SYNOPSIS:

“Many years ago, I wanted to be a pilot. I signed up for classes, bought one of those computer simulator programs and set off to fulfill this dream. At the time, I was thinking really big. I didn’t want to tool around in a Cessna for the rest of my flying career, I wanted to fly the big stuff… the space shuttle. Granted this was a pipe dream, but I was inspired by the likes of Amelia Earhart and Sally Ride. Then one day, while I had a day off from college, I was sitting in my apartment watching a televised launch of the space shuttle Challenger just to have it explode right in front of me. I don’t think I would experience anything so spiritually damaging as that until September 11, 2001… or maybe until the recent tsunamis in southeast Asia or Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf States. There was another woman I admired on board the Challenger, space teacher Crista McAuliffe. Her death made the disaster all the more personal for me. After that, it’s sad to say, I lost my vision and drive to become a pilot. Looking back, I know I should have stayed on that horse, but I just couldn’t. I stopped taking lessons and never went back. But now that we’re preparing to go to Nikumaroro Island, what is considered by some to be the crash site of Earhart’s plane, I am feeling reinspired. If you think about it, Earhart was such an amazing woman. In a time when women were expected to stay home and be wives and mothers, she bucked the system and won. She wore men’s trousers and short hair. She was a daredevil and an innovator. She was amazing and I am so glad we’re going to look for her.”

So why Nikumaroro? The interest came about after Meridian finished reading a book called AMELIA EARHART'S SHOES that proposed that Earhart possibly crash-landed on this remote chunk of coral in July 1937, thus beginning one of the biggest and most enduring mysteries in history. It is a fascinating theory that has been investigated for the past two decades by an American organization called The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery or TIGHAR. Although the team had no illusions about solving such a long-standing and thoroughly researched mystery, Rune described being on the island as “thrilling, if only because we may be walking the same shores [Earhart] walked during her last days on Earth.”

The team arrived at the island on September 24th during a brief but dramatic thunderstorm. Then, as if by magic, the clouds receded and the sun came and the heavy forested island came into sharp focus. Like so many other islands the team had visited recently, Nikumaroro had no anchorage or protected harbor, so the ship's captain dispatched the Zodiacs along the island’s northeast tip near the remnants of an old freighter that crashed here in 1929. The ship was of British origin and was called the SS Norwich City. It smashed into the reef during a fire that started in its engine room. This entire area of the reef was strewn with debris from the wreck. The ship's boilers were still visible, and there are portions of the hull that poked out of the water like an old skeleton, but the rest of the vessel was just a scattered debris field. There were historical reports from rescue parties that noted large numbers of sharks in the area, although this may have been due to the large number of dead bodies in the water at the time. Regardless, maneuvering the Zodiacs through such treacherous waters was nerve-racking for everyone involved.

Years later, there were reports from native islanders that they would come across human bones from time to time in this area. Researchers clinging to hope of finding some definitive proof that Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan crashed on this island investigated these reports thoroughly, but eventually found them to be of little help. Were the reported bones from the Norwich City crew, or were they from two missing aviators? Due to island taboos about human remains, none of the bones were salvaged from the surf and by now the ocean has devoured them.

The OCE team spent several hours exploring the Norwich City debris field and adjacent areas before returning to their ship.

The team returned to the island the following day, landing in a safer area to the south of the Norwich City wreck. With time and resources being so limited, Polaris took the unusual step and allowed Rune and Meridian to come up with the investigation plan for the island. There were three major areas the team wanted to check out, based mainly on the reports from TIGHAR. The first was where they landed the day before, near the reef and the Norwich City wreck. The second was the old English colonial village that was established in the years after the Earhart disappearance. The third was Aukairame North, the alleged campsite of Earhart and Noonan.

TIGHAR’s investigators pegged the area around the Norwich City as the possible emergency landing site for Earhart and Noonan as the reef at low tide might have looked level enough to land an airplane. There were also reports from the natives who lived on the island of airplane wreckage (and the aforementioned human remains) being found in this area. The theory was that Earhart landed the plane on the reef and then parked it in the shade of the trees on the beach. Or maybe it just lay there on the reef. Either way, over time the wreck was washed into the lagoon and vanished under the silt.

