On June 11, 1975, Air Force officer and Earhart researcher Joe Gervais sent a letter to the Nipponese Department of Immigration and Naturalization in Tokyo. He requested the date on which “Mrs. G. P. Putnam became a citizen of Japan, probably sometime between July and September of 1939 after she completed the required twenty-four-month residence in the Nipponese Imperial Islands of the Pacific.”
On July 7, 1975, Gervais received a response from Japan’s Naturalized Citizens Department. The letter acknowledged “receipt of your letter of inquiry. . . asking us whether Irene Craigmile or Mrs. G. P. Putnam was naturalized to Japan.” The letter writer went on to say that “we are not in a position to answer any inquiry as to whether a certain person was naturalized to Japan . . . the records of naturalized persons being closed to the public.” What is bizarre, and rather telling, about this response is that, in his letter, Gervais never once mentioned the name Irene Craigmile, a name that will factor heavily into the mystery of what happened to Amelia Earhart.
• 29 •The Mystery of Wilbur Rothar
A man named Wilbur Rothar entered the realm of mystery surrounding Amelia Earhart’s disappearance during the summer of 1937. Rothar would be easy to dismiss as one of several crackpots who managed to find his way into the Earhart puzzle if it weren’t for some odd tangents to his bizarre case.
Shortly after the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, her husband, George Palmer Putnam, offered a $2,000 reward for information leading to the rescue of his wife and Fred Noonan. In August 1937, Wilbur Rothar, using the alias of Johnson, appeared at Putnam’s New York office with a strange tale and a request for the money.
According to Rothar, Earhart and Noonan were found on a small island not far from New Guinea by a group of men in a vessel that was illegally transporting arms to Spain. Rothar, a.k.a. Johnson, informed Putnam that he had been employed as a member of the vessel’s crew. During the voyage, claimed Rothar, the vessel stopped at a small island to take on fresh water. In a tiny cove, he said, they found the wreckage of the Electra. Earhart was unharmed but Noonan, who had been injured during the crash, had succumbed to a shark attack. Earhart was rescued and taken aboard the vessel, where she was examined by a Chinese doctor. At the time, stated Rothar, no one knew the identity of the woman. Days later after arriving in Panama, the gunrunners recognized her from newspaper articles pertaining to the disappearance. They were afraid to put her ashore because they feared she would be identified and that officials might want to examine the boat that was filled with illegal arms. They sailed instead to New York, where they intended to collect the reward.
As proof, Rothar offered Putnam a scarf that had allegedly been worn by the aviatrix. The skeptical Putnam asked Rothar if he could provide him with a lock of Amelia’s hair so that there would be no doubt. Rothar said that he would, and the two men agreed to meet at the same location the following day. It was not learned whether Rothar provided a lock of hair, but Putnam paid him $1,000 in cash with a promise that the balance would be provided when Amelia was released into his custody. Rothar agreed to the proposition. Within an hour, he was arrested for extortion.
The subsequent police investigation of Rothar yielded the information that he was forty-two years old, lived in the Bronx, New York, under the name Goodenough, and was employed as a janitor. Prior to finding this job he was employed as a woodworker. According to the police report, Rothar was married and had eight children.
Rothar was arraigned in felony court on August 5 and scheduled to face a New York County grand jury. The involvement of Wilbur Rothar in the Earhart saga appeared ready to be filed away as nothing more than a deranged and ill-conceived plot that had gone awry, one concocted by a troubled man. But it was only just beginning to take some curious turns and provide yet another layer of mystery to what would become a complex, growing, and puzzling array of mysteries associated with the Earhart disappearance.
According to the article about Rothar’s extortion attempt and subsequent arrest, the New York Times reported that it learned the suspect came into possession of the scarf three years earlier. Rothar had traveled to Roosevelt Field in Long Island in the hope of seeing Amelia Earhart, who was making a scheduled and well-publicized landing there. Rothar was only one in a large crowd that showed up at the airfield to view the aviatrix and try to obtain her autograph. As Earhart was climbing from her plane, a gust of wind blew the brown and white scarf she was wearing off her shoulders and into the hands of Rothar. The scarf had been in his possession ever since, and it was a scarf identified by Putnam’s stenographer as having once belonged to Earhart.
