USA TODAY International Edition
Prison worker’s nephew: Earhart held on Saipan
Pacific island occupied by Japan was where famed pilot and her navigator were killed, theory suggests
HAGATNA, Guam – A man with ties to Saipan has 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 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 she was captured and executed on Saipan by the Empire of Japan. The U.S. government and military allegedly 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 who 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, which was a hub for the Japanese.
His uncle told him 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, and 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 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 say. 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.
The disappearance of Earhart and Noonan on July 2, 1937, in the western Pacific Ocean has been the subject of continuing searches, research and debate. A long-standing theory is that the famed pilot ran out of gas and crashed into deep ocean waters northwest of Howland Island, a tiny speck in the South Pacific that she and Noonan missed.
The mystery surrounding her disappearance continues to keep her memory alive.
The U.S. government and military, the theory goes, knew Japan had captured and executed Earhart and Noonan — and even found and exhumed her body.