Lest we forget these fellows - whom I interviewed in 2003. All three are no longer with us, but all three were on Saipan, their stories have been corroborated by a number of sources, plus I went to Saipan and filmed 15 near eyewitnesses who said the same things these three GI's said.
Thomas Devine saw her plane, saw it destroyed, Robert Wallack found her briefcase, passport - held onto them for two weeks before he turned it over to the CO for Julious Nabers - who Devine witnesses guarded the Electra (but didn't know it was him, until Julious repeated the same story word for word of what he told people who tried to enter the hangar "order is orders" - a corroboration from Devine without him knowing it was one.
Nabers decoded the message that said they had found her plane in July 44, guarded the plane for 24 hours - as in the entire day without sleep - was only given half a peanut butter sandwich (odd but telling detail), later saw the briefcase that was turned over to his CO (Clarence R. Wallace, whose uniform hangs in a frame in Quantico) Nabers also watched the plane destroyed by US military, and gave the SAME DESCRIPTION as did Devine, even thought neither ever met.
Later, on Saipan, we interviewed 15 new eyewitnesses who told the same story. She was brought there, incarcerated, died in custody - was dug up by two GI's (as was Fred) and partially recovered - the plane was found, and after some weeks deciding what to do about it, the "people who can decide these things" decided to destroy it. It was buried at the end of the runway at Aslito where it's steel frame rests to this day. Not a theory, not a belief, not an opinion. Just what people consistently report.
Thomas Devine saw her plane, saw it destroyed, Robert Wallack found her briefcase, passport - held onto them for two weeks before he turned it over to the CO for Julious Nabers - who Devine witnesses guarded the Electra (but didn't know it was him, until Julious repeated the same story word for word of what he told people who tried to enter the hangar "order is orders" - a corroboration from Devine without him knowing it was one.
Nabers decoded the message that said they had found her plane in July 44, guarded the plane for 24 hours - as in the entire day without sleep - was only given half a peanut butter sandwich (odd but telling detail), later saw the briefcase that was turned over to his CO (Clarence R. Wallace, whose uniform hangs in a frame in Quantico) Nabers also watched the plane destroyed by US military, and gave the SAME DESCRIPTION as did Devine, even thought neither ever met.
Later, on Saipan, we interviewed 15 new eyewitnesses who told the same story. She was brought there, incarcerated, died in custody - was dug up by two GI's (as was Fred) and partially recovered - the plane was found, and after some weeks deciding what to do about it, the "people who can decide these things" decided to destroy it. It was buried at the end of the runway at Aslito where it's steel frame rests to this day. Not a theory, not a belief, not an opinion. Just what people consistently report.
Here's an article from USA TODAY:
HAGATNA, Guam — A man with ties to Saipan shared information that promotes a theory that Amelia Earhart was brought to the island and held prisoner 80 years ago.
William “Bill” Sablan, who lives on Chamorro, said his uncle Tun Akin Tuho worked at the prison where Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan were taken prisoner in Saipan.
The History Channel shared the theory that the two were taken prisoner in a recent TV special called Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence.
Eighty years after Earhart made her voyage around the world, people are still trying to figure out what happened to the famed pilot.
The theory shared by History’s TV special says Earhart was captured and executed on Saipan by the Empire of Japan. The U.S. government and military knew it (and even found and exhumed her body). And both governments have been lying about it ever since.
Sablan’s uncle’s story fits this theory.
In 1971, he was speaking with his uncle and cousin about his dream of becoming a pilot when his uncle mentioned the people that were held prisoner in Saipan.
His uncle described an American woman and man taken to a Saipan prison in the mid-1930s by ship. He said they were found with a plane on a southern Pacific Island under Japanese control.
Sablan said Earhart was brought to Saipan, for it was a hub for the Japanese.
His uncle said that he remembers the woman and man because Caucasian people were rare on Saipan. The prison was usually quiet, but the pair's arrival caused a commotion.
“They had no reason to be there,” Sablan said.
His uncle said the plane they were flying was dropped somewhere in the ocean before coming to Saipan.
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The uncle said that the two were in the Saipan prison for two or three days before they were killed.
Sablan said it's possible the U.S. found and relocated the remains.
According to news files, in 1960 a CBS radio man, Fred Goerner, spoke with at least a dozen reliable witnesses from Saipan, who shared that before the war, two white people arrived on Saipan — described as “flyers” or “spies” — and they were held in the Japanese jail.
They said the flyers were tall and one of them was a woman, but her hair was cut short and she was wearing men’s clothing, files state.
The year was 1937, the same year Earhart and Noonan were lost.
The History TV special theory rests on an ambiguous photograph, said to have been taken in 1937, that might show Earhart and Noonan alive on a dock in the Marshall Islands. At the time, the islands were controlled by Japan.
A Japanese military history blogger Kota Yamano undermined a new theory that Amelia Earhart survived a crash in the Pacific Ocean during her historic attempted around-the-world flight in 1937.
The history blogger posted the same photograph that formed the backbone of a History channel documentary that argued that Earhart was alive in July 1937 — but the book the photo was in was apparently published two years before the famed aviator disappeared.
A retired federal agent said he discovered the image in 2012 in the National Archives in College Park, Md. The blogger said he found the same image digitized in Japan's National Diet Library.
Josephine Blanco, center, hugs her nephew, Harry Blanco, as John Blanco, also a relative, looks on.
(Erwin Encinares)
Two persons reportedly saw on two separate occasions the lost aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart on Saipan, the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.
Josephine Blanco, a 93-year old who reportedly saw Earhart in the Tanapag Harbor in 1937, noted that at the time, she didn’t know it was Earhart. She was 12 years old at the time.
“I cannot say she is pretty because I saw her from a distance,” Blanco said yesterday at a welcoming dinner at the Fiesta Resort and Spa Saipan.
“I didn’t even go inside [the harbor area],” she said, adding that it was a commotion in the area that caught her attention. She said she was halfway toward the harbor, and that was where she caught a glimpse of a woman’s figure.
“I didn’t go there to look for somebody or meet somebody. I just happened to be there,” she said, adding that she found out it was Earhart only after World War II.
WWII started in 1939.
“I didn’t tell anybody, I didn’t know about her,” Blanco said. “Only my family knew—my sister worked [in the area], and she knew too.”
Blanco mentioned other family members who knew of Earhart, but noted that they have all passed away.
Eighty-five-year-old Joaquin T. Salas was 11 when he believed he saw Earhart in 1944.
Salas noted that he is unsure if the woman he saw then was Earhart, but was sure that he saw her on a Japanese military truck with three others.
“There were two men and one lady, a blonde. They put one ribbon on her face, and her hands were tied,” he said. The truck parked in front of their house, which was across the post office in Chalan Kanoa today.
Salas said he watched them stay in front of their residence for about an hour.
“After that, they took off. I don’t know where they went,” he said.
Salas was able to reproduce through a drawing what he remembers were the positions of the military truck.
Salas believes the Japanese captured Earhart, and that they parked in front of their house at that time.