In spite of the account provided by Putnam and in spite of what was reported in the New York Times article, Amelia Earhart’s sister, Muriel Morrissey, provided a different version. Morrissey claimed Rothar came into possession of the scarf only three months earlier at an airplane hangar at Wheeler Field in Hawaii. How Morrissey would know this, if it is true, is unclear. Morrissey further stated that in spite of the well-publicized $2,000 reward, Rothar demanded $5,000 from Putnam. She also claimed that Putnam, instead of providing Rothar with $1,000 of the reward money with a promise of the balance on the delivery of his wife, merely gave Rothar fifty dollars “for my wife’s scarf” and sent him on his way.
It is difficult to account for the differences in the two versions of the same story. One has to wonder how Morrissey came by her information relative to Rothar allegedly picking up Earhart’s scarf in Hawaii. One must also wonder why, in Morrissey’s account, the established $2,000 reward was changed to $5,000. In her account, Morrissey described Rothar as a “shamefaced and frightened young man.” Rothar was forty-two years old, far from being a young man. Morrissey was thirty-seven years old at the time, five years younger than Rothar. And since there is no evidence that Morrissey was present when the events involving Rothar were taking place, how would she know what he looked like at all?
Regarding the scarf, here is another important consideration: until Putnam demanded of Rothar some proof of his Earhart connection, the scarf was never mentioned. Rothar produced it only after Putnam asked for proof. Over the years, the Rothar case was to grow even stranger.
The New York police lost no time in indicting Wilbur Rothar, alias Wilbur Goodenough, alias Wilbur Johnson, for extortion on August 5, 1937. Rothar pleaded not guilty. On August 13, Rothar was transferred to New York’s Bellevue Hospital for ten days of “sanity tests.” On October 13, a general sessions court committed Rothar to the Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane to receive treatment prior to being tried on the charge of extortion. Attending the commitment hearing was George Putnam and Special Agent Thomas J. Donegan of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Rothar’s attorney during this time was a man named Edward T. Tighe.
The presence of the FBI was curious, and Donegan’s role was never made clear. During the next two decades, Agent Donegan was to assume responsibilities as special assistant to the U.S. attorney general, chairman of internal security on the National Security Council, the FBI representative to the Executive Office of the President of the United States, a member of the Subversive Activities Control Board in Washington, D.C., and administrative assistant to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. Donegan had also been a lieutenant in the U.S. Naval Reserve. All things considered, Donegan’s rapid rise through the higher echelons of governmental administration was truly impressive following his brief involvement in the Rothar-Earhart case. And curious.
In 1966, Donegan was asked a number of questions regarding the case of Wilbur Rothar. For reasons never stated, he refused to answer any of them. In that same year, Rothar’s lawyer, Edward T. Tighe, still a practicing lawyer in New York City, similarly refused to respond to Rothar-related queries.
During Rothar’s sanity evaluation a strange incident was brought up. According to the evaluator, a Dr. Leonardo, Rothar, in referring to the alleged rescue of Earhart, stated that “the boiler was blown up by ammunition.” Leonardo had no idea what Rothar was talking about and ass
umed he was referring to a boiler on the gunrunning vessel. In truth, “the Boiler” was the nickname for certain Electra models, according to Lockheed Aircraft Corporation public relations director Philip L. Juergens. The nickname was not known outside of aircraft and pilot personnel, so how would Rothar know this?
According to Earhart researcher and writer Joe Klaas, the law of the state of New York specifies that any prisoner who is under indictment and is committed to a hospital for the criminally insane before his/her trial may neither be transferred nor be dismissed without being returned to the original court to stand trial. Wilbur Rothar was never returned to stand trial for the charge of extortion. Thus, he should have remained incarcerated at the Matteawan State Hospital. If Rothar had not died, he would still have been there in 1965 when researcher Joe Gervais went to look for him. But Rothar was not there.
