Amelia Earhart (17 page)

On November 27, 1937, an unclaimed letter in the Jaluit post office in the Marshall Islands came to the attention of a man named Carl Heine. Heine was a German missionary and an occasional special correspondent for a variety of publication outlets. The address on the letter was:

Amelia Earhart (Putnam)

Marshall Islands (Japanese)

Radak Group, Maleolap Island (10)

South Pacific Ocean

In the upper left hand corner where a return address is customarily located was printed:

Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel

Hollywood, California

The postal date stamp contained the information “Los Angeles, California” along with the date October 7, 10:00 p.m. Written across one corner of the envelope were the words “Deliver Promptly.” The back of the envelope contained the word “Incognito” that was hand-printed in small letters with a very fine touch, decidedly feminine. The letter was unopened.

This envelope is immediately curious due to the fact that virtually everyone in the world, and in particular in the United States, was aware that Amelia Earhart was listed by the U.S. government as having perished when, as it claimed, her plane went down somewhere near Howland Island. The reported crashing and sinking of the Electra occurred just over three months prior to the date on the envelope.

Questions that must be asked include: How did the sender know that Earhart had, in fact, been transported to Jaluit Island? Maleolap is a neighboring island and may have been where mail was sent. And, importantly, who sent the letter?

What is known is that Earhart's personal secretary, Margo DeCarie, was residing in the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel during the months of September and October in 1937. Did DeCarie know something of the whereabouts of Earhart that was unknown to the U.S. government and the general public? Or perhaps it was information kept under wraps by the government. And if so, how would DeCarie have obtained knowledge of Earhart's stay, however temporary it might have been, on Jaluit?

The number 10 found on the address is baffling. Some researchers have attempted to link the number with the name of the aircraft piloted by Earhart; the Electra was formally known as the Lockheed 10.

What became of the mysterious letter has never been learned. If it had ever been opened and the contents examined, that information was never made available.

O
ver time, an abundance of evidence surfaced that suggested Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan had been incarcerated on the island of Saipan. A handful of unverified accounts allude to the notion that they may have been executed. On July 2, 1960, the
San Francisco Chronicle
carried an article claiming “the famed aviatrix and her navigator . . . crash-landed in Saipan Bay in July, 1937, and were executed by the Japanese.” This information was provided by KCBS radio personality turned Earhart researcher Fred Goerner. While initially generating some interest and attention, public interest soon faded when it became clear that Goerner's hypothesis had little to no credibility. Goerner's “proof” of his statements consisted of “rusty parts of a pre-war plane and recorded conversations with natives.” The ultimate truth, however, was that the evidence presented for the existence of the Electra consisted solely of a “coral-coated generator skin divers hauled up from the depths of Saipan Bay.”

On July 6, the
Chronicle
, in a front-page article, proclaimed that “Japanese photographs and the affidavits of 72 witnesses prove that Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, were executed on Japanese-held Saipan island in 1937.” Earhart researcher Paul Briand informed interviewers that the graves of Earhart and Noonan had been located. Briand made this statement based entirely on what turned out to be insufficient evidence. In short, it was only his opinion that the graves had been found. From all appearances, Briand's conclusion was more the result of wishful thinking than actual research and investigation.

A short time later, former Japanese Imperial Navy captain Zenshiro Hoshina responded to the article from his home in Tokyo stating that the published articles were in error. He said, “No such execution could have taken place without my knowledge and approval.” He added that the governor of Saipan would never have undertaken the executions of Americans without authorization from Tokyo and that it never happened.

As it turned out, the information presented in the July 6 article was deemed false. Air Force officer Joe Gervais conceded that photographs he possessed were “not really proof of Miss Earhart's execution.” Further, he also admitted that the “72 affidavits that allegedly proved Earhart and Noonan were executed by the Japanese did not actually describe any executions.” They were, Gervais explained, only “72 names of people living today on Saipan and Guam who claimed to have information on the subject.”

