Amelia Earhart

by W. C. Jameson

  There is more to add to the mystery of two Electras involved in the Earhart flight. A man named Lloyd Royer, who was employed by Lockheed Aircraft and was involved in preparing Earhart’s plane for the around-the-world flight, stated that there were, in truth, two planes that were being worked on at the facility following the aviatrix’s ground-loop incident in Hawaii. Both planes, said, Royer, were to be used during the attempt.

  • 35 •Imprisonment

  Today in the coastal Chinese city of Weifang, Shandong Province, can be found a number of dark, gray, European-style buildings from the nineteenth century. The buildings have been neglected over the past decades and they now manifest peeling walls, broken windows, and sunken foundations. History records this site as the Weihsien Concentration Camp.

  When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, it had an immediate effect on Japanese-occupied coastal China. All Westerners living in China and Japan were classified as enemy aliens, rounded up, and interned in prison camps. One of the largest was the Weihsien facility in Weifang.

  What information remains available on Weihsien Prison reveals that at its height it housed 2,008 people from more than thirty countries. Three hundred and twenty-seven of them were children. The prisoners were fed rotten meat, thin soup, and two slices of bread per day. Prisoners were tortured for minor infractions, and executions were common.

  It was to Weihsien Concentration Camp that many are convinced the prisoner Amelia Earhart was brought and where she remained until the camp was liberated by American military forces on August 17, 1945. According to author Fred Goerner, Admiral Chester Nimitz, one of the leading military figures of the day, was quoted as stating that it was long “known and documented in Washington” that Earhart lived “under the control of Japan long after she was reported missing in 1937.” During a tape-recorded conversation with Goerner, Nimitz stated, “I don’t understand why [the U.S. government] still won’t let people know what happened.” U.S. Naval Commander John Pillsbury sent word to Goerner that he “should continue your investigation, and I want to add that, don’t you ever give up. You’re onto something that will stagger the imagination.”

  According to a few researchers, Amelia Earhart, following her internment in Saipan, was transferred to military headquarters in Tokyo, Japan. There, she may or may not have been forced into broadcasting as Tokyo Rose.

  The files of the Federal Bureau of Investigation contain a memo from director J. Edgar Hoover to Carter W. Clarke, Assistant Chief of Staff of the Office of Naval Intelligence. In the memo, dated January 18, 1945, Hoover relates information about Earhart by an unnamed “member of the armed forces” during the latter part of 1944. According to the FBI director, the soldier was in the Philippine Islands prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor. During that time, he and a fellow soldier were being “entertained by some Japanese in a hotel,” the walls of which were thin enough to overhear conversation in an adjoining room. As the soldier listened to two Japanese soldiers speaking English, he overheard that “Amelia Earhart was still alive and being detained at a hotel in Tokyo, Japan.”

  Weeks later, the soldier was taken prisoner by the Japanese and sent to a concentration camp at Bataan, a Philippine province. From his prison guards, this soldier learned that Earhart was still alive and in Tokyo. They also stated, according to the soldier, that they had heard her broadcast as Tokyo Rose over Japanese radio.

  At some point, Earhart was transferred to the Weihsien Prison in Weifang, China, where she may have been a resident for as long as six years. On August 17, 1945, the United States military “Operation Duck” involved an Office of Strategic Services team parachuting into the Weihsien Civilian Internment Camp in northeastern China. The OSS was a U.S. wartime intelligence agency. The objective was to liberate the camp, the first of many efforts involving many such camps throughout Japanese-occupied coastal China.

  Among the OSS troops was Lt. Jim Hannon. On assisting in the removal of the prisoners from the Weihsien camp, Hannon encountered a woman he referred to as a “lady Yank.” The woman had been housed with the Japanese prisoners and was in poor shape, almost comatose. Many are convinced this woman was Amelia Earhart. The aviatrix would have been forty-eight years old.

