I read it here first. Never heard that before. And I think I’ve watched every crazy thing on TV ever about this. So the plane was recovered, and hauled off?
And yet not a single nut, bolt or rivet of that aircraft has ever turned up. :dubious:
Damn! Them Japanese can sure keep a secret!
This suggests my issue with Emilia Earhart ‘revelations’. I think the consideration of them tends to be caught in a time warp where the Japanese are ‘the other’, mysterious and evil. This view had some foundation in fact at the time, plus the experience of the Pacific War added to this feeling. It’s pretty deeply ingrained in Western culture now (not just US, I find it often more so among the English speaking Commonwealth countries whose military forces were also humiliated by Japan early in the Pac War, but who had a much more limited role beating the stuffing out of Japan later on). It’s not necessarily a negative view of Japan now, but a tendency to slip back into the Pac War mentality when talking about incidents during and before that war. Same thing happens with evaluating for example the Panay incident* which happened later the same year as Earhart disappeared. It’s pretty apparent from Japanese records and sources that was an accident, but it’s still widely disbelieved in the West, based on IMO on a throw back mentality.
So for Earhart, wouldn’t Japanese records and accounts be the first place to look? Yet these revelation shows/articles never seem to be based on even trying to do that. AFAIK the standard view in Japan is that there is no record of any such event and it’s just conspiracy theorizing. But Japanese archival records have gradually gotten better organized, more accessible (a huge amount more online at the Japan National Archives site than US NARA for example) and even gaps filled in as privately kept documents have been handed back over to archives over the decades. Perhaps some might offer a suggestion of truth to theories like this, but the TV researchers don’t seem to look.
*Japanese Naval AF a/c attacked a convoy of river merchant ships on the Yangtze fleeing Nanking escorted by the US Navy gunboat Panay (not Panay alone as many accounts tend to suggest by omission). The JNAF a/c were cued by reports from Japanese Army units ashore, but communication between the services was notoriously poor, and even if the Army units might or should have realized a USN vessel was present it doesn’t seem the JNAF units realized it. And it might be noted that some famous photo’s of the JNAF a/c flying so low and close they had to realize their mistake are obvious fakes, showing a US civilian type biplane.
Alcoa was reviewing some metals, one being a wheel cover which seemed a match for the Lockheed, which was recovered on Mili Atol, consistent with the historical crash/landing and recovery site (historical per local history).
It’s fun and fine to dismiss things out of hand, but do some reading and the only consistent thing that pops up is the Mili Atol landing, Japanese retrieval/capture there with everything winding up in Saipan after stops at Jaluit and Kwajalein.
If you investigate, you follow the evidence. It doesn’t get silly until you claim they went down a worm hole.
The Japanese hid many atrocities. Many came out. Many shady things the USA has done and/or enemies have done go unknown. No, we’re not hiding bigfoot in a UFO, and this isn’t about that.
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I’m going to speculate wildly here and say that Earhart and her navigator are now dead.
I do seem to recall a claim they had found a piece of wreckage (on the atoll with the bones and shoe) which was consistent with repairs made to her plane in the failed take-off earlier in the attempt.
I don’t think it was settled conclusively, but it was close enough for me. She ditched/crashlanded, then died of thirst or exposure on that atoll.
The problem with that scenario, of course, was why no trace of Noonan? Or more of the plane?
I don’t think we’ll ever know for sure.
Gatopescado, you’re referring to Nikimororo island work done by TIGHAR. No, they’ve got nothing conclusive.
I’ve been following the Earhart project for years on TIGHAR… and it’s only gotten grimmer for them, and I am being to feel mild pain for them, because they are just out of steam/answers. TIGHAR is working the ‘crashed on Nikimororo (Gardner) Island theory’, with them dying as castaways.
Switching to the photo and the Mili landing theory:
The wheel cover is from Mili and that, with other stuff, was sent to Alcoa. I believe the History Channel piece will address the metal from Mili with the photo and the consistent stories if you island hop along the Mili to Saipan route.
