Print

[Vahe Demirjian]

In one forgotten aspect of the earliest efforts to find NR16020, I was reading a list of myths pertaining to AE's disappearance at PacificWrecks.com when I was dumbstruck to find out that the Imperial Japanese Navy carried out its own search for Amelia Earhart in the Marianas Islands (http://pacificwrecks.com/aircraft/electra/earhart/#fdr). Like the US Navy search around Howland Island, the IJN search in the Marianas failed to find any trace of AE or her plane. When putting Japan's failed efforts to find AE in the context of the conspiracy theory that AE accidentally flew to Saipan and Josephine Akiyama's claim that she saw NR16020 land at Aslito Airport, the fact that the Japanese cooperated with the US in the Earhart search weakens claims by Earhart naysayers that her cicrumglobal flight was merely a cover for her to spy on the Japanese and raises questions about whether Josephine Akiyama ever really saw a silver aircraft fly over her head or her claim was just the result of her hallucinations. Since the Japanese controlled the Marianas after WW1, would it be reasonable to assume that the Japanese government was making preparations for the IJN to search the Marianas for AE when news of AE's disappearance reached Japan?