Amelia Earhart

by W. C. Jameson

  Amran was ordered not to speak to the prisoners and to get busy treating the man’s wounds. He had been cut on the head and had a serious fourinch-long gash on one knee. It was explained that the man had suffered the injury when the plane crash-landed on the reef at Mili Atoll. In the nearly two weeks that had elapsed, the wound had become infected and inflamed. Amron cleaned it, applied an ointment, and rebandaged it.

  As Amran repacked his medical kit, he overheard the Japanese officers mention that the ship was going to leave Jaluit for Kwajalein and then proceed on to Roi-Namur, two islands in the Marshall group where the Japanese had military bases. From there, it would continue to Truk Atoll and then on to the island of Saipan. Amran also heard some of the officers refer to the female prisoner as “Ameera.” Amran learned later that her name was Amelia.

  Some of the crew members of the Kosyu told Amran that the man and woman had been picked up at Mili Atoll, where their plane had come down. A Japanese officer pointed toward the stern of the ship, where Amran saw an airplane that had been strapped down. Amran described the plane as silver, having two motors and a broken left wing. The plane was still wrapped in the stout canvas slings that had been used to retrieve it from the water. Finally, Amran was escorted off the vessel. The Kosyu departed Jaluit on July 19.

  Bilimon Amran died in 1996. When interviewed about the incident aboard the Kosyu, he never wavered in his story. Amran was described by Jaluit residents as “one of the most respected, revered, and successful persons in the Marshall Islands.” He was, in short, a credible eyewitness.

  Eric de Bisschop, identified as a French explorer who was sailing across the Pacific toward the Hawaiian Islands, reported spotting Earhart and Noonan on Jaluit. For a time, de Bisschop was held prisoner by the Japanese. He said the two Americans were also prisoners.

  Added to the above eyewitness accounts of the Electra coming down at Mili Atoll is a statement from the United Nations ambassador from the Republic of the Marshall Islands. On May 20, 2002, he stated, “She definitely landed in the Marshall Islands.” He said that he personally had interviewed a number of islanders who saw Earhart after her landing and capture.

  A Marshall Islander named Dr. John told interviewers in later years of seeing an aircraft “go down in the water about two hundred feet offshore on one of the islands.” While he saw the plane, he was never close enough to observe the crew.

  During the 1970s, author Vincent Loomis interviewed a number of Marshall Islanders relative to the Earhart disappearance. One of them was a woman who stated, “I tell you I saw this airplane and the woman pilot and the Japanese taking the woman and the man with her away.” When asked where she saw the plane, the woman pointed and said “Over there . . . next to Barre Island. That’s where it landed.”

  In 1978, Vincent Loomis traveled to the Marshall Islands to search for Earhart’s plane, which, despite the information that the Japanese had retrieved it, he believed could still be found there. He had no luck locating the craft, but he interviewed a number of residents of Mili Atoll, among them two local senators. One, Amata Kabua, told Loomis that he, along with most of the residents of the atoll, were well aware that Amelia Earhart had gone down near Barre Island. Others interviewed by Loomis throughout the area told the same story.

  Robert Reimers was born on Jabor in the Jaluit Atoll in 1909 and lived there for most of his life. Reimers was a successful businessman who owned hotels, travel agencies, shopping centers, and other businesses in Majuro. When interviewed by Earhart researcher Bill Prymak, he stated that Earhart’s capture by the Japanese was widely known by everyone on the island, “that a Japanese fishing boat found Earhart, her navigator, and the airplane near Mili Atoll. They were transferred to a bigger boat and brought to the harbor at Jabor, eight miles south of Emidj on Jaluit Atoll. There was no mystery. Everyone knew it.”

  Following the 1944 occupation of the Marshall Islands by U.S. servicemen, soldiers assigned there heard stories from the natives of a “white lady pilot and a white man” who had crash-landed at Mili Atoll and were taken prisoner by the Japanese. One marine described encountering a barracks room that had clearly been prepared to house a woman. Among the items found in the room was a suitcase that contained newspaper clippings about Amelia Earhart. Also found were a woman’s clothing and a locked diary with the title “10-Year Diary of Amelia Earhart.” What became of these articles after the war is unknown.

