Amelia Earhart vanished nearly 70 years ago, but her fate remains one of the nation's great mysteries.
The pioneering aviator disappeared on July 2, 1937, as she was flying an equatorial route around the globe. The official U.S. position is that she and her navigator, Fred Noonan, ran out of gas and went down in the Pacific.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday November 26, 2003 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 0 inches; 28 words Type of Material: Correction
Amelia Earhart -- The Then and Now column in Sunday's California section said that Earhart had planned to stop at the Hawaiian island of Niiahu. It is Niihau.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday November 30, 2003 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 0 inches; 31 words Type of Material: Correction
Amelia Earhart -- The L.A. Then and Now column in the Nov. 23 California section said that Earhart had planned to stop at the Hawaiian island of Niiahu. It is Niihau.
But conspiracy buffs begin with the premise that she was a spy captured by the Japanese. Maybe she died. And maybe she survived, living out her life anonymously. Which brings us to Rollin C. Reineck and his new book.
"Strange indeed for one civilian, contemplating a stunt flight around the world, to have involved the entire U.S. government, up to and including the president of the United States," he wrote in "Amelia Earhart Survived," published this month by the Paragon Agency. "It is little wonder that the thought of conspiracy enters into the Earhart research."
Reineck, 83, is a retired U.S. Air Force colonel who lives in Kailua, Hawaii. He was 17 when Earhart disappeared, and he has spent the last 32 years trying to prove his theory that she survived a crash-landing in the Marshall Islands, more than 2,000 miles from Hawaii. He believes she was captured by the Japanese, secretly repatriated, and lived out her life under the name Irene Craigmile Bolam.
Why that would have happened is part of the mystery. He is not the first to suggest the idea, but he is among the more tenacious. Reineck credits the research of Joe Gervais, who hatched the theory after meeting Bolam in 1965 and noting her resemblance to "Lady Lindy."
Earhart had taken off from Miami, intending to fly around the world west to east. Among her planned refueling stops was tiny Howland Island in the Pacific, then on to Hawaii and the finish at Oakland.
Some Earhart buffs believe she landed instead on the then-uninhabited island of Nikumaroro, 1,600 miles south of Hawaii, and eventually died of thirst.
But Reineck began to wonder during navigation school in World War II, when his class discussed and mapped out her route. Earhart had vanished on her second attempt to circumnavigate the globe. Her first attempt had been east to west, which was far less dangerous than the reverse. Why had she so radically increased the degree of difficulty after failing at the easier route?
"Our government needed to know what the Japanese were doing in the Pacific," Reineck said in an interview.