  Within a few days of the liberation of Weihsien Prison, a radiogram was sent from Chungking to George Palmer Putnam via the U.S. State Department to Putnam’s address in North Hollywood, California, where he resided between 1935 and 1945. The text of the message was: “Camp liberated; all well. Volumes to tell. Love to mother.” The message was unsigned. The message was found in the National Archives in 1975. At the time it was sent, it was never made public, and Putnam never mentioned it to Earhart’s mother or to her sister, Muriel.

  Those who ascribe to the Earhart-was-not-at-Weihsien-Prison faction of related research have attempted to “prove” that the message was not sent by Earhart but by a would-be writer named Ahmad Kamal. In fact, Kamal, who was listed as a prisoner at Weihsien, did send a message, but it was to Maxwell Perkins, his presumed editor at Charles Scribner’s Sons publishing house. There would have been no need for Kamal to communicate with Putnam. At least one book on Earhart has reported the contention that Kamal sent the message to Putnam, but the evidence presented is spurious.

  According to Hannon, the “lady Yank” was flown from Weihsien via Tsingtao to a camp in Korea where other American prisoners were transported for assessment and preparation for return to the United States.

  • 36 •Repatriation

  Monsignor James Francis Kelley was a well-known Catholic figure in the United States during the 1940s. He was a university graduate, a psychologist, and a one-time president of Seton Hall University and was well connected with church hierarchy as well as established political figures in the United States and abroad.

  Kelley was ordained on July 8, 1928, in Belgium. There he met Archbishop Eugenio Pacelli. Kelley’s duties included teaching the English language to Pacelli, who went on to become Pope Pius XII. In 1934, Kelley earned a degree in philosophy at Louvain, Belgium, and later did graduate work in psychology. In 1935 he received his PhD in philosophy and psychology. A short time after that he was appointed head of the Department of Philosophy at Seton Hall College and professor of psychology at Immaculate Conception Seminary in Darlington, New Jersey. In July 1936 he was named president of Seton Hall College. On April 21, 1941, Kelley was named Right Reverend Monsignor by Pope Pius XII.

  Not only was Kelley well connected within the realm of the Catholic Church, he also boasted strong political ties. On July 11, 1941, Kelley received a citation and a medal from Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau for “three years of patriotic service with integrity and diligence for the Treasury Department of the USA.” No details relative to why this award was presented have ever been located.

  In December 1941, Kelley met with Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox. A short time later, Kelley, with the assistance of Archbishop Francis Spellman, was appointed chaplain for the Atlantic Overseas Air Command. Spellman maintained close connections with every U.S. president from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Harry S. Truman as well as a number of cabinet members, other political appointees, and military leaders. To many of them he introduced Kelley.

  Kelley’s acquaintances and friends also included President Franklin D. Roosevelt, General Jonathan Wainwright, J. Edgar Hoover, President Harry S. Truman, Margaret Truman, Charles Lindbergh, and a number of sports celebrities and movie actors.

  Based on the available evidence, it appears that Monsignor Kelley entered the Earhart controversy at the invitation of Spellman, who had been advanced to the position of cardinal in the church. On August 14, 1945, Spellman flew from New York City to Honolulu, where he met with Admiral Nimitz. The following day, he met with long-time Earhart friend Jackie Cochran. The reason for Spellman’s long trip and his presence at this meeting, along with Cochran’s, has never been revealed, but the timing in relation to the pending liberation of the Japanese prison camp in Weifang seems beyond
coincidence.

  On August 17, the “unidentified” woman believed to be Amelia Earhart was encountered and rescued from a Japanese prison camp in northeastern China. Sometime in September, the woman was flown from Weihsien, China, to a camp in Korea overseen by the U.S. military. It was a location where important American prisoners of war were taken for assessment and preparation prior to returning them to the United States. During this time, Cardinal Spellman attended a meeting in Japan with Lieutenant Colonel Tex McCrary and Jackie Cochran. Speculation was that the three were making arrangements for the repatriation of the unidentified woman.