  And there is this: Just before he passed away in 1966, U.S. Navy Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz was quoted as saying, “Earhart and her navigator did go down in the Marshalls and were picked up by the Japanese.” Nimitz, who controlled a great portion of the U.S. Navy and often rubbed elbows with the nation’s leaders, would certainly have had access to critical and top secret information regarding the incident. Furthermore, Alfred Capelle, the United Nations ambassador to the Marshall Islands, told an Associated Press reporter in 2002 that “Amelia Earhart definitely came to the Marshall Islands in 1937.”

  Despite the official government position that Earhart crashed and sank near Howland Island, an increasing number of people were growing cognizant of the truth. Among them was Amelia’s mother, Amy Otis Earhart. During an interview with the New York Times, Mrs. Earhart stated that she “knew” her daughter had ended up a prisoner of the Japanese. Twelve years after the aviatrix vanished, an interview with Earhart’s mother was published in the Los Angeles Times on July 24, 1949. In part, the interview contained the following:

  I have kept quiet through the many years, but certainly this could hurt no one now. I am convinced she was on some sort of government mission, probably on verbal orders, she wouldn’t tell me. I am equally sure she didn’t make a forced landing on the open sea. She landed on a tiny atoll, one of the many in that general area of the Pacific and was picked up by a Japanese fishing boat and taken to the Marshall Islands, then under Japanese control. She was ordered taken to Japan. There she met with an accident, an arranged accident that ended her life.

  What exactly did Amy Otis Earhart know, and how did she arrive at this knowledge? While parts of her interview may be in error, there is obvious consistency relative to the notion that her daughter survived her crash at or near the Marshall Islands.

  Given the quantity and quality of the evidence, it has become increasingly clear that the Electra came down on Mili Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Controversy has surfaced as to whether the plane was shot down, forced down, or simply ran out of gas. Regardless of the reasons, there exists little in the way of compelling evidence to suggest that the Electra came down in any other location.

  It is clear, then, that Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan did not perish in a crash of the Electra, as was claimed by the government of the United States, and that they were alive for a significant amount of time after the U.S. officially assumed the position that she was dead and the case was closed.

  Just how long did Earhart survive following the alleged crashing and sinking of the Electra? The accumulating evidence suggests that she remained a prisoner of the Japanese for eight years before she was found and rescued by the conquering armies following the end of World War II.

  • 24 •The Search

  On learning of the disappearance of Earhart and Noonan, the U.S. government immediately ordered an extensive search of the region. The U.S. Navy was placed in charge. The aircraft carrier Lexington arrived in the area of Howland Island on July 13. From the USS Lexington, the mightiest aircraft in the U.S. fleet, fighter planes were ordered to within seventy-five miles of the Gilbert Islands and to within 250 miles of the Marshall Islands. In all, the United States committed to the search one aircraft carrier, one battleship (the 33,000-ton USS Colorado), four destroyers, a cruiser, two Coast Guard cutters, a minesweeper, and sixty-five aircraft, as well as a number of other support vessels from the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard.

  The search was hampered from the beginning. For one thing, the only maps available depicting the Pacific Ocean’s islands and shoals in this region we
re compiled ninety-six years earlier by whaling companies and were woefully inaccurate. For nearly a week, planes flew seven hundred feet above the surface of the sea searching for evidence of the Electra. According to government documents, a total of 151,556 square miles were covered. The Lexington, along with three other vessels, covered another 22,640.

  Oddly, in spite of the fact that the official position of the U.S. government was that the Electra came down in the area of Howland Island, the USS Swan was immediately dispatched to Canton Island to look for the plane. On arriving at the island, a large search party was sent onto the island to hunt for the wreckage of the Electra. The USS Colorado went straight to the Phoenix Island group.

