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| The Gervais-Irene, 1978. |
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| Past non-realized truths are now being revealed about her person. |
Was Amelia
Earhart's Disappearance Physically True?
by Tod Swindell for Beyond 37' C. 2012
Amelia Earhart was legally declared 'dead' two years after she was described to
have 'vanished without a trace' in 1937. Years later in 1965, while he was still on active duty, Admiral Chester Nimitz admitted
to CBS Radio Journalist, Fred Goerner how it was long ago "known and documented in Washington" that Amelia actually
survived her storied disappearance to henceforth remain under the auspice of Japan. Yet, how could such a thing have been?
And why did the great Admiral's confession end up so deeply buried in the following decades?
Amelia Earhart, that is the less known Amelia Earhart was a devout pacifist. As
a great world war loomed on the horizon in 1937 she was favoring the isolationist viewpoint just as her friends Charles and
Anne Morrow Lindbergh were. Amelia was also known for her high IQ, an ability to speak several languages fluently, and her
penchant for world diplomacy.
Before Amelia Earhart went missing she had declined
opportunities to promote aircraft for military use in times of war. Amelia was also described as 'aloof' and she truly was
a person hard to pin down. Although she was married to publishing family notable, George Palmer Putnam for six years, they
barely ever spent more than a week together at any one time, due to Amelia's promotional schedule and her own restless personal
quality, no doubt attributed to the way she grew up. Prior to Amelia becoming famous at the age of thirty in 1928, she
had led a transitional existence since her childhood days, as she was raised moving from one place to another. Her father
was a railroad attorney whose duties left him constantly relocating his family. Growing up Amelia and her sister, Muriel lived
in the cities of Atchison, Kansas City, St. Paul, Boston, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago--where Amelia graduated from
high school, and was described in her senior class yearbook as "Girl in brown who walks alone." Amelia attended
Ogontz College in Pennsylvania after high school, worked as a nurse in Toronto at age twenty, and took a year of pre-med at
Columbia University when she was twenty-two. The long term impact such perpetual motion had on Amelia was clear; the concept
of 'settling down' would always remain foreign to her. Ultimately she started and stopped college three times. She had aimed
to become a doctor, then a photographer, and she worked at the phone company in Los Angeles to support her airplane flying
hobby she picked up at the age of twenty-three. Except for her college experiences and her nurse stint in Canada, she lived
at home until she was twenty-six years old. Two Los Angeles men were known to have proposed to her; Edison Electric employee
Sam Chapman and an airplane pilot-mechanic and business partner of Amelia's by the name of Lloyd Royer. She declined both
offers. As Lloyd Royer later described, "Amelia wasn't interested in marriage."
The first time Amelia 'disappeared' was in January of 1924 while
in her twenty-seventh year. Without so much as a hint to any of her friends, she moved out of her family home in Los Angeles
far across town into a tiny apartment. People who knew her were perplexed. A month later her mother Amy filed for divorce
from Amelia's father and joined her, and by April the two were permanently relocating to Boston where Amelia's sister Muriel
had already moved to find the three ladies an apartment. Mother Amy had asked Muriel to leave her job as a school teacher
in Huntington Beach to do such a thing.
Sam Chapman,
besides being an off-and-on beau of Amelia's had been a boarder at the Earhart family home in Los Angeles. Patiently in love
with Amelia for six years, he endeared Amelia but she seemed to at least somewhat view him as a family-favored boyfriend on
a string. Sam wrote to Amelia after she moved out of her L. A. home to ultimately leave town, "What happened to you?
Why haven't I heard from you?" Lucy Challiss, Amelia's cousin later described how it was as if the Earhart's "had
fallen off the edge of the earth" in 1924. On the other hand, Amelia did stay in touch with Lloyd Royer by mail, and
they remained good friends always. (Sam, who would chase Amelia until she became famous, finally gave up and never married.
Lloyd, who is barely mentioned at all by any of Amelia's biographers, was actually one of her closest of friends. They knew
each other from the time Amelia started flying in early 1921. As mentioned the two were always in touch, and they continued
to see each other when occasions permitted. Lloyd even worked on Amelia's Lockheed Electra for her prior to her fabled 'disappearance'
in 1937. The other 'boyfriend' Amelia had and maintained a relationship with while she was famous, but who is never mentioned
at all in her biographies was Carl Harper. The public was led to believe Amelia was secretly in love with Gene Vidal back
then, but the extent of Amelia's well-kept-secret relationship with Carl Harper leads one to accept him as Amelia's true love.
