Japanese Blogger Points Out Timeline Flaw In Supposed Earhart Photo 
 
 A Japanese military history buff has found library records showing a photo supposedly depicting Amelia Earhart survived a crash landing in 1937 was actually published two years before the famous aviator vanished. 
 
 The photograph in question was featured in a History Channel special and received widespread media attention. Here's how NPR's Laurel Wamsley described the discovery of the image: 
 
 "A former U.S. Treasury agent named Les Kinney found the photo in a box of papers from the Office of Naval Intelligence while scouring for evidence regarding Earhart's disappearance that might have been overlooked. The undated photo was in a box marked 'declassified.' Its caption reads 'PL-Marshall Islands, Jaluit Atoll, Jaluit Island. Jaluit Harbor. ONI #14381.' " 
 
 In the History Channel special, some analysts argued that the photo showed Earhart (sitting at the end of the dock, facing away from the camera) and her navigator Fred Noonan (on the far left of the image). They identified the ship in the background as the Koshu Maru, and argued that the Koshu Maru rescued Earhart and Noonan after they crash-landed in 1937. 
 
 Enlarge this image toggle caption U.S. National Archives, courtesy Les Kinney U.S. National Archives, courtesy Les Kinney 
 
 But a Japanese military history blogger, who goes by @baron_yamaneko on Twitter, found evidence the photo predated Earhart's famous disappearance. The History Channel is aware of the evidence and says it is investigating. 
 
 In an English-language post, the blogger explains that "the photograph was first published in Palau under Japanese rule in 1935, in a photo book ... So the photograph was taken at least two years before Amelia Earhart disappear[ed] in 1937 and a person on the photo was not her." 
 
 The photo book in question was digitized and published online by Japan's National Diet Library. The publication date is listed in the traditional Japanese style as "Showa 10" — that is, 1935. 
 
 The blogger also identifies the ship in the image as the Koshu, which the Japanese seized in World War I, rather than the Koshu Maru, which was launched in 1937. 
 
 The History Channel tells NPR it has "a team of investigators exploring the latest developments about Amelia Earhart and we will be transparent in our findings. 
 
 "Ultimately historical accuracy is most important to us and our viewers," spokeswoman Kirby Dixon said in a statement. ||||| Documentary claimed photo showed aviator on Japanese-held Marshall Islands in 1937, but image was found in book published two years earlier 
 
 Claims made in a US documentary that the pioneering aviator Amelia Earhart crash-landed on the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean and was taken prisoner by the Japanese appear to have been proved false by a photograph unearthed in a travel book. 
 
 
 
 The History Channel documentary, Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence, which aired in the US on Sunday, made the claim that the American and her navigator, Fred Noonan, ended up in Japanese custody based on a photograph discovered in the US national archives that purported to show them standing at a harbour on one of the islands. 
 
 
 
 The film said the image “may hold the key to solving one of history’s all-time greatest mysteries” and suggested it disproved the widely accepted theory that Earhart and Noonan disappeared over the western Pacific on 2 July 1937 near the end of their attempt at a history-making flight around the world. 
 
 Newly discovered photo reignites Amelia Earhart conspiracy theory Read more 
 
 But serious doubts now surround the film’s premise after a Tokyo-based blogger unearthed the same photograph in the archives of the National Diet Library, Japan’s national library. 
 
 The image was part of a Japanese-language travelogue about the South Seas that was published almost two years before Earhart disappeared. Page 113 states the book was published in Japanese-held Palau on 10 October 1935. 
 
 The caption beneath the image makes no mention of the identities of the people in the photograph. It describes maritime activity at the harbour on Jabor in the Jaluit atoll – the headquarters for Japan’s administration of the Marshall Islands between the first world war and its defeat in the second world war. 
 
 The caption notes that monthly races between schooners belonging to local tribal leaders and other vessels turned the port into a “bustling spectacle”. 
 
 Kota Yamano, a military history blogger who unearthed the Japanese photograph, said it took him just 30 minutes to effectively debunk the documentary’s central claim. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Amelia Earhart with her navigator, Captain Fred Noonan, in the hangar at Parnamerim airfield, Natal, Brazil, 11 June 1937. Photograph: Topical Press Agency/Getty Images 
 
 “I have never believed the theory that Earhart was captured by the Japanese military, so I decided to find out for myself,” Yamano told the Guardian. “I was sure that the same photo must be on record in Japan.” 
 
 Yamano ran an online search using the keyword “Jaluit atoll” and a decade-long timeframe starting in 1930. 
 
