who are the people you most regret not being able to interview (excepting, of course, Fred and Amelia themselves)?
Interesting question Nate. Helps us focus on what we don't know.
My list (admittedly, the first couple are probably no-brainers):
1) Gerald Gallagher
Oh yeah. LOTS of questions for Irish.
2) John Lambrecht
Fred Goerner
interviewed Lambrecht and also
wrote to Tom King about Lambrechts recollections about the signs of recent habitation. I'd have few more question for Lambrecht but not many.
3) Leo Bellarts
Elgen Long did an extensive interview with Bellarts. We have both the audio recording and the transcript. I've been reluctant to post the interview because I'm not sure who owns the copyright. Elgen? The foundation to which he donated his papers? The Bellarts family? I'll check with our legal eagles.
Bellarts' interview, like all interviews done years after the event, is necessarily tainted by subsequent events, opinions, leading questions from the the interviewer, and the vagaries of memory - but it's still interesting and revealing about the personalities and attitudes aboard Itasca.
4) Temou Samuela
Indeed.
5) D.W. Hoodless
Primarily, "What did you do with the bones?"
Gallagher would probably be at the top of my list.
I'd also like to have a word with Buakee Koata, the Native Magistrate who took the Benedictine bottle to Tarawa and was probably present when the skull was found.
I'd like to talk to old Temou Samuela for sure.
Hoodless of course.
I'd like to have another chance to talk to AE's mechanic Bo McKneeley. He could tell us about that patch, why it was installed and who did it. I interviewed him briefly once over the phone many years ago. He was very hard of hearing and he was clearly not too interested in talking about that chapter of his life. It was when we were investigating the navigator's bookcase and I was pressing him about what the navigator's station was like after Manning left and Noonan took over. I got the feeling that Bo didn't like Noonan very much. Bo had been involved with Paul Mantz and Harry Manning in setting up the elaborate navigation station for the first world flight attempt, but after the wreck in Hawaii and Manning's departure "that fellow Noonan said he didn't need all that stuff."