No one seemed to get much in this area of the island, but at one point Ash said, "You know, the man died in the water." All the other members of the team just kind of stopped and stared at him. He had been intentionally told very little about the Earhart mission.

"What man?" Polaris asked.

"The man we’re looking for. We’re looking for a man, right?" Ash replied.

"Are we? What man?"

Then Ash got annoyed and went on about how his dad always answered his questions with questions. Ash did not or could not specify any further who "the man" was but Polaris encouraged him to speak up if he got anymore impressions about him.

After about an hour, the team made the short trip across the Tatiman Passage to the lagoon and made a tricky landing on the shore near where the old colonial village used to be. From there they bushwhacked until they finally found the village, or what was left of it. Like the remains of the SS Norwich City, the village was more of a debris field that had been largely reclaimed by nature. The underbrush was littered with old timber, bits of cement, glass, broken pipes, nails and other nonspecific debris all mixed in with crusty masses of palm frond. There was also quite a bit of burned material, so apparently at least part of the village caught fire at sometime in the past.

There was also one grave, an important landmark that only Rune and Meridian knew about. It was the concrete sarcophagus positioned in the center of the old parade ground which was the final resting place of Gerald Gallagher, the Englishman who established the village. It had a little plaque on it identifying the remains that was quickly covered that up with Rune’s spare shirt so no one else could read it. Then, as a controlled experiment, the members of the team were asked over one by one. They were all the same thing: "Who’s inside this grave and what was this person’s importance here?"

This yielded some interesting replies. Polaris took the longest time at the grave, walking around it several times. He finally told us that he thought it was an Englishman who had lived in the village, but he said he deduced that from the fact that the monument was not Polynesian in design or material and it was placed so prominently in the community. Polaris did not have any psychic insights into Gallagher himself, although he did note that the man probably helped to establish the community here and died on the island, both of which were correct. Anvil was clearly lost when we asked him the same questions and complained about feeling pressured. He finally said that the person inside was Amelia Earhart – so Rune and Meridian chased him off with a sharp stick. Ash was next. He too said the remains inside the grave belonged to a man. When asked if this was the same man he said had died in the water he replied no. Further conversation went on like this:

"[The man who died in the water is] a different guy," Ash said. "The man in this box died here, but he didn’t know the man who died in the water."

"Did they die at the same time?" I asked.

"No, but close together. Within a few years of each other."

"What language did these men speak?"

"English, but one was an American."

"Which one was an American?"

"The one who died in the water."

"Tell me how the American man died in the water."

"He drowned."

"Here on the island?"

"I don’t know. I just know he drowned."

"How did the man in this box die?"

"He got sick. He got sick and died." [Webmaster’s note: Gerald Gallagher died in 1941 from an intestinal illness brought on by his poor island diet.]

"Can you tell me more about the man who died in the water? What was his name?"

"I don’t know yet."

"What was this man’s name?" Rune asked, pointing to Gallagher’s grave.

"Gerry," Ash replied.

Finally it was Trespass’s turn. Trespass, the reluctant psychic hero of Wake Island. Neither Rune or Meridian expected him to take this experiment seriously. He stood looking at the grave for the longest time. Finally he said: "It’s an Englishman who lived here. He lived in the big house (he pointed to the northeast where the team had found an abundance of debris). He loved this island and is very sad that no one lives here anymore." Then Trespass walked off without saying any more.

Fascinating. Of our four percipients, three correctly identified the person in the grave as a man of English origin who was important to the village establishment. Ash was able to name Gallagher, or at least come close by calling him "Gerry" instead of "Gerald." Maybe "Gerry" what people called him? Ash’s additional insights about the American man who drowned were also very noteworthy. Certainly the team didn't have enough to claim that the American man was Fred Noonan, especially since other American men were on the island during the end of World War II and one of them could have drowned sometime during the island’s history. Ash needed to provide more specifics before any determination could be made.

