Submitted By By Katie Worth
10-14-2003
And if their long-shot lead were to be substantiated, that legendary mystery would unravel right in Guam's backyard.
The claim rests on a story told by an 81-year-old World War II veteran who was stationed in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands in 1944 as a gunman for the Marines.
The veteran, Saint John Naftel, of Alabama and some local collaborators have identified what they believe may be the gravesite of Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan, who disappeared somewhere in the Pacific in the summer of 1937 while they were attempting to circumnavigate the globe.
Historian Jennings Bunn, who is cultural resources manager for the Naval Station and who works for its Marianas Military Museum, organized Naftel's trip to the Marianas to search for the site, but he readily admits the veteran's story is just one of dozens that have flown about the Pacific over the last 66 years postulating on the fate of that famous flying duo.
The two were last heard from on July 2, 1937, when they had radioed that they were about 100 miles from Howland Island, a tiny atoll southwest of the Hawaiian Islands.
Since then, expeditions and excavations have been performed all over the Pacific in search of clues to the demise of Earhart and Noonan. All have been fruitless.
One popular theory, according to local historian Dirk Ballendorf, is that Earhart had been captured by the Japanese, who had control of much of the Pacific at that time, and killed because they thought she had been engaged in espionage.
Ballendorf said that in the '60s, a book was written by a historian based on a Chamorro woman's story that she had seen Earhart in a Japanese prison on Saipan.
Bunn has said that the woman's story has been corroborated by others who have claimed to have seen her in the Marianas at that time, but have often been unverified.
Naftel's story
Naftel's story is a little different, though, because he claims to know where she may be buried.
The veteran's story, as told in an interview last night, goes like this:
Shortly after he was stationed in Tinian in 1944, he was approached by a man who said that he had taken part in burying a white woman and a white man in aviator's suits in 1937.
The man, Naftel said, was a Hawaiian, and belonged to the class of men from all over the Pacific who had been hired by the Japanese to build up their military and commercial infrastructure in the Mariana Islands.
Those men were later hired by the U.S. military to work to restore the islands after the military took control of the islands in 1944.
Naftel said he'd been working with the man, whose name he does not know, for several days, when the man approached him with the story of the two aviators he supposedly helped bury.
According to Naftel, the man told him that in 1937, only five days after his arrival, he had helped dig the graves for two people, who he said were still wearing their aviator's suits. A Japanese guard had told the man that if he ever mentioned the burial to anyone he would be buried alive, Naftel related.
Naftel said the man then showed him where the burials were.
Naftel said that he kept the man's story in the back of his mind but didn't mention the report to his superiors at the time because they were still in the midst of the war.
He said that later he did try to tell his story to archaeologists and historians but was dismissed repeatedly.
The veteran's story stops there, and doesn't pick up again until about six months ago when a friend of his -- a retired attorney -- wrote to Guam's governor and military with the story. That letter ended up in the hands of Bunn.
Bunn spoke with Naftel several times on the phone and Naftel provided him with enough landmarks that, by using decades-old maps, they identified an approximate location of the alleged burials.
After deciding he trusted the veteran's story, Bunn collaborated with other local history enthusiasts and Continental Airlines to fly him out.
Naftel arrived on Guam last Wednesday and the crew flew to Tinian on Friday. Bunn said that, although the area was completely overgrown, Naftel identified the location that had been pointed out to him.
Bunn said that the area, which he would only identify as being in Southern Tinian near the old village of Tinian, has now been cordoned off by the police and is being "secured" until he can return with an archaeological crew.
Doubts
Ballendorf, a professor at the University of Guam who participated in a fruitless expedition to the Solomon Islands in search of Earhart's remains in the late '90s, believes the theory is somewhat farfetched, but not impossible. "I suppose I would say it's doubtful," Ballendorf said. "I doubt that Amelia Earhart was anywhere near the Marianas. But if I'm proven wrong, I would be the first one to sing the praises of the discovery."
Ballendorf said that a hole in the theory that Earhart and Noonan were brought to the Mariana Islands is that while the Japanese were in control of those islands, the region was not a major military post.
"Opinion has it that she was never anywhere near Saipan, and if the Japanese had captured her, they would have never taken her to Saipan, because at that time Saipan was a commercial industrial center," he said.
"The Japanese capital of Micronesia was Koror, Palau, and the military headquarters for the Japanese was in Chuuk, so if they had had a prisoner they would certainly have taken the prisoner to those two places before they would ever have brought them to (Saipan) -- it wouldn't have made sense," he said.
Bunn said he believes Naftel's story but said he cannot know the validity of the story the man told the veteran. "I absolutely believe (Naftel) is telling the truth, but it remains to be seen if we can find the remains," Bunn said.
He said even if it is a long shot, it is important to identify the possible graves' location while the 81-year-old Naftel is still around and well enough to help in that endeavor.
The obscurity of the circumstances surrounding Earhart's disappearance has intrigued many people, Ballendorf said. "We have never found her plane or any wreckage of the plane," he said. "It is a big mystery. She was a fantastic woman, one of the 20th century's greatest women."