Kimberlyn King-Hinds, the Republican delegate for the Northern Mariana Islands, has urged President Donald Trump to declassify any and all records related to the disappearance of aviator Amelia Earhart, saying residents of Saipan and other islands have long maintained the U.S. government holds information about her fate.
Earhart vanished on July 2, 1937, while attempting to become the first woman to circumnavigate the globe. Official U.S. accounts say she and her navigator, Fred Noonan, likely ran out of fuel and crashed near Howland Island after a 16-day naval search failed to find wreckage. For decades, however, a persistent alternative — the "Saipan theory" — has held that Earhart and Noonan were captured by Japanese forces, brought to Saipan and died in captivity.
King-Hinds told the Daily Mail she pressed the White House for "clarity" and "finality" for her constituents, noting that elders who provided testimony about seeing a foreign woman on Saipan have died and that the local historian who collected their accounts, Marie Castro, is frail at 92. Castro and others recorded recollections from island residents who described seeing a short-haired foreign woman, a U.S. aircraft hidden in a Japanese hangar, and the cremation of an American woman on Saipan.
The congresswoman framed her request to the president as part of a broader bid for transparency. In a letter cited by the Daily Mail, King-Hinds praised Trump’s public record on releasing classified documents in other cases and asked for similar action on files related to Earhart. The White House did not respond to requests for comment, according to the report.
Claims that Earhart was taken to Saipan carry potential implications for U.S. policy and historical assessment of the late president Franklin D. Roosevelt. Some researchers and local advocates contend that if Earhart was in Japanese custody, then U.S. officials may have been aware of her fate and chose not to intervene for fear of provoking hostilities. Mike Campbell, a Navy veteran and longtime investigator of the Saipan theory, told the Daily Mail that public knowledge of such a decision could alter perceptions of Roosevelt’s leadership in the prewar period. Campbell also warned that surviving documents could have been destroyed.
Mainstream historians and many scholars have disputed or debunked key pieces of purported evidence for the Saipan theory. A photograph that surfaced in U.S. archives in 2017 and was broadcast by a television network as showing Earhart and Noonan in Japanese custody was quickly challenged. Japanese researcher Kota Yamano pointed out the image had appeared in a travel book published two years before Earhart’s disappearance. Other items cited over the years — including alleged gravesites and recovered aircraft parts — have drawn conflicting explanations from investigators and, in several cases, were later shown to be misidentifications.
Skeptics emphasize more conventional explanations for Earhart’s disappearance. Some experts maintain her Lockheed Electra ran out of fuel and sank in deep water near Howland Island. Others propose she and Noonan crashed or landed on a remote atoll and perished there as castaways. Marine exploration firms, including Nauticos, say advances in analysis of radio transmissions and oceanographic data have refined search areas, and Nauticos has launched multiple expeditions to search seafloor locations near Howland.
The variety of competing theories has produced decades of searches, investigations and debate. Supporters of the Saipan account point to local oral histories, a handful of artifact claims and anecdotal testimony collected mid-century. Opponents note the lack of contemporaneous documentary proof and say some physical evidence has been misattributed or explained by other events. Over time, key witnesses have died and material evidence has degraded, complicating efforts to produce conclusive answers.
King-Hinds told the Daily Mail she is not promoting conspiracy theories but seeking closure for the people she represents. "These people who are sharing these stories are our elders… who firmly believe in their hearts that this was something they'd seen," she said. She said her duty as a congressional delegate includes pressing for any government-held information that could corroborate or refute those community memories.
The debate in the Northern Marianas has prompted differing local responses. Some residents have proposed a monument to Earhart, while others question the value of public resources for a search or memorial without corroborating evidence. Marie Castro's collection of testimonies, and the islanders she interviewed, have been central to calls for declassification; supporters say the accounts deserve official review before the surviving witnesses are gone.
Any release of records could return the Earhart story to national headlines and spark renewed historical scrutiny. Historians caution that declassification, if it occurs, may not resolve longstanding disputes: documents may be fragmentary, ambiguous, or noncommittal, and some researchers say the most direct physical evidence will remain the de facto arbiter of competing claims.
Meanwhile, private and nonprofit groups continue to search and analyze possible wreckage sites. Nauticos and other explorers say technological advances have narrowed search areas and improved the chances of locating the Electra if it lies on or beneath the seafloor. Until definitive physical evidence emerges or relevant government records are disclosed, the circumstances of Earhart's final flight will remain a subject of inquiry and conjecture.
Amelia Earhart, who became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic in 1932, is an enduring international figure in aviation history. Her disappearance while attempting a global flight at age 39 entrenched her status as an icon and left a question that has spanned generations. King-Hinds's appeal seeks to place any remaining official material about that question in the public domain so that island residents and historians alike can assess what, if anything, the archival record reveals about one of the 20th century's most persistent mysteries.