I hope the radio programs I’ve recently appeared on aren’t as unpopular or unknown as this blog appears to be, or I am truly spinning my wheels. On Aug. 5 I was on the Firebase Network Veterans Hour on the Stardust Radio Network with host Rick Townsend, and Deanna Spignola invited me on to talk to her for two hours Aug. 20 on her daily program, “Spignola Speaks,” on the Republic Broadcasting Network.
Both went as well as could be expected, having last done radio in the mid-1980s. It was good practice for my Sept. 4 date with Phil Williams of Knoxville’s WOKI 98.7 FM, likely the top afternoon-drive show here, and a real opportunity for a breakthrough. I never thought he would actually schedule me, but I finally got the official invite on Friday. Will be on Firebase again tomorrow night for an hour.
Joel Freedman is doing great work on behalf of Truth at Last. He placed a letter to the editor of The Banner Independent, of Booneville, Mississippi, in the same Prentiss County neighborhood as smaller Baldwyn, where Earskin Nabers lived most of his life, and where he died in 2006 at 82. Freedman’s letter ran at the top of the Opinion section on August 16.
After stating his belief that Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan “were captured and tortured by the Japanese” and died on Saipan, Freedman wrote that he was “impressed by Campbell’s account of the importance of World War II Marine Corps veteran Erskine Nabers in finding the truth about Earhart. … “Campbell describes Nabers as ‘a soft-spoken, low-key individual, content in his quiet life of work and devotion to family in the obscurity of small-town Mississippi.’
“Campbell explains, ‘As a radio message code clerk in the communications center of the 8th Marine Regiment on Saipan in July 1944, Nabers decoded the top-secret message announcing the discovery of Amelia Earhart’s Electra in a hangar at Aslito Field. . . . “After his death,” Freedman continued, “I can almost imagine Nabers’ spirit was greeted by the spirits of Earhart and Noonan, who thanked him for his courage and honesty, on their behalf. When I read a good book, I often learn about people I wish I had met during their lifetime. Earskin Nabers is one of these people.”
![This story appeared at the top of page 1 in the July 13, 1937 edition of the Bethlehem (Pennsylvania)-Globe Times. “Vague and unconfirmed rumors that Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan have been rescued by a Japanese fishing boat without a radio,” the report began, “and therefore unable to make any report, found no verification here today, but plunged Tokio [sic] into a fever of excitement.” The story was quickly squelched in Japan, and no follow-up was done. (Courtesy Woody Peard.)](https://earharttruth.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/fishing-boat-story-5.png?w=616&resize=616%2C352#038;h=352 "Fishing boat story 5")
Amelia Earhart: The Truth at Last 
In my father’s memoires, regarding the time after the war on Saipan (where he was stationed) he recounts that; “while we were waiting to be sent home, we were permitted to travel freely around the Island of Saipan. We had to inform the headquarters of our whereabouts at all times and of the time we returned to base.” During a trip to the Naval Station on Ashley Field a pilot came to their mess and offered a flight “out to a carrier and back”, which would take about 40 minutes.
“Upon returning, the pilot asked me if I would like to see a sight. I had to promise that I would not talk to anyone, or even write about what I was to see, for 45 years. He took me to an old airplane hanger, unlocked it, and slid open the door.
There sat a Lockheed “Electra” and a glass-topped coffin with Amelia Earhart’s body inside. The officer said that her body would be preserved indefinitely because of the embalming.
Word was that before Amelia died, the Japanese had planned to take Amelia and Fred Noonan to Japan to be exhibited as spies. Then she and Fred were scheduled to be shot. …”
Dad waited 50 years to mention this incident, while he was writing his book of memories.
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Donna,
I have heard this story before, and though it’s an example of the kind of far-fetched tales that have come to surround the already misunderstood truth about Earhart’s fate, I’ll let it stand here so that readers can see for themselves what researchers have to deal with in sorting the wheat from the chaff.
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Have you checked if the accounts are from different sources? several individuals that would have to have somehow collaborated on it and whether that is likely? Because if it came from several unrelated sources, you could be wrong about it. Don’t fall in love with your theories without seriously checking them out! Why would my father come up with this after 50 years of keeping it a secret? If he was an attention-seeker he would have been bragging about it far sooner.
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Donna,
I’ve been checking stories regarding AE for over two decades, and this is one I’ve heard only once before, possibly from the same source you cite, your father, though I have no record of it at hand. The story about the glass coffin containing Amelia a year after the Saipan battle was won is really one for the books. Think about the details of the story a little more closely, and you might agree. There was no “Ashley Field” for example. It was Isley Field, and there was no “naval station” there. It was an Army Air Force base. AE’s skeletal remains were most probabaly excavavated in July 1944 by Marine Intelligence officer Tracy Griswold and Marine privates Everett Henson Jr. and Billy Burks. I devote an entire long chapter to this incident in Truth at Last. I urge you to buy the book and read the accounts from the Saipan veterans who saw the Electra or knew of AE’s presence on the island. Once you do that, I think you will understand why the story you share is simply a dog that won’t hunt. Thanks for your interest.
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