The ‘‘landing on Mili and being sent to Saipan theory’’ is what the photo ties into.
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What’s an example of an atrocity ‘the Japanese hid’ ie no evidence of it at all in contemporary records of theirs or verifiable* accounts of Japanese veterans, that we know happened? Note that does not apply to known atrocities denied or downplayed by political extremists in Japan. The deniers are typically arguing against evidence in Japanese documents, veteran accounts or even contemporary Japanese media.
Moreover what’s a known example of a Japanese atrocity committed against citizens of ‘white’ countries still at peace with Japan, as opposed to Chinese, in the years leading up to the Pacific War? ‘The Good Man of Nanking’ is the story of John Rabe a pro-Hitler German** who helped protect some Chinese civilians in Nanking. But Rabe was part of a committee of Westerners from various countries not as friendly to Japan. They were left alone by the Japanese while Chinese were killed in large numbers.
Again I just wonder if organizations like TIGHAR direct any of their research toward finding Japanese accounts or if not why not. Or maybe they are just people into field research about plane wrecks and not so much into documentary research in Japanese, as implied by the org’s full name. Which is fine if that’s their specialty but it doesn’t seem to me a complete research approach to this question to leave out research in Japanese sources, or to brush off lack of any evidence in those sources after thorough search, if that’s the case.
*ie multiple and independent
**and even so Hitler was just shifting from pro-Chinese Nationalist to pro-Japanese position at the time: the Germans had sold lots of military equipment and advice to the Nationalists and didn’t fully tilt to Japan’s side and pull their advisers from the Nationalists till 1938.
First of all, TIGHAR is not on research mission that has anything to do with AE being moved to Saipan. TIGHAR is not in play in the Mili landing and death at Saipan investigation.
Further, while there are known atrocities, I am going to posit that atrocities at individual levels are not all documented or out in the open. Oh wait, did Japan not ‘hide them’… ? Can we split more hairs?
https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Horrors-Japanese-Transitions-Asia-America/dp/0813327180
We’re going to play a game where I have to cite stuff? What’s acceptable?
Get back on point: You either believe someone like AE could die in Japanese captivity or you don’t, and you can then believe whether this would be lost to history… ‘hidden’, etc.
FFS
I hadn’t heard about the wheel cover thing. I obviously was thinking about the Nikimororo find.
Looks like I’ll have to watch the new show now, huh?
Yep… ya got TIGHAR doing their multimillion dollar thing on Nikimororo, but the photo and Mili-to-Saipan thing are completely different. Both have their own artifacts. Nikimororo had more human activity and western visitors, military sweeps and western mechanicals interacting with the island over the years, so there’s a lot of ‘noise’.
TIGHAR on Nikimororo = castaways
Mili to Saipan = captives
Mili = much less attention, but not on merit at all. TIGHAR is prominent, well-funded, well-known and none of it makes them more right. If anything, TIGHAR’s on-going pursuit of the Nikimororo castaway theory is getting cringe worthy.
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I can sorta see how the sitting person has a vaguely Earhart-ish look. But the blob labeled “Noonan” doesn’t even look like a human to me.
This reminds me of people finding mysterious figures in the blurry backgrounds of JFK assassination photos.
I did at the time, and still do find this the most persuasive theory.
Is it your assumption that the numerous Marshallese who claimed to have seen the crash, and then Earhart and Noonan taken into captivity by the Japanese military, were trying to pull a con of some kind?
Completely unbelievable.
The “woman” is just a pure guess. Can barely tell anything about that person.
Where are the Japanese soldiers? The Japanese would have heavily guarded them and not allowed them to mingle with civilians by themselves. That this picture could represent the pair after their capture is maximally absurd.
Why in the last 80 years have people not learned to be so stupidly gullible about Earhart theories?
I really don’t think it’s off the overall point of trying to find out what happened. Like I said, if some particular organization is made up of people into investigating plane wrecks, then that’s their specialty. I doubt if they have members experienced in documentary research in Japanese.