In response to a letter Gervais wrote to the hospital’s superintendent in 1965, he learned that on April 19, 1960, a Wilbur “Rokar” had been transferred to Harlem Valley State Hospital at Wingdale, Duchess County, New York. The superintendent provided no other information on “Rokar.”
Rothar had apparently been confined in a New York state mental hospital for over two decades under a similar but different name. Rothar had been transferred illegally, for he had never been brought to trial on the charge of extortion.
Gervais contacted the director of the Harlem Valley State Hospital, a Dr. Lawrence P. Roberts, who informed him that “Rokar” had been transferred to the Central Islip State Hospital on March 23, 1962. Gervais then communicated with CISH director Dr. Francis J. O’Neill, who informed him that “Rokar” had been discharged from the hospital on October 25, 1963. O’Neill said the files contained no information on where “Rokar” might have gone.
New York State law strictly forbids the discharge of a prisoner who is under indictment from a state hospital without having been subjected to a trial. No such trial for Rothar ever took place, adding more strangeness and mystery to this odd event.
Growing ever more curious, Gervais contacted the Suffolk County Police Department inquiring about Rothar, or Rokar. Deputy Commissioner John P. Finnerty replied, stating that their records showed that “Rokar” escaped from the Central Islip State Hospital on October 17, 1962. One year later, “Rokar” returned to the hospital and turned himself in. According to the police records, “Rokar” returned to CISH four days after the hospital records claimed he was discharged. Further investigation into the matter yielded no additional information.
During his investigations, Gervais examined the New York City phone book for any Rothars. Since Rothar left a wife and eight children, the chances were good that one or more of them remained. He could find no listing whatsoever for a Rothar. He also tried Goodenough, the name Rothar was renting his apartment under when he was arrested. None were listed.
Gervais decided to go to Rothar’s former apartment to determine whether he could learn anything substantial. The address as provided by Rothar at the time of his arrest was 316 East 155th Street. What Gervais discovered remains perplexing to this day. There is not, and never was, a 316 East 155th Street. Such an address never existed, but this error was apparently never noted by the New York City police and subsequent investigators.
Not to be deterred, Gervais called the Central Islip State Hospital and spoke to a registration clerk inquiring about “Rokar.” The clerk advised Gervais that the name was in fact not “Rokar,” but “Rakor,” and that the records showed he had left the hospital without permission and never returned.
Gervais encountered another odd connection. He learned that after being confined in the Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane for twenty-three years, Rothar, without ever being returned to trial, was quietly transferred to CISH five days before the publication of the Amelia Earhart– related book Daughter of the Sky by Paul Briand. Gervais surmised that the move was made on purpose and in response to the book’s release.
Then came another odd event. In response to an inquiry, the administrators of Bellevue Hospital, where Rothar was originally transferred for observation, stated that they had no record of Wilbur Rothar ever having been admitted there in 1937. The hospital did have in its records, however, a notation stating that a Wilbur Rothar was admitted on September 27, 1964, almost a year following his disappearance from CISH, for an “emergency dressing” because of some injury. He was transported to a hospital from the Municipal Lodging House in the Bowery and released the same day.
What became of Wilbur Rothar remains a mystery, one that has never been resolved. Furthermore, what has never been explained was his odd connection to Earhart’s disappearance and the subsequent illegal transfers from one hospital to another. Following Rothar’s disappearance from the CISH, he was never seen or heard from again, in spite of the fact that the Suffolk County Police Department has in its files a notation that he returned to the CISH on October 29, 1963.
• 30 •Tokyo Rose
While incarcerated on the island of Saipan, Earhart was referred to as “Tokyo Rosa.” According to Saipanese Antonio M. Cepeda (also spelled Cepada in some references), who was interviewed by Earhart researcher Joe Gervais, Tokyo Rosa was a term that meant “American spy lady.” When showed a photograph of Earhart, Cepeda said it was the same woman who was a prisoner at Garapan. Cepeda’s observation was confirmed by another Saipanese, Carlos Palacios, who said “Tokyo Rosa was my people’s expression for American spy girl.” Like Cepeda, when Palacios was shown a photograph of Earhart, he stated that it was the same woman he saw in captivity on Saipan.
