Archive for November, 2009
The Mystery of Amelia Earhart
Thursday, November 19th, 2009The newly released movie, “Amelia,” took me back to my days as a reporter on the “Pacific Daily News” in Guam. I enjoyed the movie and was surprised that it ended when her plane crashed in the South Pacific. Viewers are left to decide whether Earhart and Noonan died in the crash or survived.
I moved to Guam after working for 2 years for the Trust Territory of the U.S. in Saipan, an island north of Guam, so my editor thought I was the perfect one to interview a man who had knowledge of Amelia Earhart’s last days. So in November 1970, I interviewed Joe Artero, a Government of Guam employee.
Artero told me that in 1937, when he was 22 years ago, he went to Saipan and heard from a police detective that Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan had been executed there. He also learned that the Japanese were fortifying the island, building a submarine base, and preparing to capture Guam. A Saipan police officer said he had photographed the Americans riding in a military auto with the Japanese governor of Saipan.
At home in Guam, Artero was questioned by the Naval Commander of Guam, who ridiculed the story that the Japanese had captured the aviators after her crash and taken her to Saipan. However, when American forces invaded Saipan in 1944, Earhart’s briefcase was discovered. Papers indicated that Earhart and Noonan had been spies and were held in a jail in Saipan until their deaths. There was even a photo of Earhart with her hands bound in back. This evidence was classified Top Secret and disappeared into U.S. Navy hands.
You can read more of my interview with Artero in my book “Where America’s Day Begins,” available through this website or at Amazon. Also, Fred Goerner’s book “The Search for Amelie Earhart,” published by Doubleday and Company in 1966, tells the complete story of the aviators’ crash and subsequent capture by the Japanese and taken to Saipan. She should be remembered an American hero who met a horrific death.