 “The photo was the 10th item that came up,” he said. “I was really happy when I saw it. I find it strange that the documentary makers didn’t confirm the date of the photograph or the publication in which it originally appeared. That’s the first thing they should have done.” 
 
 Yamano’s Twitter post fuelled social media discussion of the possible cause of Earhart’s disappearance and criticism of the History Channel documentary. 
 
 The photograph shows a woman with her back to the camera, whom the film suggests is Earhart, alongside a man – purportedly Noonan – whose face is visible, with other people standing on a dock on Jaluit atoll in the Marshall Islands. 
 
 
 
 Earhart and Noonan were last seen taking off in her twin-engine Lockheed Electra on 2 July 1937, from Papua New Guinea en route to Howland Island, about 2,500 miles away. 
 
 The documentary, hosted by former FBI executive assistant director Shawn Henry, also alleges a cover-up, claiming that the US government knew of her whereabouts but did nothing to rescue her. 
 
 The film cites facial-recognition and other forensic testing that confirmed the photograph’s authenticity, and concluded that the two figures in question were likely to be Earhart and Noonan. 
 
 The film describes Earhart as “a world-famous aviator who got caught up in an international dispute, was abandoned by her own government, and made the ultimate sacrifice”. 
 
 Henry said: “She may very well be the first casualty of world war two.” 
 
 
 
 The picture “clearly indicates that Earhart was captured by the Japanese”, said retired US treasury agent Les Kinney, who unearthed the image in the US national archives in 2012. 
 
 The version of the photo Kinney found in the US archives is undated, but he has said he believes it was taken in July 1937 – a theory now disproved by the image from Japanese archives. 
 
 The Marshall Island theory, which the photograph is alleged to support, has been around since at least the 1960s and was fuelled by accounts from Marshall Islanders, who claimed they watched the aircraft land and saw Earhart and Noonan in Japanese custody. 
 
 The History Channel website said “new evidence” suggests that Earhart died in Japanese custody on the island of Saipan. Wally Earhart, Amelia’s cousin, has said – without offering evidence – that she died of dysentery and other illnesses, while Noonan was beheaded by the Japanese. 
 
 Conspiracy theories have abounded for decades, since no trace of Earhart, Noonan or their plane has ever been confirmed. 
 
 
 
 Other experts have cast doubt on the documentary’s photos claims. Ric Gillespie, executive director of the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, said there was no evidence that the person in the photograph was Earhart. 
 
 Gillespie believes Earhart died as a castaway on the island of Nikumaroro, Kiribati, where a partial skeleton was discovered in 1940. “There is such an appetite for anything related to Amelia Earhart that even something this ridiculous will get everybody talking about it,” said Gillespie, author of Finding Amelia. 
 
 “This is just a picture of a wharf at Jaluit [in the Marshall Islands], with a bunch of people,” Gillespie said. “It’s just silly. And this is coming from a guy who has spent the last 28 years doing genuine research into the Earhart disappearance and led 11 expeditions into the South Pacific.” 
 
 Matthew B Holly, a military expert, told Agence France-Presse the photo appeared to have been taken about a decade earlier than the date given by the History Channel. 
 
 “From the Marshallese visual background, lack of Japanese flags flying on any vessels but one, and the age configuration of the steam-driven steel vessels, the photo is closer to the late 1920s or early 1930s, not anywhere near 1937,” he said. ||||| A new theory about the fate of Amelia Earhart is seriously undermined by evidence obtained by The Daily Beast. The theory, to be aired Sunday in a History Channel documentary, claims that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, were rescued by the Japanese after crash landing in the Marshall Islands and then taken to a Japanese prison where they died in captivity. 
 
 The pivot of the documentary’s case is a photograph, undated, of a wharf at Jaluit Island, one of the scores of atolls that make up the Marshall Islands. A forensic expert who specializes in facial recognition appears in the program to support the claim that Earhart and Noonan are among a group of people on the wharf. 
 
 Just beyond the wharf, in the harbor, is a Japanese military vessel identified as the Koshu Maru. The documentary suggests that after this picture was taken Earhart and Noonan were arrested and taken aboard the Koshu Maru and that a barge alongside contained the remains of their Lockheed Electra airplane. 
 
 According to the documentary, it is likely that the Koshu Maru then sailed for the island of Saipan where the two Americans were imprisoned and then killed. 
 
 The role of the Koshu Maru (maru means ship in Japanese) is therefore crucial to the theory that Earhart and Noonan are, indeed, the people in the photograph. 
 
