Malcolm
For me, your further thinking doesn't make sense in this case. Emily left Nikumaroro just before Dec 7, 1941 at an early age, and never went back to Nikumaroro, yet, she has very specific memories about the place.
You are suggesting that those memories were influenced by wartime and post war island myths that were developed in the Gilbert Islands and shared with Nikumaroro residents during the war. She wasn't there at the time.
No doubt, there were lots of interesting stories floating around the Pacific during and after the war, but I at least, have a hard time seeing how they could influence Emily's specific memories of pre war Nikumaroro. In addition, I don't think there was much inter-island travel during the war as there weren't the resources and the colony was largely left to fend for themselves until 1949 or so, when a new colonial administrator was dispatched to Nikumaroro, finding the place in a general state of disrepair and lethargy.
What I do think is interesting is that more than 10 years after Emily put her mark on the map of Nikumaroro where she said the airplane wreckage was seen, we find that the 1937 photo shows something sticking out of the water at essentially the same spot, and there are reasons to believe that it is not stuff from the NC including the prevailing NC wreckage distribution, forensic image analysis, and the fact that those 1940 colonists themselves didn't think it was from the shipwreck. Why not, I don't know, but something about it told them it was from an airplane, not the NC. Further, her description of the airplane wreckage being a long rusty tubular thing with something round at the end (something that always puzzled me) fits well with the results of the forensic imaging analysis which suggests the object is, or at least is consistent with, a Lockheed L-10 Landing gear. Coincidence? Maybe.
I do think that Emily's version of the bones is essentially a mixed up version of two stories, one being the NC sailors buried on the beach, and later dug up by pigs, erosion, or whatever, and the other being the bones of the castaway found with a "man's and a woman's shoe". The link is that the location of the airplane parts, and the bones of the NC crew are near each other on the NW shore of the island, would be easy to mix the two together into an mythical story. Emily may never have been told that the bones of the castaway were found on the other end of the island, she may had just assumed they were mixed up with the rest of the bones.
I don't think we've ever hung our hat on Emily's story, it has always been an interesting interview that fit with our hypothesis fairly well, but now would seem to take on increased relevance with the potential corroboration found in the photo. Just like the story of the bones of a castaway being found was just an Niku legend, and we discounted it as such, until we were able to corroborate it with the files found in the WPHC archives.
Andrew