Getty Amelia Earhart and navigator Capt. Fred Noonan.
The History Channel revived interest in Amelia Earhart once again this month to promote Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence, a new documentary that claims there is evidence to prove Earhart landed in the Marshall Islands. However, the evidence has since been called into question after a Japanese blogger discovered that the photo the entire program hinged on was taken at least two years before Earhart’s disappearance.
The new, two-hour documentary debuted at 9:00 p.m. ET on Sunday, July 9. Read on for a preview and a look at the photo that caught the country’s attention last week.
The Kansas-born Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, and became an American hero. In 1937, Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan attempted to fly a Lockheed Model 10-E Electra around the world. They went missing over the Pacific Ocean and their bodies were never found. Earhart was just a few weeks shy of her 40th birthday when she went missing. Her disappearance remains one of the most fascinating aerial mysteries, 80 years later.
Former FBI official Shawn Henry claims in The Lost Evidence that a mysterious photo in the National Archives shows the back of a woman who looks like Earhart and another man who looks like Noonan on a dock on Jaluit Atoll, part of the Marshall Islands. The photo was not dated and the only caption reads, “PL – MARSHALL ISLANDS, JALUIT ATOLL, JALUIT ISLAND. ONI # 14381 JALUIT HARBOR.” You can the full photo below.
U.S. National Archives, Records of the Office of Naval Intelligence, Record Group 38, Monograph Files Relating to the Pacific Ocean Area, NAID 68141661This is the photo at the center of History Channel’s new Amelia Earhart documentary.
There’s also been claims that Earhart was found and taken into custody by the Japanese, who were in the midst of building their empire before World War II. According to NBC News, Josephine Blanco Akiyama, a former resident of Saipan, claims that she saw Earhart as a child in Japan.
“I didn’t even know it was a woman, I thought it was a man,” Akiyama said. “Everybody was talking about her — they were talking about in Japanese. That’s why I know that she’s a woman. They were talking about a woman flyer.”
As The Daily Mail notes, Akiyama was 12 years old at the time of Earhart’s disappearance. She now lives in California and claims she heard that Earhart was executed.
As for the photo that The Los Evidence hinges on, the National Archives told Gizmodo that there is no date for the photo. James P. Pritchett, the director of public and media communications at the National Archives, said their experts couldn’t find any concrete information about the photo beyond the vague caption that accompanies it.
Unnamed investigators also told the Daily Mail that the photo could not show Earhart because it was taken after 1940. The Daily Mail claims it saw the photo in 2016 and had an investigator look into it. Their investigator determined that the photo was taken at least three years after Earhart disappeared. But again, there’s no way to confirm the claims from the Mail’s investigator either. Another mystery with the photo is the “confidential” marking on the back.
After the special aired, Japanese blogger “@baron_yamaneko” claimed it took him just a half-hour to discover that the photo was taken at least two years before Earhart disappeared since it was published in a 1935 Japanese photo book. He found the book in an online Japanese archive. On Twitter, the blogger said the ship in the photo is actually the Koshu, a German ship the Japanese captured in World War I.
After the blogger’s discoveries went viral, the History Channel told NPR that it has investigators looking into the photo. “Ultimately historical accuracy is most important to us and our viewers,” the network said.
Henry is the CSO and president of CrowdStrike. He served as an executive assistant director of the FBI and worked in three field officers and at the headquarters in Washington. His work focused on cyberattacks, including corporate breaches and state-sponsored attacks.
PREMIERE DATE: Sunday, July 9, 2017
TIME: 9:00 p.m. ET
OTHER TIMES:
Monday, July 10 at 1:03 a.m. ET
CHANNEL: The History Channel. (To find out what channel History is for you, click here to go to TV Guide’s listings. Click “Change” next to provider to find your cable/satellite provider.)
DESCRIPTION: “A study of new clues to the disappearance of famed 1930s aviatrix Amelia Earhart, who went missing during a 1937 flight.”