 However, in 1982 a Japanese author and journalist, Fukiko Aoki, published a book in Japanese, Looking for Amelia. She found a surviving crewmember of the Koshu Maru, a telegraphist named Lieutenant Sachinao Kouzu. He told her that, like other Japanese ships in the western Pacific, they were told that Earhart had disappeared while over the ocean and were alerted to look out for any sign of the airplane and, if they did, seek to rescue Earhart and Noonan. 
 
 After a few days, said Kouzo, the alert was dropped. At no time did anyone on Koshu Maru set eyes on the Americans, alive or dead. 
 
 Aoki told The Daily Beast that her interest in the Earhart story was sparked when she read a story about four Japanese meteorologists who were assigned to a weather station on Greenwich Island in the South Pacific. As soon as they arrived at the station early in July 1937, they received a government message to look out for the aviators and, if they saw them, to organize a rescue operation. They saw nothing. 
 
 “The disappearance of Amelia Earhart looks so different from the Japanese and American sides,” Aoki told The Daily Beast. “One of the weathermen, an old guy called Yoneji Inoue, protested against the theory that Amelia was captured and executed by the Japanese. I wanted to find out what really happened. I found and checked the log of the Koshu Maru, but of course I couldn’t find any description of the capture of Amelia Earhart.” 
 
 Aoki later moved to New York where she became bureau chief for the Japanese edition of Newsweek. She has written 12 books. Looking for Amelia was republished as a paperback in 1995 but only in Japanese. 
 
 The four meteorologists were taken to Greenwich Island on the Koshu Maru, arriving on July 3, the day after Earhart disappeared. Greenwich Island is now named Kapingamaranji,and is 1,500 miles from the Marshall Island where the photo supposedly of Earhart was taken, which means that the vessel was nowhere near the Marshall Islands at the crucial time. 
 
 As Aoki’s research indicates, the assumption that the Japanese military was under orders to arrest and quietly kill Earhart and Noonan them shows little understanding of what was happening in the Pacific at the time. 
 
 Get The Beast In Your Inbox! Daily Digest Start and finish your day with the top stories from The Daily Beast. Cheat Sheet A speedy, smart summary of all the news you need to know (and nothing you don't). By clicking “Subscribe,” you agree to have read the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy Subscribe Thank You! You are now subscribed to the Daily Digest and Cheat Sheet. We will not share your email with anyone for any reason. 
 
 The war in the Pacific didn’t begin with Pearl Harbor. It began on July 7, 1937, five days after Earhart disappeared, when a minor clash between Japanese and Chinese troops near Beijing suddenly turned into all-out war between the two nations. 
 
 The last thing the Japanese needed was to inflame American opinion by murdering the world’s most-famous woman. Although they had a formidable air force and navy the Japanese were distracted by Soviet Russia’s claims to Japanese islands and at that time they also feared American naval power in the Pacific. America, in turn, wanted no part of the war in China. 
 
 Just how anxious both the U.S. and Japan were to avoid conflict was revealed by an incident in December 1937. An American gunboat, the USS Panay, that was allowed to patrol the Yangtze River by international agreement, was called in to evacuate staff from the U.S. embassy in Nanking, as well as some international journalists as the Japanese carpet-bombed the city. 
 
 The Panay sailed upriver to what the captain thought would be a safe refuge and anchored alongside other boats laden with Chinese refugees. 
 
 But a swarm of Japanese bombers attacked all the boats, including the Panay. Two U.S. crewmen and an Italian journalist were killed. The Japanese claimed that the attack was an accident. President Roosevelt was so anxious that the bombing should not lead to calls for retaliation that he censored newsreel footage. The Japanese, alarmed that they might have awakened a sleeping tiger, paid $2.2 million in compensation. 
 
 Then there is how the Japanese treated Charles Lindbergh. 
 
 In August 1931, he flew from Alaska across the Bering Sea to Japan in a seaplane with his wife Anne. Thick fog forced Lindbergh to make a blind landing using only his instruments. After touchdown, with the engine shut down, the airplane drifted dangerously close to rocks and was rescued by a Japanese boat that towed them to a safe harbor. 
 
 When they reached Tokyo the Japanese gave the Lindberghs a welcome that one newspaper said was “one of the greatest demonstrations ever seen in the ancient capital.” 
 
 As for Earhart, there was no military intelligence value to the Japanese in getting their hands on her Lockheed Electra. The Electra was widely used by airlines across the world and held no technological secrets. By 1937 the Japanese were mass-producing a Mitsubishi bomber so far superior to the similarly-sized Electra that when it was converted to an airliner it flew a record-breaking round-the-world flight. 
 