Famous pilot Louise Thaden, a good friend and New York neighbor of Amelia's during her fame years, later admitted to having
served as a alibi for Amelia to use when visitng Harper. Thus, when Amelia told her business partner and husband, George Putnam
she was 'visiting' or 'flying' with Louise, she was actually rendesvousing and off-times even flying with Carl Harper. Once
they endured a crash landing together in Maryland that made the papers, much to George Putnam's surprise.)
Eventually in 1924, after a described 'sinus operation' before her
departure from L. A. with her mother by car, and their so called 'seven thousand miles of trekking' over months of time, Amelia
finally resurfaced in Boston late that summer. There, she was said to have endured another sinus operation right after she
arrived. Or as her sister Muriel later mentioned, Amelia went into the hospital "to have a small bone removed."
Years later Amelia would describe how she left Los Angeles in 1924
to re-enroll in medical school at Columbia University. (A seed for her return to college had been planted before. In 1922
after her first attention getting marks as a female pilot, a news article quoted her idea to enroll at Vassar. But she was
already twenty-five by then, so instead she took up photography the following year after registering for a course at USC.)
By the mid-fall of 1924 Amelia was living with some Earhart family
friends, the Stablers of Long Island whose daughter Marian was a past vacation-met friend of Amelia's. Marian would later
intimate how she soon realized Amelia's "habit of concealment extended even to her closest friends." The suggested
idea had been for Amelia to live with the Stablers while she attended Columbia. Except she did not register for classes until
February of 1925, and only to drop out shortly thereafter.
Some more curious Earhart biographers and/or researchers wondered what really went down in 1924 in Amelia's life.
One described her existence leading up to her California departure as "almost strange." And it seems odd for the
photographer Amelia had become, how any pictures of her person or she and her mother's amazing relocation process in 1924
never surfaced. Then again, a somewhat persistent rumor that attempted to more simply account for Amelia's 1924 'funk' that
caused her abandonment of life as she knew it then, had to do with a hidden unwed pregnancy. Of course where at all true...,
Amelia, Amy, and Muriel would have proved themselves deceptively smart by hiding it so well.
When Amelia was 'inadvertently discovered' and soon made a woman
aviator star by George Putnam in 1928, she was doing settlement work in Boston at the time where she cared for orphaned, impoverished,
and/or sick children of all ages and nationalities. There is no doubt she preferred to consider herself a humanitarian as
well as a patriotic American, and she truly fit both descriptions. She wasn't seeking fame necessarily, but she took it and
went with it. Then nine years later, after a whirlwind heroic career that saw her life constantly on the move while becoming
the world's most famous female aviator, she disappeared again.
* * *
It was
a tough fetch in the 1970s, when it was described how Amelia had long ago acquainted Japan's famous Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto
when he lived in the United States before returning to Japan and embarking on a brilliant military career. Or how she had
befriended a well known Japanese plane builder named Jiro Hirakoshi on Long Island a couple of years before she left on her
final world flight. These mentions were later squelched thoroughly, of course. But it was true how in the 1930s Amelia was
a greatly loved American hero in Japan just as Babe Ruth had been, and she was known for her adoration of the Orient and its
cultures, and the eastern way of "contemplating for the sake of contemplation." Not to mention friends who knew
her well enough, few they were, had been privy to Amelia's private wish to exit her 'confining' business-marriage after her
self described 'last flight,' and how weary she had grown from being hounded by the public just for being who she was. She
could smile for the camera, sure, but she was quite different when she wasn't in the public eye. After a State Department employee leaked it in 1972, the very idea
of pacifist Amelia having become part of Japan's private plane building sector after she was said to have 'vanished' was also
met with denials, but not before causing some public consternation. Most notably, the government and military said nothing
at all causing learned historians to raise their eyebrows. The same leak had also included words from a classified "Earhart,
Amelia: Special War Problems" file citing how she had worked with Jiro Hirakoshi in Japan in 1938 who had returned to
his homeland, and she had also test flown planes there. As well, it mentioned a request she had made for nipponese naturalization