Then, on July 9, the
Chronicle
reported that the generator Fred Goerner claimed came from Earhart's Electra was bogus. According to an official of the Bendix Aviation Corporation, the company that manufactured the generator for the Electra, the one located by Goerner had been made by a Japanese firm in Osaka. In fact, this was the second generator Goerner claimed belonged to the Electra. It was beginning to appear as though Goerner was fabricating evidence designed to make him appear as a dogged, competent, and successful researcher when, in fact, he was not.

In the final analysis, there exists no credible evidence and no support that Earhart or Noonan crash-landed at Saipan or had been executed on that island. There does, however, exist a body of compelling evidence indicating that they were transported to Saipan from where the Electra came down in the Marshall Islands and that they were held prisoner there for a time. Though stories abound relative to the executions and interment of Earhart and Noonan on Saipan, not a single shred of credible information has ever surfaced to suggest that these executions ever occurred.

The truth is, no one ever saw the corpse of anyone positively identified as either Earhart or Noonan. Sites alleged by some to be the graves of one or both of the Americans have been dug up. In some cases nothing was ever found, and in other cases bones were encountered, but, despite claims to the contrary, none were ever identified as having belonged to Earhart or Noonan.

What, then, became of the prisoners? The most reliable evidence suggests that after a period of incarceration on Saipan, they were transferred to Tokyo and then on to a prison camp in China.

Earhart's presence in Tokyo is controversial and oft debated. In 1972, then secretary of state James Baker confirmed the existence of a State Department file titled “Amelia Earhart: Special War Problems.” According to information obtained, the file reveals that Earhart, while a prisoner of Japan, might have participated in that nation's development and construction of aircraft. According to the report, Earhart may have been involved in testflying aircraft and participating in wind tunnel experiments. The report also describes that Earhart had filed for Japanese “naturalization” in August 1939. When pressed, Secretary Baker refused to explain why such a file existed at all for someone who, according to the government, “disappeared without a trace” in 1937.

Arthur DeWayne Gibson, an archivist for the U.S. State Department, found a letter in departmental files dated August 1939 that stated: “Mrs. Putnam wishes the United States Government to henceforth consider her a National of the Nipponese Imperial Islands.”

Gibson also encountered other Earhart-related documents in the secret files. One mentioned that the aviatrix was involved in aircraft design and testing in Tokyo during the year 1939. She was working closely with famous Japanese airplane designer Jiro Horikoshi. During a period of research, it was discovered that Earhart had met Horikoshi years earlier in Long Island, New York, during the time he was visiting the Curtiss-Wright aircraft factory there.

Gibson also found a reference to the notion that by 1939, Earhart could speak fluent Japanese. In addition, the files yielded a photograph of Earhart standing next to a Japanese prototype fighter plane that had been designed and tested around 1939 but never placed into mass production.

On June 11, 1975, Air Force officer and Earhart researcher Joe Gervais sent a letter to the Nipponese Department of Immigration and Naturalization in Tokyo. He requested the date on which “Mrs. G. P. Putnam became a citizen of Japan, probably sometime between July and September of 1939 after she completed the required twenty-four-month residence in the Nipponese Imperial Islands of the Pacific.”

On July 7, 1975, Gervais received a response from Japan's Naturalized Citizens Department. The letter acknowledged “receipt of your letter of inquiry. . . asking us whether Irene Craigmile or Mrs. G. P. Putnam was naturalized to Japan.” The letter writer went on to say that “we are not in a position to answer any inquiry as to whether a certain person was naturalized to Japan . . . the records of naturalized persons being closed to the public.” What is bizarre, and rather telling, about this response is that, in his letter, Gervais never once mentioned the name Irene Craigmile, a name that will factor heavily into the mystery of what happened to Amelia Earhart.

A
man named Wilbur Rothar entered the realm of mystery surrounding Amelia Earhart's disappearance during the summer of 1937. Rothar would be easy to dismiss as one of several crackpots who managed to find his way into the Earhart puzzle if it weren't for some odd tangents to his bizarre case.

