The loss of the skull of the Peking people is a pain that the Chinese nation will never be able to bear.
Legend has it that the national authorities handed him over to the U.S. government and asked the Americans to protect this century treasure. In the early morning of December 5, 1941, a chest containing a skull boarded a train bound for Qinhuangdao at the Qianmen Railway Station, preparing to be loaded from the port of Qinhuangdao to the United States. However, the "President Harrison" steamship that came to meet was sunk by the Japanese army on the way to China.
Coincidentally, on December 8, the qinhuangdao military camp in the UNITED States Marine Corps was also occupied by Japanese gendarmes, among which all the Americans responsible for transporting the "skull" this time were captured, and the whereabouts of the skull were unknown.
Many believe that after the loss of the skull in the United States, the Japanese secretly formed a caravan and prepared to go to the mainland. Unfortunately, this caravan happened to be sunk by the Americans again!
Since then, the skull of the Beijingers has completely lost its voice and become an open case.
The secret of "Awa Maru"
"Awa Maru", a shipwreck that haunts the souls of all salvagers around the world. According to legend, it was a "golden mountain" weighing 40 tons. This is a Japanese ocean cruise ship built in the early 1940s, with a length of 154.9 meters and a width of 20.2 meters.
On March 28, 1945, the Awa Maru, which had been requisitioned by the Japanese army, loaded a large number of Japanese retreating from Southeast Asia in Singapore and sailed to Japan. At midnight on April 1, the "Awa Maru" sailed to the waters east of Niushan Island in Fujian Province, China, and was found by the US submarine "Queenfish" that was cruising in the sea, and was attacked by several torpedoes, and quickly sank three minutes later. Of the ship's 2,009 passengers and crew, only third-class chef Kantaro Shimoda survived. The international community was shocked. And when people hear the astonishing wealth wrapped in the hull of the Awa Maru, the shock is even more indescribable.
According to the 1976 special issue of the Republican Newspaper, the "Apo Pill" was loaded with: 40 tons of gold, 12 tons of platinum, 150,000 carats of industrial diamond, the value of large bundles of banknotes is unknown, and 40 boxes of artefacts, handicrafts, and gemstones are of unknown value. According to Natoth (a former observer of the U.S. Marine Laboratory and a member of the National Diving Leadership) in the salvage plan, the minimum salvageable cargo value is $249 million, and all wealth is worth up to $5 billion. According to Taiwan's "China Times" reported on November 21, 1976: "Apo Maru" was sunk with 40 tons of gold ingots, 12 tons of platinum, 150,000 carats of unprocessed gemstones, several bundles of American, British and Hong Kong currencies, 40 boxes of handicrafts, 3,000 tons of tin, 2,000 tons of tungsten, 2,000 tons of aluminum, 800 tons of titanium, and 2,000 tons of rubber.
On May 2, 1979, Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun reported that Iemitsu Morikawa, the army commander of the year ( i.e. Corporal ) , said that the 26 trucks loaded by the Awa Maru were gold bars. Figures provided to China by the Japanese Gulf delegation: 3,000 tons of tin, 3,000 tons of raw rubber, plus antimony, tungsten and mercury, for a total of 9,812 tons.
In addition to these gold and silver treasures, there is likely to be a priceless treasure on the shipwreck of the "Awa Maru", the fossil skull of the "Peking Man".
It is said that when US President Richard Nixon visited China in 1972, he gave the Chinese government the whereabouts of the fossil skull of the "Peking Man" held by the US side as a gift. Nixon provided clues that the "Peking Man" skull fossil may have been on the shipwreck "Apo Maru".
According to the survey, in 1941, the Japanese invaders were raging with iron hooves, and Wei Dunrui, a scholar who studied the fossils of the "Peking Man", hoped to take away all the bone fossils of the Geological Survey and store them in the Natural History Museum in New York. The U.S. ambassador to China in Chongqing agreed and authorized the U.S. Legation in Beiping to accept the precious fossils of ancient humans and transport them safely to the United States for preservation.
On December 5, 1941, a special U.S. Marine Corps train sailed from Beiping to Qinhuangdao, and two boxes of fossils were placed in standardized green suitcases for the U.S. military, and checked in a luggage truck along with all the military luggage.
Three days later, the Pacific War broke out. The Japanese quickly occupied all U.S. institutions in China, and the two green suitcases containing the skulls of the "Peking people" disappeared.
Since then, the disappearance of the skull of the "Peking man" has become a major unsolved case in the history of human science.
For half a century, Japanese officials have not recognized the acquisition and collection of "Peking people".
In response to the theory that the "Awa Maru" contains the skull of the "Peking Man", some people have questioned: Why did the Japanese spend several years and painstakingly transport fossils from northern China to Southeast Asia?
Later, during the initial salvage of the "Apo Pill", the family treasure of the pseudo-"Manchukuo" political leader Zheng Yu (Fengtian Mayor, son of the puppet Manchu patriarch Zheng Xiaoxu) was found, and the yuanyan given to his descendants during the burial of Zheng Xiaoxu was found, and the words "Zheng Gongxiaoxu Burial Memorial" were found on the stone (Note, Zheng Xiaoxu died in Changchun in 1938 and was buried in Shenyang). This shows that the Japanese have transported the cultural relics and treasures collected in northern China to the "Awa Maru", and the lower-value cultural relics such as the Jade Seal Yuanyan have been brought with them, not to mention the "Beijing man skull" of immeasurable value. This is strong circumstantial evidence that the "Apo Pill" may have amputated the skull of the "Beijinger".
On January 13, 1977, the State Council and the Central Military Commission decided that under the unified command of the Fuzhou Military Region, the Ministry of Communications and the Navy would organize forces to salvage the shipwreck of the "Awa Maru", with the project code name "7713".
On 1 May, the "Awa Maru" was discovered, and the wreck had been broken into two sections, the front section was 44.7 meters long and the rear section was 107.8 meters long, buried in the mud on the seabed 9 to 11 meters, where the water depth ranged from 60 to 69 meters. Subsequently, the salvage was officially started in the name of "removing underwater obstacles from niushan fishery and ensuring the safety of marine fishing operations".
In 1980, the commanders and fighters of the Navy's "J503" ship completed the task of dismantling the first section of the shipwreck, and penetrated a total of 14 kilograms of steel cables in 4 lanes on the bottom of the ship. A total of 2,472 tons of tin ingots were recovered, priced at more than 50 million US dollars, as well as thousands of tons of rubber and other goods.
However, no gold was found, and no trace of the fossil of the "Peking Man" was found!
Where did this treasure of the century go? Is the American claim to have been looted by Japan true? And are Japan's so-called $4 billion treasures and skulls really located on this ship?
We don't know.