History Channel investigating claims about Amelia Earhart photo and documentary timeline

The History Channel is investigating claims made by a Japanese history buff that undermines a recent special that purported a long-forgotten photo showed Amelia Earhart was captured by the Japanese.

The photo in question depicts a woman with a haircut similar to Amelia Earhart's and a man that could be her co-pilot, Fred Noonan, according to the History Channel special dubbed Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence. The two-hour special hypothesized that the photo was taken after Earhart disappeared in 1937, and was proof that Earhart may have survived a crash-landing and was captured by the Japanese.

A Japanese military blogger, Kota Yamano, told The Guardian that he didn't believe the theory that Earhart was captured by the Japanese, so he decided to investigate. In a July 9 blog post, Yamano explained that "the photograph was first published in Palau under Japanese rule in 1935, in a photo book; Motoaki Nishino, 'Umi no seimeisen : Waga nannyou no sugata... So the photograph was taken at least two years before Amelia Earhart disappeared in 1937 and a person on the photo was not her."

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