Hoodless being an astute individual would not have wanted the British case in the media to be side tracked by the side show of the finding of some wayward adventurer. This was a view that the entire bureaucracy would have held highly at this time. He would have wanted these “bones”, which he must have suspected could be those of AE be hidden, until further more important matters be made clear, i.e. the war.
Unless we repudiate our vow not to use our powers of ESP when dealing with mere mortals, we have no way of knowing for sure what went on in Hoodless' mind.
We have indications in the bones file that Sir Harry Luke, head of the Western Pacific High Commission, wanted the matter kept secret. On 26 October 1940,
he wrote Vaskess: "Thinnest rumours which may in the end prove unfounded are liable to be spread." That is a reasonable position to take, I think; whether it was connected to thinking about the war or not is not clear to me.
The next to last entry by Dr. Hoodless in the bones file is this: "My report on these bones is enclosed. I will take charge of these bones until it is decided what to do with them"
(5 April 1941). By this time, Hoodless has concluded that they are
not the bones of a female European, so I doubt that he was worried about what effect the finding of the bones would have on British/U.S. relations.
I would think that Dr. Hoodless would hide this box till later examination was possible , say after an allied victory to heighten the camaraderie of the US and England. Or in the mean time possibly the inference that she was done away with by a foe such as the Japanese. This of course runs the cororally that the box needs to be placed somewhere were it will be available when needed in the future. There would be no embarassent of finding her "real body" by others once the game was afoot.
Your imaginative reconstruction of Dr. Hoodless' personality and mine differ very much on this point. I think he was satisfied that he had ruled out the possibility of the bones being hers, and was not at all anxious about post-war Japanese capture theories. Amelia is a big deal to the U.S. audience, but is much less interesting to the British ex-pats whom I met in Fiji.
All this may give us hope that AE, or the box of bones, was not thrown away but is biding its time somewhere.
I cling to that hope, too, but not on the grounds you suggest.
Imagine a box in a warehouse with the words stencilled on it: -----
Half-Caste P.I.S.S. Retain
Sorry about that..
It's OK. The fellows who coined the name were quite pleased that it was accepted, I believe.
Oh yes the book I'm reading, ''Finding Amelia,'' is truly interesting ...
Agreed.