Some people think the pilot was imprisoned on Japanese territory after a crash-landing. An old photograph could give that theory new life.<\/b>
\nThey are at it again. And this time they have a photo.
Since Amelia Earhart, the famous American aviator, and Fred Noonan, her navigator, disappeared somewhere over the Pacific Ocean during a 1937 attempt to circumnavigate the globe, groups of researchers and historians have argued over their fate.
Did they land, or did they crash? Did they drown at sea, or were they marooned? Did their twin-engine Lockheed Electra plunge into the ocean, never to be seen again? Or was it found \u2014 and even photographed \u2014 on Japanese territory in the years leading up to the United States\u2019 1941 declaration of war on Japan?
Sunday was the 80th anniversary of the disappearance of Ms. Earhart and Mr. Noonan. So it is perhaps no surprise that National Geographic recently announced that a team of forensic dogs was being dispatched to a remote atoll to search for the duo\u2019s remains. And now History \u2014 formerly The History Channel, once known more for its sober documentaries than for reality shows like \u201cPawn Stars\u201d and \u201cAmerican Pickers\u201d \u2014 is debuting a documentary on Sunday about how Ms. Earhart may have ended up in Japanese custody and imprisoned on the island of Saipan.
Various forms of this theory have been tossed around for decades, but a newly discovered photograph is breathing new life into the idea.
The photo, which History said was found in the National Archives by a retired federal agent named Les Kinney, appears to show a tall, trousers-wearing, short-haired woman seated on a dock in Jaluit, an atoll in the Marshall Islands, with her back to the camera.
It also appears to show Mr. Noonan and maybe even the Electra itself, on a barge off in the distance.
Shawn Henry, a former F. B. I. executive assistant director who has been working with History to investigate the photo for about a year, said facial identification experts called it likely that the photos showed Ms. Earhart and Mr. Noonan.
He said the Marshall Islands theory is supported by other evidence, too: pieces of metal that were found in the area and could have come from the Electra; an interview Mr. Henry conducted with an islander who claims to have seen Ms. Earhart around the time of her disappearance; and government records citing reports about Ms. Earhart being imprisoned by the Japanese, though the reports mentioned have not been found.
\u201cWhen you take it all together, to me, it\u2019s beyond a reasonable doubt. That photograph is just a bow on top of a box of evidence, \u201d Mr. Henry said in a phone interview. \u201cAnd that bow, to me, just ties it all together.\u201d
He sounded confident \u2014 just as confident, in fact, as Ric Gillespie, who may be the best-known proponent of another, entirely different theory.
Mr. Gillespie is the executive director of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, a nonprofit that has spent decades searching for Ms. Earhart. He thinks the aviator landed her plane on an atoll (then called Gardner Island, now Nikumaroro) that is more than a thousand miles away from the Marshall Islands.
This week, researchers from that organization are on their 12th mission to Nikumaroro in search of the aviator\u2019s remains. That voyage is the one being supported, in part, by National Geographic and four dogs.
The organization\u2019s previous missions have found promising artifacts, like pieces of what could be airplane metal and parts of jars manufactured by American companies during the 1930s \u2014 including one used for a freckle ointment for women, which wouldn\u2019 t have been out of place among the possessions of the freckled female aviator.
\u201cThere is such a public desire for an answer to this mystery, \u201d Mr. Gillespie said. \u201cBecause it is such a complex and multidisciplinary effort to investigate it, I see it as a wonderful opportunity to explore and demonstrate and teach how we go about figuring out what is true.\u201d
The Marshall Islands and Nikumaroro theories are at odds not only with each other, but with the U. S. government\u2019s official version of events: that Ms. Earhart plunged straight into the ocean in a failed attempt to reach a scheduled stopover at Howland Island.
That position is supported by Dorothy Cochrane, a curator in the aeronautics department at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
The Japanese capture theory has historically been tough to swallow because radio calls suggested that Ms. Earhart was near Howland Island \u2014 which is hundreds of miles southeast of Jaluit \u2014 and running low on fuel before she disappeared, Ms. Cochrane said.
\u201cShe says she is getting low on fuel, then calls 45 minutes later with a worried tone saying she is running the line on which she hoped to cross over Howland Island, \u201d Ms. Cochrane said. \u201cBut she doesn\u2019 t. She doesn\u2019 t say she\u2019s departing the area, nor does she call Mayday.\u201d
Mr. Henry said that while the crash-and-sink theory holds weight in the popular imagination, \u201cthere\u2019s not one shred of evidence that she crashed into the ocean.\u201d Millions of dollars have been spent to explore ocean floor around Howland Island, and no airplane has turned up yet.
\u201cWe all grew up with the story. I grew up with the story since I\u2019 ve been a small kid, that this is what happened to her, \u201d he said. \u201cSo it\u2019s hard, I think, for people to accept that it didn\u2019 t.\u201d He hopes that the Marshall Islands theory will not only be proven beyond the shadow of a doubt, but that researchers will one day unravel the story of Ms. Earhart\u2019s final days behind bars.
Of course, he might be wrong about everything. And that could mean no end in sight for a search that has spanned decades and cost millions, led by enthusiasts who refuse to believe that their country\u2019s most famous female aviator could have disappeared without a trace.<\/p>\n

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