The Japanese would not have wanted to admit this since they would also be admitting to military presence in the region. As Carol Linn Dow points out in her book “The Lost Flight of Amelia Earhart”, whether Earhart and Noonan were in fact spying for the U.S. government, the Japanese “had little choice but to have considered the two as such” 29. This theory is more plausible, as one only has to prove that the Japanese captured them instead of also proving Earhart and Noonan were spies. The only obstacle standing in the way of this theory is that Noonan was an excellent navigator; the Marshall islands are more than 800 miles northwest of their original destination of Howland Island. He would not have deviated so far off course, unless they were spying (with, as mentioned earlier, equipment there was no room for on the plane), or he was drunk, which some have speculated was the case. However, Earhart would not have been so foolish as to embark on the largest leg of their journey with an inebriated navigator, a position requiring full mental facilities to navigate over the vast Pacific for any amount of
The Japanese would not have wanted to admit this since they would also be admitting to military presence in the region. As Carol Linn Dow points out in her book “The Lost Flight of Amelia Earhart”, whether Earhart and Noonan were in fact spying for the U.S. government, the Japanese “had little choice but to have considered the two as such” 29. This theory is more plausible, as one only has to prove that the Japanese captured them instead of also proving Earhart and Noonan were spies. The only obstacle standing in the way of this theory is that Noonan was an excellent navigator; the Marshall islands are more than 800 miles northwest of their original destination of Howland Island. He would not have deviated so far off course, unless they were spying (with, as mentioned earlier, equipment there was no room for on the plane), or he was drunk, which some have speculated was the case. However, Earhart would not have been so foolish as to embark on the largest leg of their journey with an inebriated navigator, a position requiring full mental facilities to navigate over the vast Pacific for any amount of