It was Trespass, however, who was the standout for the day. Although his observations at Gallagher’s grave were limited, it was interesting that he was the only person who noted anything about the man’s personality. Gallagher did seem to love the island and its residents. He was also much beloved by them. It was not hard to imagine that his spirit, wherever it resides, may feel melancholy about the island’s abandonment and the poor state of all his hard work.

The team next returned to the island on the 29th, visiting the final location of Aukairame North. By a strange coincidence, the team visited this area exactly sixty-five years after Gerald Gallagher made a report to his superiors about discovering human remains (including a skull) and signs of habitation here. Gallagher telegraphed his superiors and reported that the skull was "possibly that of Amelia Earhart."

Among the other items found by Gallagher were:

"...more bones (including lower jaw) part of a shoe a bottle and a sextant box. It would appear that:
(a) Skeleton is possibly that of a woman,
(b) Shoe was a womans and probably size 10,
(c) Sextant box has two numbers on it... 3500 (stenciled) and 1542- sextant being old fashioned and probably painted over with black enamel."

In this same area, Gallagher and his men found the remains of a campsite that included the remnants of a fire pit and turtle and bird bones (presumably eaten by the camper). The human bones he discovered were quite extensive and included the skull, lower jaw, vertebra, pelvis, scapula, humerus, radius, femurs, tibia and fibula. Gallagher was ordered to keep the bones secret and send them onto Fiji for medical analysis. A British forensic expert named D.W. Hoodless later performed this, but he stated in his report that the bones were those of a short, stocky European man. (TIGHAR later had a modern forensic expert re-evaluate Hoodless’s notes and the conclusion was that the bones were of a woman of European descent. Naturally, the question then becomes how did a woman of European descent end up on a tiny island in the middle of the South Pacific?)

Jump ahead a few decades… TIGHAR came to the island following up on their theory that Earhart, who was desperately low on fuel and looking for a safe place to ditch her aircraft, turned south from her intended destination on Howland Island and flew into the Phoenix Island group. Her route took her over Nikumaroro and she crash landed on the reef near the wreck of the SS Norwich City. She (and maybe Noonan) lived on the island for sometime, but are never found by the extensive search parties, some of which even flew over this very island. Whether due to disease, thirst, starvation, accident or broken hearts, Earhart perished. With no one to bury her remains, Earhart’s bones lay in the tropical sun until Gallagher and his men found them on Aukairame North. TIGHAR later added to Gallagher’s finds by uncovering the heel of a woman’s shoe, knobs, sheets of aircraft aluminum and related materials.

During their very short visit to Nikumaroro, the Outcasts had a very simple rule for the day: look but don’t touch due to the ongoing archaeological studies in the area. During this time, the team did solve several mysteries from their previous expedition on Wake Island:

Unbeknownst to the OCE team at the time, their visit to Wake Island [August 16 through September 12, 2005] may have uncovered a mystery besides the sinking of the Japanese cruiser Hayate. Prior to landing on the island, Ash had a series of dreams about a Japanese man in a khaki or tan-colored uniform wearing a cloth cap. Polaris wrote about the dreams and his sketch of the man in his July 29th, 2005, journal entry:

"…More interesting to all of us, especially Ash, are the images of the Japanese man... Ash described him as wearing a "cap like a ball cap but it has more square edges." He also told me that the man was wearing "tan-colored clothing" which could mean a military uniform. The man has a thin mustache and it’s hard to see his eyes because the brim of the cap cast a dark shadow over them. Ash’s memories of the man’s features were clear enough that we decided to conduct an experiment a la a police suspect artist sketch. Ash and I sat down in the ship’s dining room and I had him describe the Japanese man in detail while I sketched him out. Once the sketch was done, we photographed it and sent it onto our webmasters. Our stateside support staff will be vital to our investigation on Wake Island. Not only do they have the best chance of identifying the Japanese man, but also Wake Island is the first stop on this trip in which our members have virtually no personal knowledge of the site. It will be our webmasters’ job to guide us when necessary and help us decipher information as we gather it…"