 The theory that Earthart crash landed in the Marshall Islands is not supported by the basic rules of geography and navigation. It rests on the idea that, once Earhart realized she had missed a scheduled rendezvous with a U.S. Coast Guard cutter on tiny Howland Island, she reversed direction. 
 
 The Marshall Islands are 800 miles northwest of Howland Island, way beyond the range of the Electra as it was running low on gas at the end of a long leg from Papua New Guinea, over the Pacific. 
 
 Her only option was to look for a landing place that was much closer and, ideally, ahead of her rather than far behind. 
 
 Her last message to the cutter was at 8:43 a.m. on July 2. It was that she was flying on a line of 157 337 – that is, the southeasterly course from her starting point that intersected Howland Island. Because of an unexplained problem with the Electra’s radio, the cutter could receive her messages but she couldn’t receive the replies. 
 
 As a result, in the 80-year search for Earhart there is nothing to go on to point to her final position beyond what was in that radio transmission. Yet on the basis of that one transmission we arrive at the next most prominent theory about Earhart’s fate. 
 
 This takes us to an atoll named Nikumaroro Island, 350 miles southeast of Howland Island, and to Ric Gillespie, chief executive of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, TIGHAR. 
 
 Gillespie is the best funded and most persistent of all Earhart hunters. Since 1989 he has directed 12 expeditions to Nikumaroro, partly funded by National Geographic, and each expedition follows the same pattern: advance publicity that garners a gullible audience and funds, followed by negligible results, some bordering on the ludicrous. 
 
 Gillespie gave scientific credence to his theory by analyzing 120 reports of radio traffic in the area of Nikumaroro at the time and deciding that 57 messages were possibly transmitted from the Electra, beginning three hours after the final transmission picked up by the Coast Guard cutter. 
 
 To believe this demands two leaps of faith or, more likely, of the imagination. The first is that Earhart managed to land on the atoll and the second is that she did so with such skill that her radio remained able to operate. 
 
 Such a landing would have required a near miraculous feat of airmanship. Nikumaroro is a typical coral atoll sitting atop a volcano with a rocky reef looping around a lagoon with only a tiny appendage of flat surface. And although she did not lack courage, Earhart was not a pilot of natural intuitive skills, like Lindbergh, and the Electra was an unforgiving machine in a marginal situation like this. 
 
 Earhart, under the stress of knowing that her fuel was running out, would have had to align her approach over water at a shallow angle and make a finely-judged touchdown with no margin of error. Landing on an aircraft carrier would be much easier. 
 
 For the radio signal theory to have any credence the airplane then had to remain undamaged by water – for days. 
 
 For a fraction of the money that TIGHAR has invested and is still investing in its expeditions they could have commissioned a computer program to simulate the landing. All the necessary data about the handling characteristics of the Electra and the probable weather and sea conditions at the time are available. The trouble is, of course, that this would prove the impossibility of the idea. 
 
 Gillespie was, not surprisingly, dissed when told of the History Channel “revelation” about the Marshall Islands. 
 
 “This is just a picture of a wharf at Jaluit with a bunch of people, it’s just silly,” he said. 
 
 This happened when Gillespie had just sent another expedition to Nikumaroro, this time including four sniffer dogs trained by the Institute for Canine Forensics. The dogs arrived wearing life vests when the temperature was more than 100 degrees. They were looking for human remains – the latest spin of the theory being that Earhart and Noonan had perished there. 
 
 The Earhart saga will go on providing endless fuel for lovers of the classic vanishing airplane narratives. People in the grip of a pet theory will go to great lengths to believe in that theory on the thinnest evidence. Gillespie, for example, seized on the discovery of a jar of 1930s ointment for the treatment of freckles found in the waters near Nikumaroro as evidence that Earhart, famously freckled, had made it to the island. 
 
 Freckles would not have been of much concern as Earhart planned her flight. Nothing that was not essential was carried in the Electra. She was piloting what was virtually a flying gas station. In place of passenger seats the airplane was stuffed with six large extra gas tanks and had another six in the wings, as well as having to carry 80 gallons of oil for its hot-running supercharged engines. 
 
 There is, to be sure, no reason to stop looking for Earhart, Noonan and the Electra. The odds are that after a desperate search for land they ended up, out of fuel, ditching into the ocean, and then plunged as far as 17,000 feet down to the bottom of the ocean. They most certainly didn’t die in a Japanese prison. ||||| Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. 
 
 / Updated By Tom Costello and Daniel Arkin 
 
 A newly discovered photograph suggests legendary aviator Amelia Earhart, who vanished 80 years ago on a round-the-world flight, survived a crash-landing in the Marshall Islands. 
 
