henchmen. The Kappel officer units were few in number yet well-organized and efficient at the battlefield. In August 1918, they assaulted Kazan and took it in no time. They got hold of Russia’s gold reserves stored in the city. The valuable cargo was initially controlled by the Committee of members of the Constituent Assembly that delegated its authority to the Ufa Directoire in September 1918. The latter had to submit to the dictatorial rule of Admiral Alexander Kolchak two months later due to the advancing Red Army. Admiral Kolchak held the title of the Supreme Governor of Russia and was officially recognized by Western Allies and Japan.

The gold reserves were shipped to Omsk. The items were entered in the books as 35,586 poods of gold. A one third of it is said to have been spent on military supplies. But Admiral Kolchak was soon down on his luck. Reds were pushing from all directions while groups of armed peasants took part in the insurgence behind the front lines. The fall of Omsk took place on November 14th, 1919. That’s when the mystery of czarist gold begins, according to Japanese researchers. They claim that the last piece of reliable information regarding the movements of gold stops in Omsk. As the Red Army was tightening its grip on the city, General Yasutaro Takayanagi, the head of the Japanese military mission in Omsk, offered his assistance to Kolchak. He said that the Japanese government was ready to take the Russian gold for safekeeping. But the Admiral declined the offer, according to researchers from Tokyo. Then the treasures were seized by the Czechs who betrayed the Whites. The Czechs cut a deal with Reds. The turned in the Admiral and a larger part of gold to the Bolsheviks in return for their safe passage out of the country. As it seems, the Bolsheviks didn’t get hold of all the gold.

The legend has it that the Czech legionaries might take along some of Kolchak’s gold. However, an acquaintance of mine, Japanese historian Yosiyaki Hiama, is confident that the Czechs didn’t seized it in full either.

“The last train that fled the city as the Red troops were already rolling in keeps me very doubtful as regards the total amount of gold”, says he. Now it’s a historical fact that Sigera Savada, a colonel with the Japanese military intelligence, was onboard the train along with a few Russian officers. Savada was a liaison officer between the Japanese military mission and the Kolchak government. Some sources say that the train carried a quantity of gold that was part of Russia’s gold reserves.

“I signed for ... gold bullion”

The story according to the Japanese historian is somewhat consistent with the one produced by Sergei Petrov. He said that his father who was in charge of the rear of Kolchak’s army somehow managed to escape from Omsk by train at the last minute.
The train was loaded with 63 boxes of gold. His wife, Olga Petrova, was also on the train. She graduated from the St. Petersburg Institute of Noble Maidens but worked as a nurse in the White Army.

...The train was rolling down the frozen track amid the vast snow-clad terrain, people had to get off a few times to cut through the snowdrifts, everybody felt constantly terrified at the prospect of ruthless Red coming up in pursuit. “The state cargo” was like the sword of Damocles hanging over the head: you can’t use it for buying some food yet it’s just perfect for catching a bullet. The number of those who accompanied Petrov and his wife was getting fewer day by day. People were fleeing the doomed “golden train.” One day his wife went down with typhoid fever.

“Once the dad told me that he was close to shooting his wife who was going through a lot of pain inside that cold railroad car. He was about to finish her suffering himself should the train be captured by the Bolsheviks,” said to me Sergei Petrov.

Somewhere between Irkutsk and Chita the train was stopped by mounted patrols from the Siberian Cossack Army which was under Grigory Semenov, he took over the Russian Far East after Kolchak had been executed. On the whole, those broken pieces of once powerful army were as dangerous as the Bolshevist cutthroats in Irkutsk. The cossacks confiscated the cargo of gold but somehow Petrov could snatch out 33 boxes and broke away to Chita. Later he had to swap 33 boxes of gold for the fuel and stores.

The whereabouts of General Petrov’s train until the summer of 1920 are still unknown. But the father told his son a few times about what happened at the railroad station in Manchuria.

“When I was a boy, I saw the original receipt handed by the Japanese to my dad. It was a sheet of paper measuring 25 by 15 cm. The wording was in Russian, with the mark of a Japanese stamp at the bottom. The receipt read more or less like that: ‘I hereby certify the acceptance of golden bullion to the amount of 22 boxes from General Petrov. The items are taken for safekeeping and will be returned upon request expressed by the person who submitted them for safekeeping.’ The markings and box numbers were also on the receipt. The document was signed in Russian by the Japanese military official – Colonel Izome.”

Mystic fire

Petrov has been repeatedly asked whether he got that name right. He kept saying that undoubtedly his memory served him well, and that name had entered it forever. So we had to look for “Lieutenant Colonel Idzome” as his last name is to be spelled now pursuant to the latest changes in the transcription standards. Fortunately, Japan is a country that maintains its archives in perfect order. They certainly keep the lists of commissioned officers who served in the Russian Far East or Manchuria. It felt pretty tedious looking through the endless piles of photocopied records with entries written in archaic hieroglyphs, so you can imagine our excitement when we spotted a matter-of-fact entry on one of the records. It read: “Rokuro Idzome, Lt. Col.”

