Amelia Earhart (16 page)

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.”

O
ver 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.

On the day the seaplane arrived at Saipan, eleven-year-old Josephine Blanco was walking to Tanapag Harbor to deliver lunch to her brother-in-law, J. Y. Matsumoto. Tanapag Harbor was bustling with activity overseen by the Japanese military and oriented toward improving the docking facilities for larger ships.

According to Blanco, as she approached the harbor she heard the sound of an airplane and looked up to see a twin-engine craft aiming for a landing in the harbor. Since the Electra had been transported to Saipan aboard the
Kosyu
, Blanco was mistaken in her identity of the aircraft and confusing another craft with Earhart's plane. Several minutes later when she finally located her brother-in-law, he told her to come with him to see the “American woman.”

The two soon joined a throng of onlookers where they observed an American woman wearing trousers and a shirt similar to a man's. The man wore a short-sleeved shirt. The two Americans, according to Blanco, appeared quite sick; their faces were drained of color and they looked drawn and stressed. Following a short glimpse of the captives, Blanco and Matsumoto watched as the pair was led away by soldiers. Blanco was convinced they were on their way to be executed. The two were, in fact, eventually transported to the Garapan prison, where they were incarcerated.

Earhart and Noonan were first taken to a three-story building named the Hotel Kobayashi Royokan, which had been commandeered to serve as headquarters for Japanese officers and administration. The hotel was owned by a Japanese family named Kobayashi (also spelled Kobayi in some references) who had settled on the island years earlier. Following a round of questions and paperwork, the two prisoners were separated and transferred to the nearby prison.

Ramon Cabrera, who worked as a guard at the prison, told an interviewer that he remembered Earhart and Noonan well and that he was present when they were first brought to their cells. Both had been blindfolded, and their hands were tied behind their backs. At the time, Cabrera thought Earhart was a young-looking man. Jesus Salas, a prisoner at Garapan, also recalled seeing Earhart and Noonan, but only once.

A witness interviewed by author Fred Goerner—Joaquina Cabrera—stated she had seen “a white lady and a man” being held prisoner in the Kobayashi Royokan Hotel in Garapan. She claimed the man was “taken away” and that the woman “was dead of disease.”

In a 1970 interview, Michiko Segura, the daughter of the Garapan chief of police, told the story that Japanese military police shot Amelia Earhart as a spy in 1937. Segura was eleven years old when she heard soldiers describing the execution to her father.

In 1961, José Pangelinan told interviewer Fred Goerner of seeing an American man and woman on Saipan, but never together. The man, he said was held in the prison, and the woman resided “at the hotel in Garapan.” Pangelinan claimed the man was beheaded and the woman died of dysentery. He admitted he was an eyewitness to neither of the two events.

Grigorio Camacho, a brother-in-law of Josephine Blanco, was interviewed years later. At the time of the interview he was a retired judge. He stated that Noonan resisted his captors. He also said that at the time Saipan was occupied by the Japanese, it was expected of the families of prisoners to provide them nourishment. As a result, Earhart and Noonan, he claimed, were fed little but watery soup. Both became ill with dysentery.

Camacho stated that Noonan, angered at his treatment by the Japanese, went into a rage one afternoon and threw his bowl of soup in the face of his guard. Camacho said the navigator was taken some distance from the prison and executed.

Earhart was regularly walked from her cell at the prison to the administration offices in the hotel for questioning. During these transfers, Earhart was often seen by the native Saipanese. Matilda Fausto Arriola, during an interview, recalled that her family gave Earhart fresh fruit because they suspected she was suffering from dysentery. Arriola stated that the “white woman” was a brunette and her hair was cut short like a man's. Arriola also said that the woman gave her sister a “gold ring with a white stone.”

Ana Villagomez Benevente worked as a maid at the administration building and was given the job of washing the woman's clothes. Benevente said that she often saw the woman seated on one of the verandas of the upper floors. She said the woman had short, wavy hair.

Benevente also saw the woman “at least three times” at the Garapan prison, where she often went to visit her brother. She was unable to get close to the woman because of the ever-present guards.

Another Saipanese woman, Maria Roberta de la Cruz, said she was informed that the two flyers were Americans and had crash-landed near an island to the south. A Catholic nun who resided on the island recalled that she was told that the woman was caught for spying and that her name was Amelia.