 The photo, found in a long-forgotten file in the National Archives, shows a woman who resembles Earhart and a man who appears to be her navigator, Fred Noonan, on a dock. The discovery is featured in a new History channel special, "Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence," that airs Sunday. 
 
 Independent analysts told History the photo appears legitimate and undoctored. Shawn Henry, former executive assistant director for the FBI and an NBC News analyst, has studied the photo and feels confident it shows the famed pilot and her navigator. 
 
 "When you pull out, and when you see the analysis that's been done, I think it leaves no doubt to the viewers that that's Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan," Henry told NBC News. 
 
 Earhart was last heard from on July 2, 1937, as she attempted to become the first woman pilot to circumnavigate the globe. She was declared dead two years later after the U.S. concluded she had crashed somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, and her remains were never found. 
 
 Amelia Earhart sits in her Electra plane cabin at the airport in Burbank, California, on May 20, 1937. Albert Bresnik / Paragon Agency via AP 
 
 But investigators believe they have found evidence Earhart and Noonan were blown off course but survived the ordeal. The investigative team behind the History special believes the photo may have been taken by someone who was spying for the U.S. on Japanese military activity in the Pacific. 
 
 It is not clear how Earhart and Noonan could have flown so far off course. 
 
 Les Kinney, a retired government investigator who has spent 15 years looking for Earhart clues, said the photo "clearly indicates that Earhart was captured by the Japanese." 
 
 Japanese authorities told NBC News they have no record of Earhart being in their custody. 
 
 Related: The Search Is Still On for Amelia Earhart 80 Years After She Disappeared 
 
 The photo, marked "Jaluit Atoll" and believed to have been taken in 1937, shows a short-haired woman — potentially Earhart — on a dock with her back to the camera. (She's wearing pants, something for which Earhart was known.) She sits near a standing man who looks like Noonan — down to the hairline. 
 
 "The hairline is the most distinctive characteristic," said Ken Gibson, a facial recognition expert who studied the image. "It's a very sharp receding hairline. The nose is very prominent." 
 
 Gibson added: "It's my feeling that this is very convincing evidence that this is probably Noonan." 
 
 A newly discovered photo shows a woman who resembles Amelia Earhart and a man who appears to be her navigator, Fred Noonan. National Archives 
 
 The photo shows a Japanese ship, Koshu, towing a barge with something that appears to be 38-feet-long — the same length as Earhart's plane. 
 
 For decades, locals have claimed they saw Earhart's plane crash before she and Noonan were taken away. Native schoolkids insisted they saw Earhart in captivity. The story was even documented in postage stamps issued in the 1980s. 
 
 "We believe that the Koshu took her to Saipan [in the Mariana Islands], and that she died there under the custody of the Japanese," said Gary Tarpinian, the executive producer of the History special. 
 
 "We don't know how she died," Tarpinian said. "We don't know when." 
 
 Josephine Blanco Akiyama, who lived on Saipan as a child, has long claimed she saw Earhart in Japanese custody. 
 
 "I didn't even know it was a woman, I thought it was a man," said Akiyama. "Everybody was talking about her — they were talking about in Japanese. That's why I know that she's a woman. They were talking about a woman flyer." 
 
 It is not clear if the U.S. government knew who was in the photo. If it was taken by a spy, the U.S. may not have wanted to compromise that person by revealing the image.
– A new History documentary floats one of the most provocative theories yet about Amelia Earhart: The show focuses on a newly surfaced photo that some think proves she and navigator Fred Noonan survived their 1937 plane crash. Investigators with the documentary say the image shows Earhart sitting on a dock with her back to the camera and Noonan standing to the far left, reports Time. The person believed to be Earhart is looking out at a ship that appears to be towing a plane. The image fits into a larger theory: After being blown off course, Earhart crashed in the Marshall Islands, then got picked up by the Japanese military, which apparently thought she and Noonan were spies. They were then taken to Saipan, where they're believed to have died in prison. History buff and retired federal agent Les Kinney says he found the "misfiled" photo in the National Archives, per People. "When you pull out, and when you see the analysis that's been done, I think it leaves no doubt to the viewers that that's Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan," former FBI official Shawn Henry tells NBC News. The photo has Office of Naval Intelligence markings and is labeled "Marshall Islands, Jaluit Atoll, Jaluit Island, Jaluit Harbor." The photo, which isn't dated, might have been taken by someone spying for the US on Japan's military operations in the Pacific. Not everyone is buying it, however. Dorothy Cochrane, curator for the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Aeronautics Department, tells People that the idea Japan took Earhart prisoner is "ridiculous." She had not yet seen the show, which airs Sunday night.