An Amelia Earhart photo that fueled a theory that she had been captured by the Japanese appears to have been debunked by a blogger. A second theory, that she died on a remote island, is now a long shot after cadaver dogs failed to find any remains there.
Researchers for the History Channel documentary "Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence" claimed that a blurry photo found in the U.S. National Archives may have captured Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan on a dock in Marshall Island harbor in 1937, reported The Guardian.
That theory, though, seemed to unravel after a Tokyo-based blogger Kota Yamano pointed out what appears to be same photo published in Japan's National Diet Library on Oct. 10, 1935, nearly two years before Earhart attempted her trip around the world.
Earhart was on her final leg of the attempt when she and Noonan disappeared on July 2, 1937, on their way to the isolated Howland Island.
The caption under the photo published in Japan did not identify the people in the picture, but described maritime activity at the harbor on Jabor in the Jaluit atoll, headquarters for Japan's administration of the Marshall Islands between the first and second world wars, said The Guardian.
Dorothy Cochrane, a curator at the aeronautics department at the National Air and Space Museum, was already casting doubts on the photo, said Smithsonian magazine. She rebuffed two independent forensic analysts quoted by the documentary that supposedly identified Earhart and Noonan in the photograph.
"I can't really comment definitively on the photograph, and I don't think (History investigators) can either," Cochrane told Smithsonian. "(The image is) kind of a blurry photograph."
Shawn Henry, former executive assistant director for the FBI and an NBC News analyst, told the network last week that he believed the photo showed Earhart and Noonan.
"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.
Yamano told The Guardian, though, it took him an online Google search and about 30 minutes to prove the theory wrong.
"I have never believed the theory that Earhart was captured by the Japanese military, so I decided to find out for myself," said the Japanese military blogger. "I was sure that the same photo must be on record in Japan."
"The photo was the 10th item that came up. 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."
Last week, cadaver dogs searched remote Nikumaroro Island as part of an Earhart expedition sponsored by The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery and the National Geographic Society which hoped to confirm Earhart made it to the island with navigator Fred Noonan, said NatGeo.
No bones were found but archaeologist Dawn Johnson and physician Kim Zimmerman collected soil from around a tree to be tested in a German DNA lab for any sign of human remains. The dogs had "alerted" to the tree.
Fred Hiebert, National Geographic's archaeologist-in-residence, told the magazine that while Neanderthal DNA had been successfully extracted from soil dug from a French cave, finding DNA in a tropical environment like Nikumaroro was a long shot.
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