In an undated handout photo from the National Archives, people stand on a dock at Jaluit Atoll in the Marshall Islands. A recent History Channel documentary claimed that the photo contains Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan and was taken after the pair disappeared on July 2, 1937. However, new evidence shows that the photograph was published in late 1935.
A photograph that a recent History Channel documentary proclaimed as lost evidence that could solve the mystery of Amelia Earhart's disappearance appears to have been published nearly two years before the aviator vanished in July 1937.
The pre-WWII photograph features a throng of people on a dock in Jaluit Atoll, one of the Marshall Islands. In the documentary Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence, filmmakers claim that two Caucasian people in the photograph—a man standing next to a post, and a person of indeterminate sex squatting on the dock's edge—are Earhart's navigator Fred Noonan and Earhart herself, in the custody of the Japanese military in 1937.
However, new evidence indicates that the photograph was published in a 1935 Japanese-language travelogue about the islands of the South Pacific. As Japanese military history blogger Kota Yamano noted in a July 9 post, he found the book after searching the National Diet Library, Japan's national library, using the term "Jaluit Atoll," the location featured in the photograph.
“The photo was the 10th item that came up,” he said in an interview withThe Guardian. “I was really happy when I saw it. I find it strange that the documentary makers didn’t confirm the date of the photograph or the publication in which it originally appeared. That’s the first thing they should have done.”
His search query turned up the travelogue, The Ocean's "Lifeline": The Condition of Our South Seas, which features the "Earhart" photograph on page 44. One translation of the caption describes a lively port that regularly hosted schooner races—with no mention of Earhart or Noonan to be found. Page 113 of the book indicates that the travelogue was published in October 1935.
Yamano's evidence, which he says he obtained in 30 minutes, undercuts the History Channel's claim that the famed aviator crash-landed in the Marshall Islands and became a prisoner of the Japanese military. Residents of the Marshall Islands and some Earhart enthusiasts have long touted this scenario, but many Earhart enthusiasts consider it outlandish.
tags: amelia esrhart photo , lost earhart photo , nathan finneman , breed of speed , aviation ,
RSS Feed