However to get the best possible answer to the question overall, I still see the apparent lack of research into Japanese sources, about something supposedly done (at least per some theories, again not necessarily the plane wreck enthusiast people) by the Japanese military as a glaring gap. They kept records. They were not anywhere near all destroyed. There is a very large and deep literature of first hand accounts in Japan including of disagreeable incidents.
And I don’t see a cite of a catchy title of a book as answering which atrocities we know happened with zero input from Japanese sources of any kind, as would apparently be the case with theories of Earhart captured/killed by the Japanese military. A bunch of the things mentioned in the short blurb for the book are well known from other books and accounts including Japanese, besides which the book itself claims to be based on research in ‘previously closed archives’, presumably Japanese, and is by a Japanese author. That’s hardly a good explanation to why researchers into Earhart wouldn’t even bother to look into Japanese sources, which apparently some don’t and still expect to be taken seriously.
And you also didn’t address the ‘mental throw back’ issue as I’d call of WWII attitude of outrage and hatred from Japanese military atrocities against Western Allied prisoners (and civilian internees in some cases) during the Pacific War as a reason to think a similar fate befell Earhart/Noonan before the Pac War. But there weren’t any other such cases AFAIK. There’s at least serious reason for doubt the IJA would have killed them rather than just deliver them back if they’d really ever seen them. The other mythology which gets involved there is of Japanese fortification of the Mandated islands pre-war in violation of treaties, but that was very marginal in reality.
‘Research’ into Earhart now which doesn’t even try to find evidence in Japanese sources is fatally flawed IMO. For one basic example if a ship Kosho (Kosho Maru presumably) supposedly towed a barge with the plane on it, why wouldn’t the researchers at least try to look into that ship? Was it there at the time at least? There were ships of that name built in 1911 and 1921, the former looks potentially to be the one in the picture (not certainly), latter no photo on web I can quickly find. I don’t see how a conclusion could be reached about the validity of that photo without basic research like that, as just a starting point.
Koshu (Maru) I should have said.
Particulars but no photo of a Koshu Maru (膠州丸) of 1921
http://jpnships.g.dgdg.jp/company/list_haradakisen.htm
Particulars and photo of a Koshu Maru (杭州丸) of 1911
http://jpnships.g.dgdg.jp/company/osk_taishoki1.htm
No, it’s not at all a case of “you believe it’s possible or you don’t”. There are thousands of possibilities that I would concede are possible, but are also very unlikely.
And without good evidence for it, a possibility that is very unlikely can be ignored (again, until there is some evidence for it).
So we’re not arguing about whether it’s conceivably remotely possible or not that the Japanese military would, four years before entering WWII, execute in cold blood an internationally famous American woman, without leaving any surviving records. We’re arguing about how unlikely that is.
And, since there’s a very very plausible explanation already (crashing at sea), then we can pretty safely ignore unlikely ones until there’s good evidence for it.
Ho, hum. You mean they found Noah’s Ark? Again?
Why is “execute in cold blood” the only possibility?
Or to put it another way: what about the photograph leads to the conclusion that the only way the man and woman in question could have died, is to have been executed in cold blood?
The Japanese it-was-an-accident excuse is widely disbelieved because it would have been very hard for their pilots to avoid having seen American flags plastered all over the Panay.
*"For years, people wondered if the attack was a mistake. Perhaps the Japanese thought the Panay was a Chinese boat. But Huffman (surviving crew member) and Spark (filmmaker and writer) say that’s not likely.
“They had American flags all over the ship — all over the top of the ship,” Huffman says.
Spark adds, “Any aircraft flying over should be able to see these flags and understand this is an American vessel.”
So why did the Japanese attack? Spark says the chaos in Nanking created an opportunity for renegade factions within the Japanese army who wanted the United States and China to “get into an active conflict so that the Japanese could once and for all drive the United States out of China.”"*
“Even if there was inter-service confusion within the Japanese military, the footage that Norman Alley took contradicted some of the official Japanese claims. When the film was to be released to the American public, FDR had the most sensitive parts (showing the planes at low altitude where they would have easily seen the American flags) cut out.”