The finding provided indirect proof that Petrov’s story holds water. Idzome turned out to be quite a character, he seems to have been made to take part in an adventure involving the missing gold.

He was born in 1878, trained in a military academy and stationed with the General Staff where he was successfully climbing up the career ladder. Drawing up the plans of a possible war with Russia was his job at the time. From 1913 to 1915 he was stationed in St. Petersburg at the office of the military attache. A 2-year stay in the Russian capital enabled the intelligence analyst to produce a monumental study titled “The economic geography of Siberia”. The tome had 650 pages with detailed descriptions of Siberia’s infrastructure, natural resources, and prospects for a region that definitely looked very tempting to the Japanese. In the rank of lieutenant colonel, he was sent on a mission to the staff of the expeditionary corps in the Russian Far East. He became a chief of one of the intelligence sections. In the summer of 1920 he was transferred from Chita to Manchuria railroad station. Idzome was personally involved in talks with ataman Semenov and the Kappel forces regarding conditions to be applicable to the remnants of Kolchak’s troops wishing to pledge allegiance to the Japanese authorities. Around the same time he appears to have issued that receipt to General Petrov. Soon he was promoted to colonel, a significant rank within the Japanese imperial army.

Now it seems that the gold items taken by Idzome against the receipt weren’t eventually entered in the books mentioned by Ambassador Nomura. With a high degree of probability, we can assume that gold never entered the official documents checked by the Japanese foreign office. Aside from the missing gold of Admiral Kolchak, the “unaccounted items” situation might also shed some light on the other mystery, specifically it might have been related to the terrible fire that broke out in the town of Utsunomia north of Tokyo.

Saite Matsumoto, a writer and a researcher of the dark spots of Japan’s history cites the testimony of a military translator called Matsui in his study “The Syeva’s era historical excavation”. According to the translator, the officers of the 14th division of the imperial army seized a great amount of gold in Siberia. The translator admitted taking part in the delivery of the treasures to Utsunomia where the barracks of that military unit were located. He claimed that the amount of gold inside the sealed wooden boxes was worth 10 million czarist roubles. The gold was hidden at the warehouse belonging to Kikuti Unsoten, a transport company. The facility was located in the vicinity of the town main railroad station and well-guarded. Despite the tight security arrangements, rumors of some valuables kept in the dark by the military started circulating about the town. Then the CO’s of the 14th division decided to set fire to the warehouse, according to the translator. The gold was secretly removed and sent somewhere “in the direction of Tokyo”.

The feats of the 59th regiment

It took us a few hours to reach Utsunomi by car. We rode on the North-East freeway connecting Tokyo to the northern regions of the country. We saw a military camp still used by one of the units of the Japanese “self-defense” forces. The camp looks a little bit like a cross between a Russian model garrison and an American military base. Boring clean pavements, no idle passers-by, buildings and fences painted in the same pattern. We found a site for sore eyes, though. The red-brick gate of the barracks in Utsunomia was a sure reminder of the 19th century.

“Yes, this is our pride and glory,” said the unit’s communications officer. “In days of old the gate opened the way to the barracks of the 59th regiment of the 14th division. The history of the regiment is flush with glorious moments. It concerns Russia, by the way. The regiment was part of the troops that were dispatched to Siberia. You can step inside our museum and look around some exhibits, in case you’re interested.”

Later my partner Obayasi told me of his irresistible urge of rushing into the museum once the name of the 59th regiment had been mentioned; it’s the very military unit that captured the lion’s share of Russian gold, according to eyewitnesses. Going through the flimsy pages of the regiment’s official logbook, we were hardly expecting to come across something that had to do with the treasures. But a few short references to spoils were found on some pages: “On April 19th, 1920, the unit engaged the bandits in the vicinity of the Red River. The enemy’s completely defeated. Numerous valuable trophies seized.”
Incidentally, Cpt. Kosaburo Yamasava, an officer with the 14th division, spilled the beans during one of the brawls ( it’s in the records) as to a large amount of Russian gold seized by him and his fellow combatants from the 59th regiment precisely in April. The captain felt that his military career was curtailed by his superiors, and spoke bitterly about the valuables being misappropriated without any fuss by the chief of staff of the division who had commanded the 59th regiment before. But the servicemen laid hands on gold all the time during the Siberian campaign, according Yamasava. He said that it never entered the books as trophy. Instead, it went straight into possession of commanding officers.