to Japan's Imperial Islands in August of 1939, just before Hitler invaded Poland. No surprise, as mentioned any questions
about the 'leak' were greeted by 'official silence' in Washington and Tokyo, and no one pressed the matter further. Today,
few are at all aware how there never was an 'official' investigation into the Earhart-loss incident. Basically Uncle Sam and
his military swept it all under the rug with a 'let's move on' attitude, and there it has remained ever since. Looking back, after she 'disappeared' on July 2, 1937 with no word
of her plane experiencing any mechanical trouble, and an estimated four to five hours of fuel remaining (her plane had a fuel
range of better than 4,000 miles and she had flown about 2,500 miles at the time she abondoned her effort to find Howland)
the United States Navy immediately embarked on a massive search effort, easily conveying to the world public how everything
was being done to try and locate the famous lady pilot, who five years earlier had become the first woman to solo a plane
across the Atlantic Ocean. Few realized at the time, the navy would never go near Japan's Marshall Islands during its search
where 'insiders' believed Amelia had grounded on an atoll, and where Admiral Nimitz described she had been "picked up"
by Japan. Even as recently as 2002 the Marshall Islands Ambassador to the United Nations, Alfred Capelle told the Associated
Press how it remained "common knowledge" in his country, how Amelia Earhart ended up there in 1937. In addition to all of this, no one was aware until the late 1970s
when an infamous 1938 White House transcript was unearthed, how nine months after the Earhart incident occurred Eleanor Roosevelt
had queried FDR right hand man and Presidential Cabinet member, Henry Morgenthau Jr. on the possibility of releasing some
still-held information concerning her gone friend Amelia's flight ending, and even renewing the search for her. The suggestions
were greeted by disdain and quickly shouted down by Morgenthau, who oversaw the President's 'secret service' division. He
passed along to the First Lady how "Amelia Earhart absolutely disregarded all orders" and "releasing"
the information held at the White House concerning her last flight would "ruin her reputation." On the withheld
truth he also added, "I just hope I never have to make it public," with 'it' ostensibly referring to what actually
became of Amelia. Yes, in 1938 even Eleanor Roosevelt herself was
convinced to accept how when it came to Amelia Earhart's true ending, no matter what happened she was 'dead' according to
the White House, and she would always remain so according to official United States history too. As well, there is virtually
no doubt the hidden truth about Amelia's continued existence was relegated to be buried by war time propoganda and double
talk. Her awkward reality was converted into a campaign of fallen comrade heroism, geared toward American men who were needed
for the U. S. war effort against the axis powers, that by 1941 Japan was legion to. No better example appeared for this than
was found in the late 1942 RKO film Flight For Freedom starring Rosalind Russell in the Earhart styled role. The film was
widely shown to U. S. servicemen on ships and overseas as well as in the United States, depicting Amelia Earhart as the first
American casualty of World War Two. Was she? Of course not. Produced with the cooperation of Earhart's former husband George Putnam, Flight For Freedom's premise conveyed how
Amelia had secretly taken on an assignment to enable the U. S. Navy to spy on the Japanese in the Pacific. It even showed
her bravely commiting suicide at the end of the film with an airplane nose-dive into the sea; an apparent, if not convenient
effort to destroy all evidence and back door convey the government's preferred certainty to all, of Amelia's final death as
an American hero. The American public, still boiled over about Pearl Harbor just as it would be after 9/11 years later, willingly
ate and digested the film's schmaltzy version of Amelia's story. Nothing was farther from the truth. Nary a public soul was aware Amelia Earhart had survived her so-called 'disappearance'
to eventually change her name in the interest of future anonymity. Had she done so by design? Was the long held rumor correct
where she was trying to return to a private life she might finally share with a daughter no one ever knew she had? Even Admiral
Nimitz himself was uncertain of what became of Amelia beyond his awareness of her initial continued survival under Japan's
auspice. And although her post-loss survival was surely hinted at in the 1970s, few believed or accepted how the former Amelia
Earhart would have done such a thing as changing her name, and that she had died in the United States in 1982. Or that she
had done so after helping to run Radio Luxembourg in Europe in the 1960s and 1970s, that incidentally, was a free-world news
and music radio station that helped introduce the Beatles to Russia. Today, with a past 'closed blind eye' from Amelia's sister Muriel, (Amelia's only sibling who