  The U.S. Navy communicated with the second secretary of the Japanese embassy, Tsuneo Hayama, that a clue derived from one of Earhart’s messages suggested that she was near a point two hundred miles north of Howland Island and that the USS Lexington and the Colorado were on their way to that location. They requested assistance from the Japanese. In truth, both vessels were on their way to the Phoenix group of islands located four hundred miles southeast of Howland Island. It remains unclear whether the U.S. Navy was providing false information to the Japanese or whether they were simply lost or confused.

  On July 3, Karl Pierson, the chief engineer of the Patterson Radio Corporation in Los Angeles, California, was approached by officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and sworn to secrecy regarding any radio messages that might have been received from Earhart during her flight. Walter McMenamy, a Los Angeles ham radio operator, was also approached and given the same instructions. To be sure, these requests relative to the disappearance of Amelia Earhart appear quite odd and unnecessary given that the government had already stated she was but a civilian pilot who crashed into the Pacific Ocean.

  A formal request was sent to Japanese officials to allow American ships and aircraft to enter the Marshall Island group to search for the Electra, but it was denied. The Japanese informed the Americans that they would conduct their own search with the Twelfth Squadron’s four ships, led by the ships Kamoi and Kosyu.

  It was learned later that while the Japanese were informing the world they were actively searching for the downed aviatrix, the Twelfth Squadron, save the Kosyu, which was docked at Jaluit, had never left the homeport at Ise Bay, Japan.

  The Japanese did not want the U.S. Navy anywhere near the Marshall and Gilbert Islands. They intended for their military installations on these islands to remain secret as long as possible. Japanese foreign minister Koki Hirota ordered Consul General Fukuma to meet with the American naval officer in command of the Earhart search effort. The U.S. officials assured Fukuma that no searches would be conducted near any of the Japanese mandated islands. The Japanese were concerned that the truth had leaked out somehow and were worried that the Americans would press them for details. After the passage of several days, however, no queries arrived.

  It was estimated that the cost of the search exceeded $4,500,000. The involvement of the U.S. military in the search for Earhart and Noonan generated severe criticism from some members of Congress. Pennsylvania representative Charles I. Faddis asked the question: “Do you suppose the navy would spend 250,000 dollars a day to hunt for some poor fisherman, perhaps the father of a family, if he were lost in the Pacific?” Representative Byron Scott of California stated, “It is time someone in authority announced that henceforth the navy would not be used to search for ‘publicity-stunt’ aviators.” The notion had been advanced that the United States was anxious to locate and retrieve the Electra before the Japanese found it and discovered the secret cameras.

  Two months following the disappearance of Earhart, George Palmer Putnam requested permission from the Japanese to search the Marshall Islands for evidence of her downed plane. He had made a request earlier but was summarily denied. In part, Putnam’s letter asked, “Is there any way of ascertaining what the Japanese are actually doing, especially as regards a real search of the eastern fringe of the Marshall Islands? That is one of the most fruitful possible locations for wreckage.” The question must be asked: What did Putnam know or suspect that others did not? Or perhaps more accurately, what did Putnam know that the government refused to reveal?

  From San Francisco, Consul General Shiozaki cabled Minister Hirota about the request. He stated that Putnam was convinced the Electra could be found at or near the Marshall Islands. Hirota placed Vice Foreign Minister Kensuke Horiuchi in charge of the matter. Horiuchi passed the request on to Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the vice minister of the Japanese navy. In a return message to Horiuchi, Yamamoto wrote: “In regard to the search for the remains of the Earhart plane in our mandated territory, our Imperial nation will have all the vessels and fishing boats in the area make every possible effort to search for the remains.” The message clearly was intended to stall or deter any effort by Putnam. The Japanese, in truth, had no intention of conducting a search of any kind.

  In the end, no evidence was ever produced to suggest the presence of the Electra on land or in water in the area of the search.

  Even though the U.S. government officially called an end to the search for Amelia Earhart, evidence exists that indicates that, in one form or another, it continued for years afterward.

  • 25 •The Mystery of the Itasca Logs

  Almost from the time of Earhart’s disappearance, the logs of the Itasca have been the subject of controversy. Researchers have expressed considerable doubt relative to the accuracy of the records and reports as well as their completeness.