Shortly after the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, her husband, George Palmer Putnam, offered a $2,000 reward for information leading to the rescue of his wife and Fred Noonan. In August 1937, Wilbur Rothar, using the alias of Johnson, appeared at Putnam's New York office with a strange tale and a request for the money.

According to Rothar, Earhart and Noonan were found on a small island not far from New Guinea by a group of men in a vessel that was illegally transporting arms to Spain. Rothar, a.k.a. Johnson, informed Putnam that he had been employed as a member of the vessel's crew. During the voyage, claimed Rothar, the vessel stopped at a small island to take on fresh water. In a tiny cove, he said, they found the wreckage of the Electra. Earhart was unharmed but Noonan, who had been injured during the crash, had succumbed to a shark attack. Earhart was rescued and taken aboard the vessel, where she was examined by a Chinese doctor. At the time, stated Rothar, no one knew the identity of the woman. Days later after arriving in Panama, the gunrunners recognized her from newspaper articles pertaining to the disappearance. They were afraid to put her ashore because they feared she would be identified and that officials might want to examine the boat that was filled with illegal arms. They sailed instead to New York, where they intended to collect the reward.

As proof, Rothar offered Putnam a scarf that had allegedly been worn by the aviatrix. The skeptical Putnam asked Rothar if he could provide him with a lock of Amelia's hair so that there would be no doubt. Rothar said that he would, and the two men agreed to meet at the same location the following day. It was not learned whether Rothar provided a lock of hair, but Putnam paid him $1,000 in cash with a promise that the balance would be provided when Amelia was released into his custody. Rothar agreed to the proposition. Within an hour, he was arrested for extortion.

The subsequent police investigation of Rothar yielded the information that he was forty-two years old, lived in the Bronx, New York, under the name Goodenough, and was employed as a janitor. Prior to finding this job he was employed as a woodworker. According to the police report, Rothar was married and had eight children.

Rothar was arraigned in felony court on August 5 and scheduled to face a New York County grand jury. The involvement of Wilbur Rothar in the Earhart saga appeared ready to be filed away as nothing more than a deranged and ill-conceived plot that had gone awry, one concocted by a troubled man. But it was only just beginning to take some curious turns and provide yet another layer of mystery to what would become a complex, growing, and puzzling array of mysteries associated with the Earhart disappearance.

According to the article about Rothar's extortion attempt and subsequent arrest, the
New York Times
reported that it learned the suspect came into possession of the scarf three years earlier. Rothar had traveled to Roosevelt Field in Long Island in the hope of seeing Amelia Earhart, who was making a scheduled and well-publicized landing there. Rothar was only one in a large crowd that showed up at the airfield to view the aviatrix and try to obtain her autograph. As Earhart was climbing from her plane, a gust of wind blew the brown and white scarf she was wearing off her shoulders and into the hands of Rothar. The scarf had been in his possession ever since, and it was a scarf identified by Putnam's stenographer as having once belonged to Earhart.

In spite of the account provided by Putnam and in spite of what was reported in the
New York Times
article, Amelia Earhart's sister, Muriel Morrissey, provided a different version. Morrissey claimed Rothar came into possession of the scarf only three months earlier at an airplane hangar at Wheeler Field in Hawaii. How Morrissey would know this, if it is true, is unclear. Morrissey further stated that in spite of the well-publicized $2,000 reward, Rothar demanded $5,000 from Putnam. She also claimed that Putnam, instead of providing Rothar with $1,000 of the reward money with a promise of the balance on the delivery of his wife, merely gave Rothar fifty dollars “for my wife's scarf” and sent him on his way.

It is difficult to account for the differences in the two versions of the same story. One has to wonder how Morrissey came by her information relative to Rothar allegedly picking up Earhart's scarf in Hawaii. One must also wonder why, in Morrissey's account, the established $2,000 reward was changed to $5,000. In her account, Morrissey described Rothar as a “shamefaced and frightened young man.” Rothar was forty-two years old, far from being a young man. Morrissey was thirty-seven years old at the time, five years younger than Rothar. And since there is no evidence that Morrissey was present when the events involving Rothar were taking place, how would she know what he looked like at all?