TIGHAR

At long last our Catalog and Analysis of Post-Loss Radio Signals During the Search for Amelia Earhart in June 1937 is ready for prime time.  The amount of work that has gone into collecting, compiling, cataloging and analyzing these signals boggles the mind.  Over the past twenty years, dozens of TIGHAR researchers have contributed to this important aspect of our investigation of the Earhart disappearance but we want to especially thank LCDR Robert Brandenberg, USN (ret) whose tireless dedication and extraordinary expertise have made this catalog possible.

Radio signals, although invisible and fleeting, are just as real as bones and artifacts.  This is the first comprehensive compilation of what signals were reported and which of them are credible.  The importance of the story they tell is difficult to overstate.  This catalog is an essential tool in piecing together that story.

The Kiribati Archives are proving to be a treasure trove of information on the colony at Nikumaroro. Most of what they are seeing was not available 10 years ago when we last had a team there. Some of the files were scattered around the world in random places; some of the files were in boxes in storage rooms; and some was uncollected. Now it’s all in one place. It will take months if not years to understand all the wealth of detail included in the various reports and manifests and records, but we’ll have digital images of all of it and we’ll get it all on line as soon as we can after the team returns. The importance of the background and context we’re acquiring from these records cannot be over-stated. Dusty, insect-eaten documents may well prove to be the most important links in piecing together the story of the Castaway of Gardner Island.

The meetings with government officials have gone very well and there is agreement in principal as to what the relationship should be between TIGHAR and the Republic of Kiribati. Getting everything approved and signed off is, of course, a lengthy process, governments being much the same everywhere, but there is ample good will and even friendship among the principals.

I write this on Saturday night; today was Sunday for the team, and nothing, but NOTHING happens in Tarawa on Sunday. They are using the day to draw breath, figure out what is left to do, and plan for the final few hours. They leave Tuesday mid-day, their time – Monday evening our time. Stateside on Tuesday and back at home on Tuesday night (Bill, heading for Idaho) and Wednesday mid-day (Ric, Delaware).

From Pat:

Much better satellite access today and we talked for quite a while. They are learning so much about ordinary day-to-day life on Nikumaroro from the resources they’ve found in the archives. This kind of background is absolutely essential for understanding the Seven Site and what we’ve found there. One real gold mine: A Manual of How To Set Up A British Colony (that’s not its title, but that’s what it is). How to build a village, how to build a house, where to put things, what to do when this or that happens. They are photographing each page and we’ll be able to process the images here when they get back and get it all on line.

A meeting with Tukabu Teroroko, the Director of the Phoenix Islands Protected Area (PIPA), and others in the government, is scheduled for later today so they can present our formal report on Niku VI. (Find PIPA on Facebook as well.)

And for something completely different: each morning Ric is spending an hour or so writing the opening chapters of Finding Amelia Book II. We hope to be able to start publishing excerpts in the very near future. Click on the logo to read more.

From Pat:

The first day in the archives has gone well. The last visit there by TIGHAR folks was ten years ago; we’ve learned a lot since then, know a lot more about what to look for. Also, the archive has added a lot of material that was scattered around the world. So new avenues of research are opening up and it’s promising to be a very fruitful trip.

Some materials are very delicate; the climate in the Pacific doesn’t do paper any favors. They are photographing items that are too fragile to scan or photocopy, but that should work out fine.

A meeting has been scheduled with some of the government folks and that side of the trip also looks promising.

The satellite telephone link is uncertain at best, so we are exchanging the bare minimum of information in between “Are you there” queries. More tomorrow.

From Pat:

Ric called me yesterday. It was about 5 a.m. local time in Tarawa. After traveling from Philadelphia to Los Angeles to Fiji to Tarawa, he wasn’t exactly sure what time it was for his brain but he was quite coherent. Bill was still asleep, dawn was just breaking, and all was quiet.

All the travel went very smoothly until the very end, when they went through Customs at the airport there at Tarawa. Turns out that e-tickets have one drawback: they don’t provide you with a printout of your official return or onward leg, which Kiribati Customs requires. To get a printout, they had to get to the hotel. To get to the hotel, they had to clear Customs. To clear Customs.... hmmmmm. Anyway, Customs let them through but kept their passports until they could bring back the printouts of their itinerary.

