thedrifter
07-18-08, 06:49 AM
Incredible WWII legends found in Pacific
SAIPAN - For a week I've been traveling in Saipan and Guam, coming to learn three startling World War II legends relating to these two U.S. territories in the far-Western Pacific so distant from mainland America in mileage, culture and history.
One of these legends, which its adherents insist is true, is patently false, according to most reliable historians. The other two, all agree, are 100 percent valid.
The highly-dubious legend refers to the July 1, 1937 mysterious disappearance of famed aviator Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, who were en route in their twin-engine Lockheed Electra from Lae, New Guinea, to Howland Island in the Pacific during their round-the-world flight.
After departing New Guinea, Earhart, Noonan and their aircraft vanished. A massive search by U.S. Navy vessels was unsuccessful, and today, 71 years later, the search continues. Some believe the Electra ran out of gas and fell into the sea, killing the pair instantly. Others believe the plane crashed on a deserted island, and the fliers ultimately died of exposure and starvation.
Here on Saipan, capital of the U.S. Territory of the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas, I've heard an astonishingly radical thesis: Earhart and Noonan somehow managed to reach Saipan, land their airplane just as its fuel was running out, and then were captured by the Japanese who had held this island since the end of WW I in 1917 when they purchased it from Germany.
CBS newsman Fred Goerner published a book in 1966 advancing this theory that two U. S. marines claimed they saw Earhart's plane inside a Japanese military hangar after United States forces liberated Saipan in 1944, and several native Saipanese have sworn they saw Earhart and Noonan being held in a Japanese prison on this island.
Other Saipanese have pointed out the fliers' graves, but no bones have been found in the alleged graves. The jail site still exists here, and visitors are shown the cell where Earhart and Noonan reportedly were held.
Another far-fetched theory is that Earhart managed to escape from Saipan, reach the U.S., and live out her life in New Jersey under an assumed name.
"All of these theories of Earhart and Noonan landing here are just nonsense. They undoubtedly died in the ocean or on deserted Gardner Island," says Northern Marianas College history professor Samuel F. McPhetres, a 30-year Saipan resident.
"But the Saipan angle makes good reading, so it will never go away until proven wrong," he said.
In 1943, the feature film "Flight for Freedom," starring Rosalind Russell and Fred MacMurray, alleged in its plot that Earhart was spying on the Japanese under U.S. orders and was executed when her plane landed here. A new movie titled "Amelia" starring Richard Gere and Hilary Swank is to be released in 2009, but it is unknown what theory it will develop regarding the fliers' disappearance.
Meanwhile, on Guam, 125 miles south of here, the two legends that no one doubts whatsoever relate to a U.S. Navy enlisted radioman and a Japanese Army sergeant who hid out from Japanese and U.S. forces, respectively, during and after World War II.
Navy radioman George Tweed, who hid for 31 months from the Japanese on Guam until the island's liberation by the U.S. in 1944, lived in a succession of caves and was aided by local natives. Several of them and U.S. prisoners were tortured and beheaded by the Japanese for refusing to give up the elusive Tweed.
Known as the "Caveman of Guam" and "The Robinson Crusoe of Guam," Tweed was able to signal U.S. destroyers by a mirror and signal flags just a few days before U.S. forces stormed the island and was rescued. He was awarded the Legion of Merit and wrote a book titled "Robinson Crusoe, USN," which subsequently was turned into the 1962 movie, "No Man is an Island" starring Jeffrey Hunter and Marshall Thompson. Tweed died in 1989 at the age of 89 following a Northern California automobile crash.
The Japanese soldier who hid from the Americans was Sgt. Shoichi Yokoi, who eluded U.S. troops on Guam for an incredible 28 years, hiding in caves and scourging in garbage cans for food and eating plants, roots and nuts to survive until being found at the age of 56 by two hunters. When examined by U.S. Army doctors upon his capture, he was found amazingly well and fit.
He regaled incredulous newspaper reporters with his life in hiding, describing how he made shrimp traps from bamboo, rope from coconut fiber, bags from hibiscus fiber, rat traps from string and wire and a cooking pot from a cut-up canteen.
Yokoi said his favorite food was rat liver. He was allowed to return to his family in Japan, which had long given him up for dead. He died in 1997 at the age of 82.
Before his death, Sgt. Yokoi confessed to Japanese reporters that he hid out all those years not in fear of the Americans, but because he did not commit suicide, an act his military superiors had told him was more heroic than being captured.