  Though never verified, it has been related that the unidentified woman was disguised as a nun and flown to Japan and then on to the United States. According to researcher Dean Magley, the U.S. government was well aware that the rescued woman was Amelia Earhart. While in Japan, she adopted, or was given, the name Irene Craigmile. With the assistance of the U.S. military and the Catholic Church, “Craigmile” was flown to Rumson, New Jersey, where she was ensconced in an estate owned by Monsignor Kelley.

  The selection of the name “Irene Craigmile” was indeed curious. A woman named Irene Craigmile was, in fact, a contemporary of Earhart’s, a pilot, and at the time resided in New Jersey.

  Prevailing wisdom has Kelley, the good friend of Cardinal Spellman, assisting in the repatriation of Earhart under her new identity and having a hand in helping her recover from her total of eight years of imprisonment and ill treatment at the hands of the Japanese.

  According to revelations made by Kelley during the 1980s, he admitted to having had a role in the repatriation and rehabilitation of Amelia Earhart. He stated to Helen Barber, one of his neighbors on the island of St. Croix, that he was enlisted to help bring Earhart back from Japan and that he was chosen to serve as her “psychiatric priest.” For the time that Earhart lived at Kelley’s estate, he claimed, he “was able to give her spiritual, emotional, and psychological help.” Kelley also told Barber that it was Cardinal Spellman who suggested him as the ideal person to rehabilitate Earhart.

  According to Kelley, Earhart told him about a safe-deposit box in New Jersey wherein her birth certificate and other important papers were stored but was “adamant that she no longer wanted to be identified as Amelia Earhart.” She never provided Kelley a reason for her decision, but she was inflexible in her demand.

  Some have ventured the opinion that Earhart was so humiliated and embarrassed by her forced role as Tokyo Rose that she chose not to return to her former identity. It has also been suggested that if, as has been purported, she was involved in the design and testing of Japanese aircraft and, according to a State Department document, applied for Japanese citizenship, then such things would have been difficult to explain and harder to live down if she were repatriated under her real name.

  The notion has also been advanced that Earhart was encouraged by government officials to return to the United States under another identity in order not to embarrass those involved in the flight-around-the-world spy mission, which included Franklin D. Roosevelt and a number of his appointees.

  Still others suggested that the eight years as a prisoner of the Japanese, often under terrible conditions, had such an effect on her mind that she opted for what today would be termed a witness protection program. This would have exposed her to a minimum of attention and possible attack from those who would perceive her as a traitor.

  Author Joe Klaas expressed the belief that Earhart was “so fed up with the extravagant curiosity of the world and the intrusions of the autograph hunters and with a publicity-minded husband that she agreed to perform espionage for her country in exchange for the permanent peace and privacy of assumed death.” Monsignor Kelley stated, “After all she’d been through, she didn’t want to be Amelia Earhart anymore.”

  While under the care of Kelley, Earhart was in regular contact with U.S. government officials who were assisting her with her new identity. The principal motivation for the U.S. government to become involved in “such a complex and difficult operation as the transformation of the identity of Amelia Earhart . . . was embarrassment.” The potential for embarrassment to the highest political office in the land was great. The political implications of the knowledge that Earhart had been a prisoner of the Japanese and had been moved through a succession of prison camps were immense. Roosevelt would have been branded as a coward and an incompetent. His image would not have survived such an assault. Thus, it was in the best interest of the U.S. government and Amelia Earhart for her to return under an assumed identity.

  In 1991, Earhart researcher Rollin C. Reineck contacted Donald DeKoster, a Detroit resident and good friend of Monsignor Kelley. DeKoster admitted that he and Kelley had had several conversations about Amelia Earhart over the years. He related that the aviatrix had “survived the war, but that she did not retain her identity.” DeKoster said that Kelley told him that Earhart did not want to be connected with the Tokyo Rose disgrace along with other issues related to her flight and disappearance. He also stated that her new name was Irene Craigmile.