So they went to get their rental car, an old beat-up Toyota something-or-other. Seemed to run fine, but it had almost no gas. And, of course, they had no local money (Kiribati is on the Australian dollar). Problem is, to get money changed, you have to have ..... a passport. It seemed likely that they would run out of gas by the side of the road before getting to the hotel to get the printouts done to return to the airport to retrieve their passports to ... anyway, they were able to change a U.S. twenty into Aussie dollars at another hotel where Ric has stayed before, get some gas, and get to their hotel in Betio. As soon as the world was up they were going to head back out to the airport, ransom the passports, and then head for the Archives.

All in all, a normal start to a trip to the Pacific.

This is a busy summer for Earhart Project research. A TIGHAR team recently returned from several weeks in Fiji searching for the castaway's bones that were sent there from Nikumaroro and last seen in 1941. (See "Bones, bones, and more bones" below)

On Sunday, June 19, TIGHAR Executive Director Ric Gillespie and TIGHAR board member/researcher/expedition veteran Bill Carter will head for Tarawa, the capital of the Republic of Kiribati - the island nation that owns Nikumaroro.  Ric and Bill will arrive on Tuesday, June 21 (it's a long way to Tarawa) and be there for the next week, returning to the U.S. on June 28.  They'll be doing archival research in the Kiribati National Archive, delivering a report on last year's expedition to the Phoenix Islands Protected Area Management Committee, and meeting with government officials regarding future work at Nikumaroro.

The archival work is important to our efforts to accurately interpret th e artifacts, faunal materials, and other data collected during TIGHAR's ten (to date) expeditions to Nikumaroro.  Of particular interest would be records detailing activities at the Seven Site - the remote spot on the southeastern end of the atoll that matches the description of where the partial skeleton of a castaway was found in 1940. Like most archaeological sites, there are relics from several periods and types of occupation.  Many of the items discovered during TIGHAR's archaeological excavations are consistent with the presence of an American woman of the 1930s trying to survive by catching and cooking local wildlife and devising ways to collect and boil water for drinking. Other items are clearly from visits to the site by target-shooting WWII Coast Guardsmen from the Loran station at the island's tip.  There is also evidence of some kind of construction activity - nails, asphalt roofing, corrugated metal sheeting, etc - most likely associated with the Gilbertese colonists who lived on the island from 1939 to 1963.  Ric and Bill are hoping to find documents that shed some light on what was going on.

When the colony was abandoned in 1963 the residents were resettled in the Solomon Islands . A TIGHAR team plans to travel to the Solomons in mid-August  to do archival research in the capital Honiara and interview surviving immigrants from Nikumaroro in outlying villages.  Perhaps there is someone still alive who remembers what the colonists were doing at the Seven Site.

We'll, of course, be reporting on the results of all of these research efforts.

TIGHAR’s  Fiji Bone Search team has returned to the U.S. In terms of results — as is so often the case with expeditions — the jury is still out.

This was TIGHAR’s third effort to locate the castaway’s bones found on Gardner Island (now Nikumaroro) in 1940 and sent to British colonial headquarters in Fiji for examination. Suspected at the time of being the remains of lost American aviator Amelia Earhart, the thirteen bones were measured and evaluated by the then head of the Colonial Medical School, Dr. David Hoodless. Hoodless noted that the poor condition of the bones, especially the ends chewed by crabs, made identification of the sex and ethnicity of the individual difficult. Applying the criteria available in the 1940s, he judged the remains to be those of a European or possibly mixed-race male. Satisfied that the partial skeleton was not that of Amelia Earhart, the British High Commissioner rejected suggestions that the bones be sent to Australia for more sophisticated evaluation and decided not to inform American authorities of the discovery. On April 12, 1941, Dr. Hoodless was instructed to “retain the remains until further notice.” What happened to the bones after that is a mystery.

In 1998 we found Hoodless’ notes and the measurements upon which he based his identification of the bones as male. Re-evaluation of the measurements by two independent forensic anthropologists using currently available computer databases found the measurements to be consistent with a female of northern European ancestry who stood roughly Earhart’s height. If we can locate the bones — assuming they still exist — we should be able retrieve DNA and confirm or deny that they are Earhart’s.

