Solved, They Claim

Amelia Earhart Mystery Solved, They Claim

From Ralph Craib, in San Francisco.

July 1

An American radio news reporter and a Saipanese dental technician may possibly have solved the mystery of how famed American aviatrix Amelia Earhart and her navigator Frederick Noonan died more than 20 years ago.

THEY believe that the flying pair crash landed into a Saipan bay in July, 1937, and were executed by the Japanese, who had illegally fortified their League of Nations Mandate islands.

For 23 years ever since the Earhart Lockheed took off from the airfield at Lae, NG, on July 2, 1937, the fate of the pair has been a mystery. They were en route for Howland Island, 1,660 nautical miles southwest of Hawaii.

But the rumour has long persisted that Miss Earhart and Noonan met death before a Japanese firing squad. Japan withdrew from the League of Nations in 1935; entrance of Europeans to the islands north of New Guinea was almost im possible after that.

Woman's Story

Fred Goerner. of San Francisco Radio Station KCBS, returned to San Francisco today after three weeks on Saipan. His companion on the trip was Maximo Akiyama, a dental technician in the suburb of San Mateo, and a former Saipan resident.

Akiyama’s wife, Josephine, a nurses’ aide, recently told in a news paper story here how when she was

11 years old she saw the arrivi of “an American girl with her ha cut short” at Panapag Harbou where she was then living.

She said she had ridden her bicyc to the Japanese navy base when st heard a spluttering motor and sa a huge silvery two-engine plane flj mg low over the water and gradi ally coming down. She later saw huge crowd gathered around woman, a man and the aircraf which was on the beach.

“The people were talking aboi the American lady pilot”, she sai( “She wore long trousers and sweater or a jacket.

“I think she had a dark seal around her neck. She had reddis! or light brown hair cut very shor She was very thin and looked ver tired.”

She was told later that the woma: had been shot.

Many persons scoffed at Josephine 1 story but Goerner determined to g to Saipan, in the northern Mariana: to verify the facts. He took Mi Akiyama as interpreter.

On his return today, Goerner sai( that the report was true. A Japanesi naval launch had picked up Mis Earhart and Noonan, he said, an<

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This is probably the last photo of Amelia Earhart. It is in the possession of a Post Mores[?] man. Mr. Tom Leonard, and shows Miss Earhart and her Lockheed at Lae, NG, just before [?] take-off into the unknown.

them to headquarters of the ary base. ter separate interrogation, Miss lart was taken to a small build near the headquarters. Noonan taken away in a car and never again.

Plane Fragments

jerner displayed a huge collec of fragments—coral encrusted lich. he said, were recovered l the area where natives said

plane alighted.

,ul Mantz, famed movie stunt who was in charge of prepara -5 for the Earhart round-the d flight attempt, identified one 3 as a high-capacity Leece-Nevil irator which “could be the irator I installed in her plane”, will have to make a detailed y of his files, he said, antz said that another part—a 3 of pipe about a foot long— have been part of special fuel p valves he had installed, ■itics had discounted the r ama story because it indicated the Earhart Lockheed had n north-north-west from Lae, 3ad of east-north-east to reach land, where a rough landing > had been prepared and where aited States Coast Guard cut f er standing by. The Saipan land report indicates that the air t was more than 1,500 off se.

Native Witnesses a Saipan, Goerner talked to 11 ve witnesses who verified Mrs. /ama’s story. Goerner and

Akiyama said they talked to more than 300 people.

“I heard from the Japanese officers about the American lady flier,” one witness, Gregorio Camacho had said.

“The Japanese were very surprised to see a lady flier because at that time it would never happen that a lady would fly.”

Another native told the reporter and his interpreter that Japanese officers had invited him to attend the execution of Miss Earhart in her gaol cell—but that he had refused the invitation.

The two-acre military compound was destroyed during the war and is covered by vegetation now.

The key to the mystery depends now on verification of the 600 pounds of parts returned by Goerner today.

At the time of the disappearance of Miss Earhart, the US Navy made

widespread searches, estimated to have cost about $4 million.

Friends financed later search missions, all of them fruitless.

A i a ter report from San Francisco said that Captain Paul Briand, Jr., an instructor at the US Air Force Academy, claimed that Captain Joseph Gervais, a pilot now stationed a t Okinawa, had written to him to say he had a photograph and affidavits from 72 witnesses to prove that Earhart and Noonan were executed on Saipan.

But former Captain Zenshiro Hoshina, who had legal respon sibility for executions in the Jap anese Navy, said that no execution could have occurred on Saipan with out his permission, and that no execution of Americans ever did occur there.