  In August 2000, John P. Riley had an article published in Naval History Magazine in which he stated that the deck logs of the Itasca relative to the Earhart disappearance had been “partially falsified” and that the Howland Island radio log was phony. Riley learned the latter from the Howland Island radio station operators Yau Fai Lum and Ah Kin Leong. Lum told Riley that the entries were “completely fictitious.” Lum’s name was even misspelled on the logs.

  When Riley showed Lum copies of the Howland Island log that indicated he had maintained a radio watch with Radioman Second Class Frank Cipriani, Lum stated that he had never worked with Cipriani and that he had never been assigned any such watch.

  The Itasca’s chief radioman Leo G. Bellarts related years later that the direction finder used on Howland Island was inoperative and had been disabled when the operator, Frank Cipriani, broke it. The direction finder had been carried aboard the ship, where it was disassembled and inspected by Bellarts. Bellarts found a wire broken by Cipriani and also discovered that the batteries had apparently failed during Earhart’s flight as a result of overloading.

  Bellarts also reported that documents were mysteriously disappearing from the Itasca’s central radio headquarters. He reported the disappearances, and a short time later his commanding officer instructed him to secure the room. Who was taking the documents and why remains a mystery to this day, but it must be assumed with a degree of certainty that such orders came from higher up the chain of command.

  Documents and journals maintained by radioman Leo G. Bellarts were handed down to his son, David, who in turn provided them to Earhart researchers. From these materials it has been learned that Earhart never attempted to contact the Itasca until the last few minutes of the flight. It would have been a simple matter to do so. The question is why?

  Louis Ream was a deputy to General William Donovan, who went on to direct the Office of Strategic Services in World War II. Ream was later connected with Allen Dulles, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. John Ream, Louis’s nephew, stated, “It was well known within high ranking intelligence circles that Miss Earhart, at the time of her disappearance, was involved in an intelligence-gathering operation . . . ordered at the request of the highest echelons of government.” Ream went on to state that there were “serious blunders by the Navy in their attempt to provide Miss Earhart with proper guidance, and the Navy was and is determined to conceal their participation in their part of the
operation.”

  • 26 •On to Saipan

  Over the decades since Earhart’s disappearance, a number of theories have evolved relative to her fate as well as that of Fred Noonan; the predominant ones were reviewed in chapter 22. In his 1960 book, Daughter of the Sky, author Paul Briand advances a scenario wherein Earhart and Noonan undertook a forced landing near Saipan in the Mariana Islands. There, according to Briand, they were arrested and executed as spies a short time later. Few Earhart researchers have been attracted to Briand’s theory, but those that are don’t waver. Briand’s hypothesis, however, is based on the testimony of a single Saipan native who reported spotting a white woman wearing men’s clothes some time prior to the onset of World War II.

  Though the evidence to support Earhart and Noonan crash-landing on Saipan is weak, there is little doubt that the two were on the island, having been delivered to the Japanese headquarters located there following their capture at Mili Atoll.

  Shortly after being transported to one of the atolls associated with Truk Lagoon on the Caroline Islands, Earhart and Noonan were transferred to a Japanese navy seaplane and flown to Saipan, located northeast of Guam. Truk Lagoon was 2,800 miles west-northwest of Howland Island and almost due north of Lae, New Guinea, from where they had taken off on July 2. Truk Lagoon was another of the Japanese mandated islands.

  Further evidence of the transfer of Earhart and Noonan to Saipan comes from U.S. Navy Commander Paul Bridwell. Bridwell states that documentation exists relative to the “transport of Earhart and Noonan from the vicinity of Majuro, Ailinglapalap, and Jaluit Atolls in the Marshals to Yap and then to Saipan.” This documentation was found in the radio logs of the USS Goldstar, USS Blackhawk, USS Henderson, and USS Chaumont (later named the Oglala). Bridwell reports that these vessels intercepted coded messages sent by Japanese ships and shore installations to the home islands of Japan.