Following the European D-Day, when it was apparent that the Japanese resistance was about to collapse, a woman’s voice was often heard broadcasting false information from Tokyo to American GIs. The broadcasts were intended to entice and demoralize the U.S. troops on programs titled “Humanity Calls,” “The Postman Calls,” “Prisoners Hours,” and more. The female voice broadcasting would tell the troops that Japanese fighter planes had wiped out the U.S. Navy and that their wives and girlfriends back in the United States were unfaithful and running around on them. The voice was known throughout the Pacific as “Tokyo Rose.”
In her book Courage Is the Price, Earhart’s sister, Muriel Morrissey, asked, “Could this ‘Tokyo Rose’ possibly be Amelia, brainwashed to the point of leading her countrymen into enemy traps?” It has been estimated that nine out of ten Pacific-based troops had listened to Tokyo Rose broadcasts.
As a result of suspicion that Tokyo Rose might have been Earhart, George Palmer Putnam, who was fifty-five years old at the time, was provided a direct commission as a major in army intelligence and, with no training whatsoever, was immediately sent to China. Morrissey wrote of Putnam’s assignment to China as well as a three-day slog through Japanese-held territory to a Marine Corps radio station where Tokyo Rose broadcasts came in loud and clear. Morrissey stated that Putnam alone “could without question identify Amelia’s voice, even though weakened and tense from psychological mistreatment.” For the U.S. government to make such an assignment to a civilian suggests they knew something unknown to the rest of the world.
Morrissey’s statement “even though weakened” is suspicious. Normally one would say “even if weakened.” Did Morrissey know something, as has been suggested? Further, why would the U.S. government provide Putnam the rank of major and ship him across the world to listen to a woman’s voice after they spent so much time and energy declaring she crashed and sank in the Pacific Ocean? It was apparent they knew something they were not revealing to the American public.
On July 12, 1949, a woman named Iva Ikuko Toguri D’Aquino was arrested, charged, and tried for treason as Tokyo Rose. During the two months of testimony, it was brought out that there may have been as many as fifteen different women who broadcast as Tokyo Rose. It was also learned that as many as forty female prisoners of war were engaged in preparing and broadcasting the programs. It was rumored that Amelia Earhart was one of the fifteen women who bro
adcast over the airwaves as Tokyo Rose. According to author David K. Bowman, the U.S. Military Intelligence Service in 1944 was convinced that Earhart was involved in the Tokyo Rose broadcasts.
D’Aquino was an American citizen of Japanese parents, a California resident, and a UCLA coed. She was found guilty and sentenced to ten years at the federal penitentiary in Alderson, West Virginia.
In an interesting aside, it is documented that Amy Otis Earhart, Amelia’s mother, attended the Tokyo Rose trial every day. Following the verdict, she told a reporter for the New York Times that she knew her daughter “had ended up in Japan’s care.”
Author Klaas was of the opinion that Amelia Earhart was given the code name “Tokyo Rose” by the Japanese, who planned on using her to blackmail the United States into signing a treaty favorable to Japan. Roosevelt, according to Klaas, rejected the blackmail and refused to demand Earhart’s return, for it would be tantamount to admitting to American espionage. Earhart received the treatment afforded to all American spies captured by a foreign power—she was abandoned by her country.
• 31 •The Mystery of the Morgenthau Memo
Henry Morgenthau resided in Hyde Park, New York, in the upper part of the state. There he oversaw a one-thousand-acre farm and grew prosperous. One of his neighbors was Franklin D. Roosevelt. The two men soon became acquainted and in time grew to be close friends. Morgenthau’s wife likewise was an even closer friend to the president’s wife, Eleanor. When Roosevelt was elected governor of New York, he invited Morgenthau to join his administration. Morgenthau soon distinguished himself as an effective and efficient administrator, was unabashedly loyal to Roosevelt, and evolved into the position of close confidant.
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