Concepcion Diáz, an early owner of the Kobayashi Royokan Hotel, related that a woman matching Earhart's description had been imprisoned there by the Japanese from some time in 1937 until she died in 1938.

Father Sylvan Conover, a Catholic priest assigned to Saipan, took the story of an elderly female resident of the island who stated she saw “a white woman being transported from Aslito Field in the sidecar of a Japanese motorcycle.” An accompanying motorcycle transported in its sidecar a “white man with a large bandage around his head.” Both had their hands tied and were clearly prisoners.

In 1937, a seven-year-old Saipanese named Anna Magofo watched two Japanese soldiers guarding a white man “with a big nose” and a white woman while they were digging a hole just outside the cemetery near Garapan City. When interviewed as an adult, Magofo claimed the man was then blindfolded, beheaded, and placed in the hole. Magofo led a group of Earhart researchers to the spot she was convinced was the grave. When it was excavated, found among the debris were a three-tooth gold dental bridge and a number of bone fragments. Later, an anthropologist determined that the bones had belonged to “a female, probably white individual, between . . . forty and forty-two [years of age].” Other bones found belonged to a male. No evidence was ever produced to suggest it was Amelia Earhart and/or Fred Noonan interred in the grave.

By mid-1938, word had spread throughout the city of Garapan that the white woman prisoner had died of dysentery. The rumor was never substantiated, and proof of her demise was never forthcoming.

Two Saipan women—Florence Kirby and Olympio Borja—related a story they heard from a farmer who had an odd experience. As he was retrieving a cow that was tethered at the end of his pasture, the farmer saw several Japanese soldiers marching a man and a woman toward the Garapan cemetery. The prisoners, he said, had their hands tied behind their backs, were wearing khaki uniforms, and had bags tied over their heads. Their exposed skin suggested they were white. On seeing the Japanese, the farmer, fearful of being spotted by the soldiers, ducked out of sight and remained hidden for several hours. He was convinced, he said, that the Japanese executed the two prisoners.

A short time later, a Japanese policeman who was dining with his thirteen-year-old daughter was interrupted by several other Japanese police officers who boasted of killing two Americans—a man and a woman.

Kirby and Borja also related that their grandfather, who was a prisoner at Garapan, occupied a cell near the one “occupied by the American lady pilot.” For years, when tourists visited Saipan, they were directed toward the prison where they could see Amelia Earhart's cell.

When American soldiers invaded Saipan in 1944, a number of photographs of Amelia Earhart were found. Ralph R. Kanna, a soldier from Johnson City, New York, found a photograph of Earhart standing beside a Japanese airplane. Kanna gave the photograph to an intelligence officer. Another soldier—Robert Kinley from Norfolk, Virginia—came upon a photograph of Earhart standing next to a Japanese officer. The background in the photograph contained landmarks sufficient to indicate it was taken on the island of Saipan.

Corporal Harry Weiser came across a photograph of Earhart in a Saipan house he inspected. It was subsequently identified as one of a quantity she carried with her for publicity purposes.

In addition to the above, numerous other reports, as well as rumors, exist pertaining to Earhart-related possessions and other evidence. Most, if not all, of these items were turned over to military authorities, where they subsequently disappeared or were classified as top secret by the U.S. government. None of the alleged photographs of Earhart found on the island of Saipan, and there were several, have ever surfaced.

Following the U.S. military occupation of Saipan, a number of rumors arose relative to the notion that the U.S. Marines were led by natives to a place where Earhart and Noonan had been buried. Under orders, the rumors continued, the marines dug up the remains and had them shipped to the United States. The U.S. Marine Corps denied any involvement in such activity. When questioned, Japanese authorities denied that Earhart and Noonan ever fell into their hands.

The question has been raised: Why would the Japanese not simply return Earhart and Noonan to the American authorities? To do so would have generated goodwill. During this time, however, the Japanese activity relative to establishing military bases, airfields, ports, and other activities pertinent to their plans to gain control of the Pacific were done in secrecy. The last thing they wanted the rest of the world to know was what they were up to. If Earhart and Noonan had seen such military installations and reported on them, then Japan's secret military preparations would have been exposed.

A
n odd event occurred almost five months after Amelia Earhart disappeared in the Pacific, one that has never been explained and that perplexes researchers to this day. It represents one more mystery in what would come to be a growing number of unsolved and perplexing enigmas revolving around the Earhart disappearance.