Some time after the Utsunomia fire, a retired general Ghiity Tanaki, Japan’s PM at the time, found himself at the center of a scandal. The general was one of the top brass with the Far East expeditionary corps. He suddenly turned into the leader of one of the largest political parties in Japan following his retreat from Siberia. The party was his springboard to the top of the government. But the opposition was quick to produce a set of documents with irrefutable evidence of a foul play on the part of the general. The documents showed that he literally bought his top post by cutting a deal with the Parliament power brokers. The general had reportedly money to burn after his return from Russia. Deputy Nakano referred to witnesses while claiming that the general became a millionaire thanks to the Russian gold misappropriated by his lieutenants in Siberia. He reportedly got the largest cut of it. Various sources said that the same 14th division was seizing valuable items while in the Amur region, the Japanese reportedly got hold of valuables found in the barracks of the retreating Russian troops commanded by General Rozanov. They’re said to have simply robbed Kalmykov, one of the fellow combatants of ataman Semenov.

The opposition also lashed out at the general regarding gold taken from Khabarovsk in February 1920. The angry speakers made references to the other consignment of gold seized while fighting Reds near Alexandrovka and Zeia in October 1919, they spoke of the pilfered gold mines in Transbaikalia. The hearings resulted in a great deal of speculation and bad publicity but eventually all the excitement and commotion abated and the case was dropped following the death of an investigator in the murky circumstances. He had been assigned by the prosecutor’s office to investigate the case.

$ 80 billion’s worth of dreams

In the meantime, once he handed the gold to Idzume, General Pavel Petrov spent some time cruising around the area between the Russian Far East that was still out of reach for the Bolsheviks, and Manchuria. His first son, an acquaintance of ours from California, was born there. His family then moved to Vladivostok in 1922, but the Japanese treated the Kappel officers rather bad since the Japanese staked a lot on the Cossack force headed by Semenov. The impoverished general moved to Shanghai and set up a photo shop. That major sea port was under control of Western powers, a Russian officer regiment rendered security services. Things started to get better but 1932 saw the general life’s taking another dramatic turn. He announced to his loved ones that he’s about to set off to Japan. He said that he’d been authorized by the leaders of Russian emigration community to start legal proceedings for reclaiming the gold in the court of law.

The Petrovs settled down in a beautiful house with servants, in one of the posh neighborhoods of Yokogama, a big port city on the coastline. The city looked a little like Snanghai in terms of cosmopolitanism. They enjoyed a good life for three years as the general looked after the legal action that seemed to go in the right way. The poor photographer from Shanghai suddenly became a man of means with good connections in the Tokyo political circles. The changes could be hardly explained by support he got from the high-ranking Russian emigres.

“Yes, the money came from the Japanese military,” confirmed Sergei Petrov. “But I don’t know who those people were. Though I still remember a snowy morning of February 26th, 1936. A group of the military attempted to overthrow the government on that day.

I don’t know what actually happened back then, but it was the last day of our good life. We became poor again and had to rent a shabby house on the outskirts of Yokogama.”

The most radical group of the Japanese military who intended to establish a regime similar to that in Nazi Germany was defeated in the winter of 1936. Some leaders of the attempted coup were executed, others were sent into prison or early retirement. The mentor of the rebels, General Sadao Araki, was removed from the political scene. After WWII he will be tried and sentenced to life imprisonment by the International Tokyo Tribunal for crimes committed on the occupied territories. That die-hard militarist also took part in the invasion of Siberia and had close ties with Semenov and other prominent figures of the White emigration.

It seems that Araki and his buddies financed Petrov and paid his legal expenses for reasons that are still unknown to us. But things went from bad to worse after 1936. After a serious of disastrous hearings the claim was finally rejected. The case about the missing gold was closed in 1940. Sergei Petrov admitted that his dad had to sell the Idzome receipt to pay for the legal costs. Shortly after the hostilities broke out at the Pacific in 1941, the general and his family moved to the U.S.A. Sergei Petrov assured us that his father had photocopied the receipt. But the copies are either lost or at best stuck in between the dusty records at the Russian Emigration Museum in San Francisco.

Some optimists in Russia now say that Japan presently has “our gold at the estimated value of $80 billion including interest”. In the meanwhile, the Japanese government is confident that it can easily account for any czarist or other items of value that were officially handed over to the government before and after the October revolution. As regards the gold bullion and other valuable items carried by Petrov, Kalmykov, and Rosanov, I doubt very much that we’ll ever learn the true story about their disappearance.

Japanese researchers share the opinion that part of the treasures was simply stolen by officers of the expeditionary troops. However, the larger part of gold was appropriated by secret institutions set up by the military and intelligence agencies the authorities can’t control. The funds were used for financing espionage and terrorist activities. Goro Tenkay, a Japanese historian, writes the following in his book “The secret treasures of the Romanov dynasty” about the embezzlement of the Russian gold: “it was a collective crime of the militarist circles. They used those treasures for fulfilling the goals that were not always consistent with the official political course of the government.” This is really a no-go situation: Tokyo considers the file has been closed whereas Moscow seems quite reluctant to bother the neighbor by making any unfounded allegations.