died in 1998, Muriel later knew her iconic sister as 'Irene' and had known about and always supported her complex survival
reality) the public remains encouraged through the media to keep trying to locate Amelia's plane. All along Muriel knew Amelia's
plane would never be found, but too, as long as people were encouraged to look for it her sister's invented 'mystery' would
remain in tact, as preferred by official history. For Uncle Sam's desire for the mystery of Earhart to endure was something
both sisters eventually grew to understand and accept. After all, it became more of a 'Sophie's choice' Amelia found herself
facing as a result of World War Two, as opposed to something she had been forced into by the United States or Japan. But did
she remain under Japan's auspice the entire tiime from 1937 to 1945? It's hard to say. Some feel she remained fairly mobile
until the last two years of the war. Later, in 1987 Monsignor James Francis Kelley told Detroit news reporter, Dean Magley
how a "man" Amelia had been in love with went to Japan to help her return as a renamed person. Father Kelley, who
was close to her throughout her post-war life in the United States until her passing, mentioned he too had assisted with Amelia's
private repatriation and reidentification process. Amelia's mother, Amy Otis Earhart? In an amazing 1949 interview with the New York Times, Amy Earhart mentioned how
she "knew" her daughter Amelia had survived as a courtesy of Japan. She said she 'knew' Amelia had communicated
with the U. S. from overseas after she was reported missing. She also denounced how some people tried to call her daughter
a traitor, and every day she attended the Tokyo Rose trial in San Francisco in 1949 as well, in response to U. S. soldiers
having previously described Amelia as a possible war-time 'Tokyo Rose.' A year later, in 1950 Amelia's befuddled 1930s husband
and business partner George Putnam died. There is absolutely no doubt George had been kept in the dark all along. Meanwhile
the former Amelia Earhart, who had endured some serious rhinoplasty and conformed to more usual feminine attire, was blending
in as an everyday person in Great Neck on Long Island, a familiar-to-her place she had lived with the Stabler family twenty-five
years earlier, that also sported one of she and Muriel's favorite 'beach haunts' from past youthful days. Amy Otis Earhart never spoke out about her daughter again after
her 1949 interview. It is likely she learned the truth subsequent to Muriel, and she held it close until she died on October
29, 1962. No irony, although the former Amelia died on July 7, 1982... her 'self-planned' lavish Memorial Dinner was not held
until October 29, 1982, exactly twenty years to the day after her mother's passing. And no matter about all of this. For Amelia Earhart always loved her country. Sad
too, for whatever the true reasons were for both her decision to exit public life and the final outcome it caused (with some
help from a World War) her famous spirit somehow ended up an odd victim of fratricide from early on, after she refused to
allow her name to be associated with promoting the art of war. So where her body continued to exist well beyond the date of
her storied 'disappearance,' in a way the Earhart 'person' people knew and loved in the 1930s did die on July 2, 1937. For
after that day she became someone else beyond who she used to be both physically and legend wise. Back then though, information
did not flow as freely as it does today, so we never learned Earhart's truth until her false legend was solidly cemented in.
It's also a shame, how we live in a world where such a thing could even happen to the great human being Amelia Earhart was
known to have been. But clearly, we do. In the meantime news media wise, perhaps a quote from the John Ford film 'The Man
Who Shot Liberty Valance' is appropriate in helping to explain Amelia's post-loss regard; "When legend becomes fact,
print the Legend." The legend became; Amelia Earhart vanished without a trace in 1937 and she was never seen or heard
from again. The truth however, was and remains, quite different.
| Amelia, age 26, four years before fame struck. |
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| "Lifting the veil off the history of Amelia Earhart." |
"The Amelia Earhart 'mystery' exists because
it's supposed to exist, not because it does or ever did exist." Beyond 37'
| The Gervais-Irene, 1978. |
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| Past non-realized truths are now being revealed about her person. |
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| 1945-1982 Gervais-Irene, harder exposure... |
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| ...all of her eighty years in 1978. |
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| The Gervais-Irene, 1978. |
|
| Past non-realized truths are now being revealed about her person. |
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