But Ash’s dreams stopped before the team made it to Wake Island, and with no other information to go on, the man in the military uniform was dismissed for the time being. Once on Wake Island, the team became much more interested in Trespass’s psychic vision of a burning ship off the south coast of the island, a ship that the team now believed was the Hayate. Then time ran out and no additional on-site investigation of the Japanese soldier was possible. Curiously though, Ash, Anvil and Rune came across a clue to his identity during their last days on Wake. As Rune reported:

"…There’s a lot of very intricate stone work with sunken paths leading up to hidden bunkers and foxholes and supply depots. From what the contractors here told us, most of this stuff dates from the Japanese occupation. Apparently, when the Japanese finally took over Wake, they captured hundreds of American civilians who were there primarily to help with construction efforts. The Japanese kept them on the island because they knew how to work all the equipment. These poor souls were used as slaves for the next four years or so and all their handiwork is still here. It was very sad working in these areas today. On the lagoon side of the island we also found a big chunk of coral that had been carved by Americans. It read "98 US PW 5-10-43." Not entirely sure what this inscription means." [Journal entry dated September 1, 2005.]

So what is the connection between American prisoners of war, a strange inscription on a chunk of coral and the phantom Japanese soldier from Ash’s dream? Actually, the connection is a tragic one.

As Rune noted in her journal entry, after the Japanese take-over, some American civilians were kept on the island as slave labor. The captured military personnel and other civilians were transferred to POW camps in China and Japan. The Japanese used the American workers for the next few years to build elaborate fortifications in anticipation of an American invasion. Then, in October 1943, an increase in American air raids led the garrison commander there to believe that an invasion was imminent. He ordered all ninety-eight of the remaining U.S. civilians marched out onto the beach and executed, convinced that they were somehow feeding the American military with information about Wake’s new defenses. After the massacre, all the civilians were hastily buried in a mass grave on Wake’s north shore.

The man who gave the massacre orders was Rear Admiral Shigimatsu Sakaibara, and he bears a striking resemblance to the "phantom soldier" sketched by Polaris and based on Ash’s dreams.

So how did the inscription on the chunk of coral, now known as the "98 Rock," come into being? There are two stories about the rock’s origin, although nobody knows for sure because the man/men who carved it were killed by Sakaibara’s execution squad. The first story is that the rock was carved in May 1943 by the contractors as a record of their existence as POWs on the island. The other story states that one American escaped Sakaibara’s mass execution and remained at large on the island for several weeks. During this time, this unnamed fugitive carved the "98 Rock" as a memorial to the men who died. The confusion over when the inscription was carved may stem from the date shown on the rock itself. "5-10-43" could be mean either May 10th or October 5th depending on how you interpret it. If the latter interpretation is correct, however, then the date of the massacre is wrong on the rock. The killings took place on October 7th; meaning the rock was either carved two days before the massacre or the person who carved the inscription was mistaken about the date. The number of dead is also incorrect. The fugitive POW would have been the ninety-eighth prisoner on the island, and obviously he would not have counted himself among the dead since he escaped the firing squad. If the fugitive had carved the rock, it should have read "97 US PW." The prisoner-at-large story ends with the unnamed man being recaptured and beheaded by Sakaibara himself.

It the belief of the Outcast Earth team that the rock was most likely carved on May 10th as a record of the POWs on the island. Although it does appear that a single American escaped the firing squad, the idea of him carving the rock contains too many implausible elements, the erroneous date and number of dead being two of them. We must also ask ourselves why a man running for his life would stop and take so much time to carve an inscription in a piece of coral? And if he was going to donate so much effort to this occupation, why not mention the execution itself? Wouldn’t an inscription of "97 US killed 5-10-43" have made more sense? It is our belief that the prisoner-at-large carving the rock has the hallmarks of a good urban legend, and it serves to further demonize Sakaibara since he supposedly murdered the man after the tragic inscription was finished.

The OCE team believed that Ash’s dreams about the "Japanese solider" may have reflected Sakaibara’s presence on the island and his subsequent murder of the ninety-eight civilians. It was a shortcoming that the team did not dig deeper into the identity of the "Japanese soldier" while on Wake, being somewhat preoccupied by the Hayate mystery and Trespass’s erratic behavior. The lesson learned here was to never dismiss any clue until you’ve investigated it fully.