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Saipan and the Mystery of Amelia Earhart
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by William H. Stewart at The CNMI Guide
In the mystery surrounding the disappearance of Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan, Saipan has featured prominently in the stories.
On July 1, 1937, the famous aviatrix Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared somewhere in the vicinity of the Phoenix Islands southwest of the Hawaiian Islands. Many theories abound and those familiar with Saipan know that some believe that she was eventually found by the Japanese and brought to Saipan. The Japanese have consistently denied having any knowledge of the fate of Amelia Earhart. Some have theorized that she may have been engaged in espionage for the United States in an attempt to learn more about military activities in the Japanese Mandated Islands of Micronesia, particularly in the vicinity of Truk which was believed at the time to be the site of a Japanese naval base. The theory rests upon the last message ever received from Earhart by the U. S. Coast Guard Cutter Itasca and whether or not the information received was a compass heading or a sun line. She radioed, "We are on a position 157 degrees - 337 degrees, we will repeat this message on 6210 kilocycles. We are running north and south."
The entire theory rests on two of several radio messages transmitted from her aircraft that provided flight information to the Itasca. One message being a position fix 5 hours after her departure from Lae, New Guinea and a second message radioing either a heading on a compass or a sun line as she neared her destination. For over sixty years her disappearance has been a riddle wrapped in an enigma.
Although it has been consistently denied by the United States Government, there must have been several high ranking officers within the American naval establishment who saw in Earhart's plan for a flight around the world a golden opportunity to reconnoiter the developments being carried out within the Truk Lagoon by the Imperial Japanese Navy.
The mysterious disappearance of Amelia Earhart (Mrs. George P. Putnam) and her navigator, Fred Noonan, (previously a Pan American Airways navigator), along with their Lockheed Electra -10 after the aircraft left Lae, the capital of the Australian Mandated Territory of New Guinea, is a puzzle that remains fascinating.
It is not known if American intelligence officers ever bothered to read the annual reports the Japanese were required to submit to the League of Nations in the late thirties on their activities in the islands. If the United States authorities analyzed such reports they must have become curious as to the purpose of the imports of certain commodities listed in the statistical tables of the Annual Reports for 1936 -'37 which included 3.8 million tons of rice, (enough to feed a huge naval establishment).
Did knowledge of these increasing imports prompt General Henry "Hap" Arnold, Army Air Corps Chief, to attempt to find out what had been taking place within the Japanese Mandated Islands beyond their wall of secrecy by ordering the flight of two B -24's to reconnoiter the area barely two weeks before the outbreak of war in the Pacific and attempt to learn what Earhart failed to do 4 years and 5 months earlier?
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