It would have been a bit of a publicity coup for the Japanese to capture the Americans pretending to be on a world record flight around the world, Amelia Earhart and Freddie Noonan (1937)
It would have been a bit of a publicity coup for the Soviet Union to capture the American pretending to be on a weather gathering flight, Francis Gary Powers (1960)
The amount of positive publicity and sympathy that the Soviet Union gained from the U2 incident was an excellent example of how to play the undercover war. I am sure the Japanese wouldn't pass up an opportunity to get a little sympathy from the rest of the world either by displaying their capture of 'American spies'.
IMHO
Jeff,
I don't agree. The Cold War lasted for 15 years when the U2 was shot down. There wasn't a Cold War between USA and Japan in 1937, and the Japanese aren't Soviets. If the Japanese got A.E., they would have had more reasons to cover it than to make it public.
One thing I stumbled across about Howland was the Japanese attack there the day following Pearl Harbor and in days following - from
Wikipedia -
"A Japanese air attack on December 8, 1941 by 14 twin-engined Mitsubishi G3M "Nell" bombers killed two of the Kamehameha School colonists: Richard "Dicky" Kanani Whaley, and Joseph Kealoha Keliʻhananui. The raid came one day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and damaged the three airstrips of Kamakaiwi Field. Two days later a Japanese submarine shelled what was left of the colony's few buildings into ruins.[15] A single bomber returned twice during the following weeks and dropped more bombs on the rubble of tiny Itascatown. The two survivors were finally evacuated by a U.S. Navy destroyer on January 31, 1942. Howland was occupied by a battalion of the United States Marine Corps in September 1943 and known as Howland Naval Air Station until May 1944."Not that any of that has any bearing whatsoever on AE's disappearance in 1937 - it is merely interesting.
It does however tell us something of Japanese capabilities in the vicinity in 1941 with WWII breaking loose and how they felt about things at that point.
The gas these Japanese-obsconded theories get in their tanks may have something to do with perceptions we tend to have of their regional aggressiveness in those years and a sense of a secretive nature about expansion, etc. I dunno, just 'interesting'.
My gut feel is that had the Japanese really done her in something would have cracked about it by now. I also can't quite rationalize how AE would have fallen into their hands anyway (time / space at time) given where she would have reasonably flown (I don't buy the 'spy' stuff),
unless Hooven was right about Gardner and the outcome there.
LTM -