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Author Topic: Perish the Thought II  (Read 38805 times)

Brad Beeching

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Perish the Thought II
« on: June 11, 2012, 04:46:07 PM »

I was reading of Dr. Stone's visit to Niku in 2002 last night and had an ugly thought. What if there is an inter-island junk dealer out there who saw a bunch of junk washed up on the beach and decided since it was light enough for his winch to pick up, he did and now that which we seek ended up as a Fosters can in East Slovobia somewhere?

Brad
Brad

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Randy Reid

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Re: Perish the Thought II
« Reply #1 on: June 11, 2012, 05:27:08 PM »

 ;D I believe I can see rivet holes in my beer can  ;D

Randy
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Tom Bryant

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Re: Perish the Thought II
« Reply #2 on: June 11, 2012, 06:52:33 PM »

That's always one of the challenges of doing archaeology. Your valuable artifact is somebody else's resource. Especially if resources are scarce. No wonder the local native population would be considered for their potential for gathering and using some bits and pieces. It happens over and over all over the world as we build on the bones of those that came before.
"Well... it seemed like a good idea at the time"
 
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George Pachulski

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Re: Perish the Thought II
« Reply #3 on: June 20, 2012, 09:35:55 AM »

A speculation .....or am I a victim of hearsay?

  Along a similar line of thought I remember hearing that certain secret documents from the war (WWII) era were not as yet open for the public to examine.  Initially a fifty year period after the war ie 45 --95  was the cutoff date, but then I heard that some of those files had been closed for an extra 50 years due to complications that may arise from the information contained therin..  My speculation is was this the case with the bones documents? 

Could the bones themselves still be somewere but their location is still classified for whatever reason; acka a warehouse Indian  jones style ?

Please note  , this is just a speculation on my part   after all there are still mysteries such as the "Rudolf Hess Hitlers Deputy in Scotland " event and the "Sikorski Airplane accident"  and others that are not fully penned yet.

Problably a few more..too
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Martin X. Moleski, SJ

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Re: Perish the Thought II
« Reply #4 on: June 21, 2012, 08:51:10 PM »

Along a similar line of thought I remember hearing that certain secret documents from the war (WWII) era were not as yet open for the public to examine.  Initially a fifty year period after the war ie 45 --95  was the cutoff date, but then I heard that some of those files had been closed for an extra 50 years due to complications that may arise from the information contained therin..  My speculation is was this the case with the bones documents? 

Not that we know of.  I suppose that if we are imagining secret files that have not yet been made public, it is the kind of thing that we could not know about until someone searches them.

The bones file was created by the Western Pacific High Commission.  I'm not clear on the relationship of the WPHC to the British military system, but, so far as I know, the WPHC Archives were not classified as military secrets.  There are files in the system that are marked "secret," but most of them seemed to be dealing with international diplomacy and land claims (e.g., the U.S. vs. Britain on Canton), not with military activity. 

There is no evidence in the bones file that the WPHC officially contacted anyone in the U.S. diplomatic service to discuss the bones found on Niku.  Without that correspondence, I would not expect any U.S. files on the question to exist.

Apart from the Kilts story, no one seems to have published anything about the remains of a skeleton being found on Niku until a TIGHAR researcher found the Tarawa file in 1997.

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Could the bones themselves still be somewhere but their location is still classified for whatever reason; acka a warehouse Indian Jones style?

That would be wonderful!  I didn't list that explicitly in my discussion of the possibilities after Bones II, but it can't be ruled out because we have not been given permission to search all Indiana-Jones-style warehouses in Fiji, Great Britain, the U.S., and Auckland.

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Please note  , this is just a speculation on my part   after all there are still mysteries such as the "Rudolf Hess Hitlers Deputy in Scotland " event and the "Sikorski Airplane accident"  and others that are not fully penned yet.

Probably a few more..too

If the bones or other documents about their disposition are locked up, we'll just have to wait until someone unlocks the doors.  There is no direct way that I know of to act on this theory.
LTM,

           Marty
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George Pachulski

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Re: Perish the Thought II
« Reply #5 on: June 22, 2012, 08:15:15 AM »

You have encouraged me to postulate further with regards to this matter.
For good or otherwise...   :-X

In the year 1940 Britain was at war with Nazi Germany and Japan. The US was not. 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.

Britain was working on getting the US involved on their side, much as they were working on splitting up the German-Russian alliance. This rather obscure matter with AE would not lend itself to helping them with the depressing war scenario, they then were in, until properly thought out by Admiralty or the mechanizem that Empire works.

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.

All this may give us hope that AE, or the box of bones, was not thrown away but is biding its time somewhere.


