Book Claims To Solve Amelia Earhart Mystery Disappearance

Irene Bolam (a/k/a Amelia Earhart?)

Author W. C. Jameson has published a new book in which he claims to have solved the mystery disappearance of Amelia Earhart and her co-pilot, Fred Noonan, in 1937 when they were attempting to circumnavigate the globe in a Lockheed 10 Electra, a trip which was supposedly sponsored by Purdue University where she was a member of the aviation department's faculty. According to the book, Earhart and Noonan were actually working as spies for the U.S. Navy when their airplane, which was equipped with cameras used to photograph Japanese military installations, was either shot down or crash landed in the Marshall Islands. The book claims Earhart and Noonan survived the plane crash and were captured by the Japanese and held as prisoners of war.

The book claims Earhart assumed the identity of a childhood friend, Irene Craigmile Bolam, who was also an aviator, while in captivity. There is speculation in the book that the voice of at least one of the Tokyo Rose propagandists during World War II was that of Earhart. The U.S. government is accused of being complicit in a cover up of Earhart's status as a Japanese POW and use in Japanese propaganda efforts to avoid disclosing the true mission of her 1937 flight as a spy for the U.S. military. Bolam, who later became a prosperous banker in New York and shared many friends with Earhart, always denied she was Earhart and once sued a book publisher in the 1970s which made an earlier claim about Earhart's true identity.

As a side note, it's interesting to note that Amelia Earhart's mother attended the trial of Iva Toguri, a Los Angeles resident who was tried and convicted by the U.S. government for treason as a Tokyo Rose voice during World War II in 1949. Toguri was later pardoned by President Gerald Ford after it was learned that federal prosecutors forced witnesses who testified against Toguri to commit perjury while on the witness stand. Some who believe the narrative advanced by Jameson note the striking similarities in the voice of Earhart and the voice of Tokyo Rose heard by U.S. soldiers, in addition to the uncanny physical resemblance of Earhart and Bolam. Skeptics point out that Toguri spoke with an accent unlike the distinctive American voice of Tokyo Rose. Irene Bolam died in 1982. Many U.S. military documents related to Earhart remained classified as top secret and hidden from the public all of these years later.