TIGHAR teams in 1999 and 2003 reviewed official records of burials and cremations, inspected collections of bones in museums and medical schools and conducted dozens of interviews, but there were a number of places, in particular the giant Colonial War Memorial Hospital, that our teams had never been able to search. The 2011 search was organized by Dr. Jon Overholt who initiated a fruitful physician-to-physician dialog with the hospital’s chief medical officer and with the American embassy in Suva, Fiji. With expectations of access to previously unsearched areas, Jon recruited a largely self-funded team of veteran TIGHAR researchers: Gary Quigg, Lonnie Schorer and Karl Kern. On the ground in Suva, Jon transferred operational leadership to Gary. Building on the excellent work of the 1999 and 2003 teams, the 2011 team cultivated and enjoyed an unprecedented level of cooperation from the hospital staff and Fiji government officials which enabled them to performed a detailed search of the hospital and a number of other likely but previously prohibited or unknown venues.

And they found bones — lots of bones — forgotten bones — old bones — damaged bones — bones that nobody knew were there. They did not, however, find a group of bones that matches the selection sent to Fiji in 1940. There is, of course, the possibility that the collection was dispersed at some time and that “our” bones got mixed in with other bones. The excellent connections and cooperation the team established in Suva will enable us to explore that possibility as well as several other leads that the team didn’t have time to follow up on. The search goes on.

A TIGHAR team led by Dr. Jon Overholt has arrived in Fiji to search for the partial skeleton, believed to be Earhart’s, that was sent there from Nikumaroro in 1941. This is TIGHAR’s third attempt to locate the missing bones but, for the first time, we have permission to search the Colonial War Memorial Hospital – arguably the most likely place for the bones to have been stored.  The team of four experienced TIGHAR researchers – Dr. Overholt, Gary Quigg, Lonnie Schorer, and Karl Kern – is working closely with the American embassy, Fiji governmental authorities and hospital officials to carry out a thorough search for the bones of a castaway discovered on Gardner Island (now Nikumaroro) in 1940 and sent to British colonial headquarters in Fiji for analysis.  Although originally thought to possibly be the remains of Amelia Earhart, the head of the Medical School measured the bones and judged them to be those of a man. American authorities were not notified and the bones were stored in an undocumented location. Review of the measurements by forensic anthropologists in 1999 found them to be consistent with a female of northern European descent who stood roughly Earhart’s height.

TIGHAR executive director Ric Gillespie will speak at the Amelia Earhart Festival in Atchison, Kansas, the town where Amelia was born and spent much of her childhood. Atchison’s annual celebration of AE’s accomplishments and legacy is held on the third weekend in July, this year Friday July 15 and Saturday July 16. The festivites include a country music concert Friday night and a full day of events on Saturday climaxing with a fireworks extravaganza on the riverfront. Ric’s presentation “Finding Amelia” is scheduled for 2:30 PM on Saturday in the 200 seat Atchison Community Theatre.

In addition to Ric, several members of TIGHAR’s Earhart Project Advisory Council are planning to be there. TIGHAR members and anyone interested in learning more about TIGHAR’s progress in solving the mystery of Earhart’s disappearance are encouraged to join us in Atchison. This is the first time TIGHAR has been invited to attend this event. In the past, presentations at the festival concerning Earhart’s fate have often featured enthusiasts who are devotees of the theory that Amelia was abducted by the Japanese. This year, all of the fireworks may not be on the riverfront.

During the Niku VI expedition we found a small broken jar (designated TIGHAR Artifact 2-9-S-1) of rather distinctive design.

The jar is of a type known as an “ointment pot” and markings embossed on the bottom show that it was made by the Hazel-Atlas Glass Company.  Further research has shown that the jar matches Hazel-Atlas design No. 1955. The only product we have found advertised that appears to have used this style of container is Dr. Berry’s Freckle Ointment, an ointment intended to fade freckles. It was marketed from 1892 until 1961. Earhart is known to have been concerned about her freckles.

From Amelia: A Life of the Aviation Legend, by Goldstein and Dillon.

This refers to the New York ticker tape parade after the “Friendship” flight:

“As photographers snapped, several spectators, eager for a glimpse of the famous bob, sang out ‘Take off your hat, Amelia!’ She made a little face, but obligingly removed her modish straw cloche. Tossing it to Muriel, she remarked ruefully, ‘Here’s where I get sixty more freckles on my poor nose, I guess!’” (page 62)

Check your grandmother’s medicine cabinet. We would very much like to find an existing jar of Dr. Berry’s Freckle Ointment for direct comparison to TIGHAR Artifact 2-9-S-1.