Imagine a box in a warehouse with the words stencilled on it: -----

    Half-Caste   P.I.S.S.  Retain   :P

Sorry about that..


Oh yes the book I'm reading Finding Ameila is truley interesting ...
« Last Edit: June 22, 2012, 09:11:09 AM by George Pachulski »
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Gary LaPook

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Re: Perish the Thought II
« Reply #6 on: June 22, 2012, 09:47:57 AM »

You have encouraged me to postulate further with regards to this matter.
For good or otherwise...   :-X

In the year 1940 Britain was at war with Nazi Germany and Japan. The US was not. 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.

Britain was working on getting the US involved on their side, much as they were working on splitting up the German-Russian alliance. This rather obscure matter with AE would not lend itself to helping them with the depressing war scenario, they then were in, until properly thought out by Admiralty or the mechanizem that Empire works.

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.

All this may give us hope that AE, or the box of bones, was not thrown away but is biding its time somewhere.


Imagine a box in a warehouse with the words stencilled on it: -----

    Half-Caste   P.I.S.S.  Retain   :P

Sorry about that..


Oh yes the book I'm reading Finding Ameila is truley interesting ...

1. Britain had nothing to do with causing the loss of Earhart so no reason to fear a backlash from Americans because they found her bones on one of their islands.
2. Britain was not at war with Japan until December 8, 1941 (the same as December 7, 1941 in Hawaii, a date you should recognize) more than a year after the bones were found.
gl
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Martin X. Moleski, SJ

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Re: Perish the Thought II
« Reply #7 on: June 22, 2012, 11:40:34 AM »

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.

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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.

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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.

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Imagine a box in a warehouse with the words stencilled on it: -----

    Half-Caste   P.I.S.S.  Retain   :P

Sorry about that..

It's OK.  The fellows who coined the name were quite pleased that it was accepted, I believe.   ::)

Quote
Oh yes the book I'm reading, ''Finding Amelia,'' is truly interesting ...

Agreed.
LTM,

           Marty
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Chris Johnson

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Re: Perish the Thought II
« Reply #8 on: June 23, 2012, 07:04:04 AM »

I was reading of Dr. Stone's visit to Niku in 2002 last night and had an ugly thought. What if there is an inter-island junk dealer out there who saw a bunch of junk washed up on the beach and decided since it was light enough for his winch to pick up, he did and now that which we seek ended up as a Fosters can in East Slovobia somewhere?

Brad

If I remember rightly when TIGHAR announced the 'red' object found in a satilite image of the island some salvage firm went to Niku and pulled off a chunk of the Norwich City.  I'll get the link later.
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Chris Johnson

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Re: Perish the Thought II
« Reply #9 on: June 23, 2012, 07:13:31 AM »

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Martin X. Moleski, SJ

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Re: Perish the Thought II
« Reply #10 on: June 23, 2012, 07:55:36 AM »

Link to above

Thanks for the link, Chris.

I have started a list of "Visitors to Nikumaroro" to keep track of oddities like this. 
LTM,

           Marty
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Chris Johnson

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Re: Perish the Thought II
« Reply #11 on: June 23, 2012, 07:56:47 AM »

Your welcome, my heads stuffed full of mostly useless information  ;D
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Martin X. Moleski, SJ

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Re: Perish the Thought II
« Reply #12 on: June 23, 2012, 08:24:41 AM »

Your welcome, my heads stuffed full of mostly useless information  ;D

Hah!  So is the TIGHAR website, I guess.   8)
LTM,

           Marty
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John Ousterhout

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Re: Perish the Thought II
« Reply #13 on: June 23, 2012, 08:28:09 AM »

It makes me wonder how common there are/were visitors to any other islands.  Certainly the skeletons found would indicate that someone got stranded there, presumably due to their craft being lost on the reef.  The same might be said of the Norwich city crew.  Should we start referring to Niku as the Crossroads of the Pacific? 
Cheers,
JohnO
 
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Chris Johnson

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Re: Perish the Thought II
« Reply #14 on: June 23, 2012, 08:42:33 AM »

JohnO,

Martys started work on a topic on the Wiki visitors to Niku.  One thing we do know is that the British tried (i use that word because we all do stuff were not supposed to do) stop unofficial inter island travel by the natives.  How successfull was this I've no way of knowing.

Prior to the 'aquiring' of territories by european powers the micro and polynesians were known to be great sea farers.

I'm sure Dr Kings book 'shoes' mentions pre historic artifacts found on Niku.  I'll dig (no pun intended) the reference out and post it.
« Last Edit: June 23, 2012, 08:44:53 AM by Chris Johnson »
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