  Kelley passed away in 1996 at the age of ninety-four. Following his passing, permission was granted to Reineck to examine his personal files. Though there were file cabinets and boxes filled with a variety of materials, Reineck found only three Earhart-related items. One was a folder that had the name Amelia Earhart printed on one side and the name Irene Bolam on the other. (Irene Craigmile married Guy Bolam in 1958.) The second item was a handwritten note by Kelley that said, “It’s too bad that her mother never knew she had survived.”

  The third item was a copy of a letter written by the monsignor to Irene Bolam. A portion of the missive contained the following curious passage:

  But by far the most distressing part of this past week was the most terrible treatment you received when leaving. I can never forgive him for simply dropping you off at the airport and then not calling me until 4:00 PM on Sunday. Had I known your high priority was not being recognized by the counter clerk, I would have called the airport manager immediately. It so happens he was upstairs in his office, just above the ticket counter all day Sunday. Our little friend should have used his intelligence and gone up to see him. There would have been no problem. I have since been assured by the manager’s secretary. God love and bless you.

  From the accumulated evidence, it is clear that Monsignor Kelley was acquainted with Amelia Earhart and Irene Craigmile Bolam and that the two could have been one and the same. It is also clear, based on the previous letter passage, that some level of secrecy relative to Bolam’s identity was important.

  • 37 •Enter Irene Craigmile Bolam

  Joe Gervais was a retired command pilot for the U.S. Air Force. He also manifested a deep and enthusiastic passion for all things Amelia Earhart. Gervais was a tireless researcher and spent tens of thousands of dollars of his own money flying to various Pacific islands and interviewing anyone and everyone who might have some connection to Earhart and/or her plane. His name is well known among Earhart enthusiasts, and his passion for studying her disappearance was all consuming. Some critics of Gervais maintain he was too passionate and that he oriented his conclusions to fit predetermined objectives. Regardless, his contributions to the realm of Earhart research cannot be denied.

  Following an Earhart research–related visit to Truk Lagoon during the spring of 1965, Gervais arrived home to find in the mail an invitation to speak about his findings to the Early Fliers Club at West Hampton Air Force Base on Sunday, August 8, 1965. The invitation also mentioned that members of the Ninety-Nines would be in attendance. The Ninety-Nines was a women’s flying organization; its first president was Amelia Earhart.

  Gervais and his wife arrived at a reception held at the Sea Spray Inn on the Dunes, East Hampton, Long Island, New York, on August 8. Three hundred people were in attendance. A large percentage of the members were elderly and had not flown for thirty years or more, but their enthusiasm for aviation had not dimmed with the passage of time
.

  Gervais was introduced to most of the members. Many of them, he learned, had known Amelia Earhart. As Gervais took photographs of some of these aviation pioneers, Viola Gentry, who had arranged for his visit, was standing nearby. At one point, Gentry glanced about the reception room. Suddenly, according to Gervais, Gentry’s “eyes widened and she gasped.”

  Gentry pointed to a woman in the room and, speaking in a somewhat reverential tone, identified her as Irene Bolam. Gervais turned to look and spotted a “distinguished-appearing, silver haired . . . woman who had just entered the room.” Gervais stared at the woman and later stated that at that point he experienced a chill and a slight tremble, for he felt as though he were looking at Amelia Earhart. (Earhart would have been sixty-eight years old in 1965.) Gervais, who had been steeped in Earhartiana for so many years, had a feeling he was looking into the face of the famed aviatrix, “the same face twenty-eight years older than in her last pictures.” Her hair was “shaped the same way, short around the head . . . parted the same way.” He asked Gentry whether she could arrange for an introduction.

  Gentry led Gervais across the room and introduced him to Mr. and Mrs. Guy Bolam. Following the exchange of opening pleasantries, Gervais asked Mrs. Bolam whether she had been a friend of Amelia Earhart. Mrs. Bolam “smiled to a far-off memory” and replied that she knew Earhart.