Did Amelia Earhart’s secretary send the mysterious letter found at Jaluit Post Office in November 1937?

With the recent passing of my dear friend Bill Prymak at age 86, we can write finis to a great era of Earhart research.  Bill has joined a host of Earhart researchers whose myriad contributions have made an enormous impact in establishing the facts about Amelia’s tragic end on Saipan, and although our current national zeitgeist stands in vehement opposition to their findings becoming widely known anytime soon, the truth will stand the test of time and will someday be revealed to all when the U.S. government finally finds the fortitude to do so.  Bill’s death leaves only Paul Rafford Jr., 95, the former Pan American Airways radio flight officer and author of Amelia Earhart’s Radio: Why She Disappeared (2008) and Joe Klaas, 94, Joe Gervais’ close friend who penned the infamous 1970 book, Amelia Earhart Lives as the only surviving old timers.

Beginning with today’s post, as a tribute to Bill and his formidable contributions to the Earhart saga, I will republish some of the great research articles that graced the pages of his remarkable Amelia Earhart Society Newsletters, which he produced, without fanfare or remuneration, and solely for the limited membership of the Amelia Earhart Society in his Broomfield, Colo., office from December 1989 until March 2000.  I know Bill would be happy that his fine work, and that of many others, is honored and shared with the remaining few who continue to seek and value the truth.

The May 25, 1938 issue of Pacific Islands Monthly, which published Carl Heine’s fascinating story, “POSTAL MYSTERY, UNCLAIMED LETTER FOR AMELIA EARHART,” of March 17, 1938.

Due to the columnar format of this blog, it won’t always be possible to exactly reproduce the letter size that comprised Bill’s newsletters, but I’ll do everything possible to present these entries as close to their original look.  I’ll also make it clear when the material presented is taken directly from Bill’s AES Newsletters.  Today’s article is taken from the May 1991 issue of the newsletters, and looks like this:

FROM: PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY MAGAZINE 5/25/38

“POSTAL MYSTERY, UNCLAIMED LETTER FOR AMELIA EARHART”

From: Mr. Carl Heine a special correspondent and German missionary in the Marshall Islands, Jaluit Atoll, March 17, 1938

Here is a curious thing.  On November 27, 1937 in the Jaluit Post Office, in the Marshall Islands (Japanese), among the unclaimed mail a certain letter attracted my attention.  In its upper left corner was printed “Hollywood-Roosevelt Hotel, Hollywood California.”  A little lower down appeared the postal date stamp with “Los Angeles, California, October 7, 10 pm,” within the circle, L ower down in the usual place appeared the following stating address:

“Miss Amelia Earhart (Putnam); Marshall Islands (Japanese); Ratak Group, Maloelap Island, (10); South Pacific Ocean.”

Written diagonally across one corner was this, “Deliver Promptly.”  On the back of envelope ”Incognito” was penciled in very small, fine handwriting.  The letter was unopened, and consequently I have no idea of its contents.  Now, it seems to me that anyone in U.S.A. writing as late as October, ought to be well aware that Amelia Earhart had been given up as lost long before.  Hence, it would appear that the letter may have been written by some one desirous of hoaxing the public.  Still, it is just possible that such may not be the case at all.

Certainly, the writer of the address on the envelope, while making some errors such as anyone at a distance might make, displays a little more geographical knowledge of these parts than one would expect of the average individual, but which one would certainly expect of anyone about to traverse the Pacific, and would be passing this group at a distance of a few hundred miles.

It is conceivable that Amelia Earhart may have told some trusted friend in America, before setting out on her ill fated journey, that she intended to take a look-see in at the Marshalls en route or that she might possibly do so if in any danger as she passed by.  And it is possible that this hypothetical friend in Hollywood might think that Amelia had reached this group, and might be lying low for some reason or other at Maloelap.  It seems curious that anyone without specific interest in the group should know the name of that particular atoll which is of no great importance.  What the number (10) might mean in connection with that island I have no idea.  (End of Carl Heine’s original narrative.)

HISTORICAL NOTE: “Maloelap Island” (Bill Prymak’s comments follow.)

Prior to WWII in the Pacific the Japanese built its first military operational airfield among the Marshall Islands Group on this island.  During the invasion of the Marshall Islands by the U.S. Forces during WWII, Maloelap Island was bypassed and not occupied.  The Japanese on this island did not surrender until after the signing of the surrender in Tokyo Bay.

Editor’s note:  Isn’t it coincidental that Margot DeCarie, AE’s personal secretary, was living in the Hollywood-Roosevelt Hotel during Sept-Oct. 1937?  It is stated that with her death in 1983, the true answers to the AE mystery were buried with her . . . ” (End of entry.)

The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, circa 1937, where Margot DeCarie, Amelia Earhart’s personal secretary, was living during the September-October 1937 time frame, when the mysteries letter to Earhart was delivered to the Jaluit Post Office.

This is all we know about the letter.  Carl Heine obviously respected privacy rights — even of those believed deceased — too much to open and read its contents, and no one else has ever indicated what became of it.  It’s quite possible that the letter was confiscated by U.S. intelligence assets soon after they learned of its existence, and it’s joined Robert E. Wallack’s briefcase and the photos of Amelia and Fred reportedly discovered by Seabee Joe Garofalo and other GIs on Saipan, deep in top secret archives where nobody can get to it.

We do know that DeCarie wasn’t shy about expressing her ideas about what happened to her boss in July 1937, but we can also wonder whether she told people like Fred Goerner all that she really knew.  In a phone interview sometime in the early 1960s, she told Goerner that she had “promised secrecy” to an unknown party, but still gave him plenty to think about.  “Do you really think Purdue University bought that plane for Amelia,” she asked, “and do you think that it was intended for some kind of vague experimentation?  Second, if the whole thing was a publicity stunt . . . why did the government assign some of its top experts to the flight, and why did President Roosevelt have an airfield built for her?  Last, do you believe the President ordered the Navy to spend four million dollars on a search for a couple of stunt fliers?”  DeCarie was sure Earhart “died a long time ago,” and that the Japanese captured her “within moderate range of Howland Island. . . . President Roosevelt knew everything,” she said.  “He knew the price Amelia paid.”  Margot DeCarie passed away in North Hollywood, Calif., in 1983 at the age of 79.

In his 1997 book, Where Nets Were Cast: Christianity in Oceana Since World War II, John Garret wrote that during the war, Carl Heine was given the option to leave the Marshalls, but he chose to stay.  He was detained, along with his wife, at times in isolation by the Japanese.  “In January 1944 US bombing became heavier at Jabor, preceding the full counter-attack on fortified positions,” Garret wrote.  “Many Marshallese – but few, if any Japanese – died in the most intensive bombardment in March.  In April, Carl R. Heine was beheaded and his body burned at Enijet, Jaluit.”  (Garrett was clearly in error about the location of Heine’s beheading, as Enijet is an island on Mili Atoll, not Jaluit Atoll.)

Heine’s grandson John would later tell Earhart researchers about the barge with the silver airplane with the broken wing he saw at Jaluit as a child.  “It was the plane an American lady had been flying when she crashed,” Heine told T.C. “Buddy” Brennan in 1983, and he believed that after leaving Jaluit the ship “went on to Kwajalein . . .  then on to Truk and Saipan.”