David C. Henley is Publisher Emeritus of the LVN.
Ellie
SAIPAN - For a week I've been traveling in Saipan and Guam, coming to learn three startling World War II legends relating to these two U.S. territories in the far-Western Pacific so distant from mainland America in mileage, culture and history.
One of these legends, which its adherents insist is true, is patently false, according to most reliable historians. The other two, all agree, are 100 percent valid.
The highly-dubious legend refers to the July 1, 1937 mysterious disappearance of famed aviator Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, who were en route in their twin-engine Lockheed Electra from Lae, New Guinea, to Howland Island in the Pacific during their round-the-world flight.
After departing New Guinea, Earhart, Noonan and their aircraft vanished. A massive search by U.S. Navy vessels was unsuccessful, and today, 71 years later, the search continues. Some believe the Electra ran out of gas and fell into the sea, killing the pair instantly. Others believe the plane crashed on a deserted island, and the fliers ultimately died of exposure and starvation.
Here on Saipan, capital of the U.S. Territory of the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas, I've heard an astonishingly radical thesis: Earhart and Noonan somehow managed to reach Saipan, land their airplane just as its fuel was running out, and then were captured by the Japanese who had held this island since the end of WW I in 1917 when they purchased it from Germany.
CBS newsman Fred Goerner published a book in 1966 advancing this theory that two U. S. marines claimed they saw Earhart's plane inside a Japanese military hangar after United States forces liberated Saipan in 1944, and several native Saipanese have sworn they saw Earhart and Noonan being held in a Japanese prison on this island.
Other Saipanese have pointed out the fliers' graves, but no bones have been found in the alleged graves. The jail site still exists here, and visitors are shown the cell where Earhart and Noonan reportedly were held.
Another far-fetched theory is that Earhart managed to escape from Saipan, reach the U.S., and live out her life in New Jersey under an assumed name.
"All of these theories of Earhart and Noonan landing here are just nonsense. They undoubtedly died in the ocean or on deserted Gardner Island," says Northern Marianas College history professor Samuel F. McPhetres, a 30-year Saipan resident.
"But the Saipan angle makes good reading, so it will never go away until proven wrong," he said.
In 1943, the feature film "Flight for Freedom," starring Rosalind Russell and Fred MacMurray, alleged in its plot that Earhart was spying on the Japanese under U.S. orders and was executed when her plane landed here. A new movie titled "Amelia" starring Richard Gere and Hilary Swank is to be released in 2009, but it is unknown what theory it will develop regarding the fliers' disappearance.
Meanwhile, on Guam, 125 miles south of here, the two legends that no one doubts whatsoever relate to a U.S. Navy enlisted radioman and a Japanese Army sergeant who hid out from Japanese and U.S. forces, respectively, during and after World War II.
Navy radioman George Tweed, who hid for 31 months from the Japanese on Guam until the island's liberation by the U.S. in 1944, lived in a succession of caves and was aided by local natives. Several of them and U.S. prisoners were tortured and beheaded by the Japanese for refusing to give up the elusive Tweed.
Known as the "Caveman of Guam" and "The Robinson Crusoe of Guam," Tweed was able to signal U.S. destroyers by a mirror and signal flags just a few days before U.S. forces stormed the island and was rescued. He was awarded the Legion of Merit and wrote a book titled "Robinson Crusoe, USN," which subsequently was turned into the 1962 movie, "No Man is an Island" starring Jeffrey Hunter and Marshall Thompson. Tweed died in 1989 at the age of 89 following a Northern California automobile crash.
The Japanese soldier who hid from the Americans was Sgt. Shoichi Yokoi, who eluded U.S. troops on Guam for an incredible 28 years, hiding in caves and scourging in garbage cans for food and eating plants, roots and nuts to survive until being found at the age of 56 by two hunters. When examined by U.S. Army doctors upon his capture, he was found amazingly well and fit.
He regaled incredulous newspaper reporters with his life in hiding, describing how he made shrimp traps from bamboo, rope from coconut fiber, bags from hibiscus fiber, rat traps from string and wire and a cooking pot from a cut-up canteen.
Yokoi said his favorite food was rat liver. He was allowed to return to his family in Japan, which had long given him up for dead. He died in 1997 at the age of 82.
Before his death, Sgt. Yokoi confessed to Japanese reporters that he hid out all those years not in fear of the Americans, but because he did not commit suicide, an act his military superiors had told him was more heroic than being captured.
David C. Henley is Publisher Emeritus of the LVN.
Ellie