researcher, Lynn Myers, came up with rare Saipan material as well as the elusive G. P. Putnam autobiography, Wide Margins (1942).
June Rigler of Muscatine, Iowa, generously loaned me numerous books from her extensive Amelia Earhart collection; she also allowed me to sort through an extensive, decades-spanning clipping file on Amelia, entrusted to me in a piece of vintage Amelia Earhart luggage. June’s clippings, from hundreds of newspapers and magazines, greatly helped broaden my picture of Amelia and her disappearance—in particular, a 1982 series of articles about the Irene Bolam controversy appearing in the Woodbridge, New Jersey, News Tribune.
Alice and Leonard Maltin graciously fielded several phone calls, providing instant in-depth research as the unpaid proprietors of the Toluca Lake Historical Society (phone number unlisted). Tom and Yuko Mihara Weisser also fielded impromptu phone inquiries; Yuko helped me figure out that the hotel referred to in every source as “Kobayashi Royokan” likely was the Kobayashi Ryokan, “ryokan” being Japanese for “inn.”
In 1996, Jim Ayres of Muscatine moved his family to Saipan, where he and his wife took teaching jobs. In the midst of this traumatic relocation, he undertook on-site research for me, intersecting with the Department of Community and Cultural Affairs of the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands. Jim and his family took photos and searched out books, magazine articles, and visitor’s bureau information, as well as photocopied the original testimony of Matilde Fausto Arriola, among others. He also located several video documentaries on the disappearance as well as a current travelogue on Saipan.
The key book Jim found is Nan’yo—The Rise and Fall of the Japanese in Micronesia, 1885- 1945 (1988), by Mark R. Peattie. In trying to imagine the Garapan of 1940—a city that had virtually ceased to exist by July 1944—I found in the Peattie book many major puzzle pieces (most discussions of Saipan focus on the invasion, and photos of the rubble of Garapan are as common as photos of pre-bombing Garapan are not). Other puzzle pieces were culled from various magazine and newspaper articles, notably a Yank article by Corporal Tom O’Brien on Camp Susupe. Others were gathered from East Again (1934), Walter B. Harris; Lady with a Spear (1953), Eugenie Clark; Micronesia Handbook—Guide to the Caroline, Gilbert, Mariana, and Marshall Islands (1992), David Stanley; Saipan—Then and Now (1990), Glenn E. McClure; and Saipan: The Beginning of the End (1950), Major Carl W. Hoffman, USMC.
Three biographies provided much information and many insights: Letters from Amelia (1982), Jean L. Backus, a warm life story illuminated by lengthy quotes from Amelia’s letters to her mother; The Sound of Wings (1989), Mary S. Lovell, the most detailed biography, beautifully written and exhaustively researched, marred slightly by the author’s inexplicable approval of G. P. Putnam (ironically, much of my negative view of Putnam is derived from material in Lovell’s book); and Amelia Earhart—A Biography (1989), Doris L. Rich, an outstanding job with a slightly less rose-colored view of Amelia than Lovell’s. These books tend to accept the notion that Amelia crashed into the sea; Lovell in particular spends time debunking disappearance theories.
Also consulted were the lavishly illustrated Amelia, My Courageous Sister (1987), Muriel Earhart Morrissey and Carol L. Osborne; Amelia Earhart—Pioneer of Aviation (1973), Julian May; Still Missing (1993), Susan Ware; and Winged Legend (1970), John Burke. A tribute with pictures, Amelia—Pilot in Pearls (1985), Shirley Dobson Gilroy, provided useful nuggets. Other biographical material was drawn from books bylined Amelia Earhart: 20 Hrs. 40 Min. (1928), The Fun of It (1932), and The Last Flight (1937), as well as G. P. Putnam’s puffy, unconvincing Soaring Wings (1939).
While I viewed several documentaries and one of the two television movies about Amelia, the work that really impacted this book was Nancy Porter’s 1993 documentary, Amelia Earhart—The Price of Courage, which explores Amelia as a celebrity created and manipulated by the media.
The groundbreaking Daughter of the Sky—The Story of Amelia Earhart (1960), by Paul L. Briand Jr., endorses the notion of Earhart and Noonan winding up in Japanese captivity on Saipan. Still a good read despite all that has followed, The Search for Amelia Earhart (1966), by Fred Goerner, is the cornerstone of the Saipan scenario. The next major entry is the controversial (and withdrawn) Amelia Earhart Lives (1970), by Joe Klaas, covering the Joe Gervais investigation and presenting the Irene Bolam theory; entertaining but disorganized, this book is a peculiar mix of hard research and wild speculation. Also consulted was Amelia Earhart: The Final Story (1985), Vincent V. Loomis with Jeffrey Ethell. The “disappearance” book authors are often catty about each other’s work—almost everybody bad-mouths Goerner, despite his pioneering contribution. A tour guide through the theories is presented in the excellent Amelia Earhart: Lost Legend (1994), Donald Moyer Wilson.
Two of the best inquiries into the Saipan theory are Eyewitness: The Amelia Earhart Incident (1987), Thomas E. Devine with Richard M. Daley; and Witness to the Execution (1988), T. C. “Buddy” Brennan (and his video documentary of the same name). My character Buddy Busch is a composite of Devine and Brennan, with some fiction tossed in; in particular, Brennan’s research is the basis for Busch’s, including the testimony of Mrs. Blas and the discovery of the blindfold. The story of the burning of the Electra, and Forrestal’s presence on Saipan, derives from Devine.
Other books focus primarily on the flight itself: Amelia Earhart—What Really Happened at Howland (1993), G. Carrington, suspects an intelligence mission was undertaken, while Amelia Earhart—Case Closed (1996), Walter Rosessler and Leo Gomez, attempts to debunk that same thesis. The most convincing, coherent, credible inquiry into the government’s role in the “last flight” is Lost Star (1993), Randall Brink.
Material unavailable elsewhere was found in the well-illustrated The Earhart Disappearance—The British Connection (1987), J. A. Donahue. Ann Holtgren Pellegreno’s World Flight—The Earhart Trail (1971) charts her own recreation (sans disappearance, of course) of Earhart’s “last flight” in an Electra in 1967; she includes her own insightful overview and summary of the disappearance theories. During the writing of Flying Blind, another woman “recreated” the Earhart flight, but Iowan Pellegreno did it first, and far more authentically.
A number of biographies provided the basis of characterizations in this book, in particular Hollywood Pilot (1967), by Don Dwiggins, an excellent biography of Paul Mantz. The autobiography Age of Heroes (1993) by aviator Henri Keyzer-Andre with Hy Steirman includes the fascinating possibility that the Japanese “Zero” fighter plane may have benefited from engineers having access to Amelia’s “flying laboratory.” The autobiographical travel books of Irving and Electa Johnson were essential in creating not only their characters but Heller’s ocean voyage, specifically Westward Bound in the Schooner Yankee (1936) and Yankee’s Wander World (1949). The only world cruise the Johnsons seem not to have written a book about is the one including the Amelia Earhart side trip; their article “Westward Bound in the Yankee” in The National Geographic (January 1942) purports to describe that trip, their third, but is in fact a condensation of their 1936 book on the first voyage.
