Buga-buga Cave - World War 2 Straggler's Refuge
Location: 400 meters south of Mt. Bugabuga, and a few meters uphill from WW2 Peace Memorial. As we're toiling our way into tight narrow crevices and through the rugged dark passages, our venture to the one of the mazelike cave occupied by the Japanese stragglers 75 years ago, made me think of the hardships they had endured as they hid inside during the height of Leyte battle between December 1944 to April 1945 - where many of them took refuge here and was reportedly died from illness and starvation* The cave has chambers connected by small tunnels and you really need to hunker down to get into one chamber and crawl again to get to the other. Due to hunting expeditions in the past decades, where it was believed that there were treasures left by the Japanese, traces of excavations are apparent in each of the caverns. There are countless of diggings inside, dripstones were destroyed, and some passages were intentionally sealed with soil and rocks.