Amelia Earhart : The mystery of his disappeared

Amelia Earhart was a world famous American aviatrix whose courageous exploits and plucky personality made her an international hero and an American cultural icon in the early half of the 20th Century. 

Earhart was the first woman to cross the Atlantic ocean by airplane (1928), the second person and first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic (1932), the first person to fly solo across the Pacific between California and Hawaii (1935), and the first woman to compete in the National Air Races in Cleveland, Ohio (1935). She also set a number of speed and altitude records and was awarded numerous high level honors and awards from American and Foreign dignitaries. 

On July 2, 1937, Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared over the Pacific Ocean during one of the final legs of their equatorial round the world flight. Had they finished the crossing Earhart would have been only the second person to complete such a journey and the first woman ever to do so. 

The mystery of Earhart's disappearance continues to intrigue the public and to generate scores of books, articles, and films. Popular theories for her disappearance include navigational error, capture by the Japanese military, and even UFO abduction. Earhart herself authored two books, 20 Hrs. 40 Min (1928) and For the Fun of It (1932). Selections from her journal, mailed to husband George Putnam during her final flight, were posthumously published as a third book, Last Flight, in 1937. 

Throughout her life Earhart worked tirelessly to promote aviation and opportunities for women. Amelia Mary Earhart was born July 24, 1897 in Atchison Kansas. Her early years were spent, primarily, with her maternal grandparents who were prominent local citizens. But in 1908 Amelia and her sister Muriel went to live full time with their parents, Edwin and Amy. It was the beginning of a time of hardships and turmoil.Her father's unstable career meant frequent moves. Economic woes fueled marital strife -- and her father's alcoholism -- and her parents separated frequently. Amelia meanwhile resented the stress foisted on her father as the family’s sole provider. Already a tomboy, she resolved that she would be a more independent style of woman, one who would be an equal partner. 

Theory of disappearance 

The mysterious fate of the larger than life woman flyer tugged at the public's consciousness. For nearly a decade she had amazed and delighted the world by doing the seemingly impossible, by doing what others could not. She was plucky, resourceful, and smart. Could this extraordinary American hero really have fallen prey to error or the forces of nature? To many it seemed unlikely. Surely she was simply marooned somewhere, waiting to be discovered. But another hypothesis was already in the making. 

On October 16, 1937 the Australian newspaper, Smith's Weekly, charged that U.S. planes, allegedly searching for Earhart, were in fact carrying out reconnaissance of Japanese military installations in the Pacific. The expansionist Japanese empire had been very busy of late in certain parts of the South Pacific, shipping in great quantities of building materials, and enough food to support an army. Given that the Japanese had already begun an invasion of China, U.S. officials had to be nervous about Japan's intentions toward American interests in the Pacific. At the same time the search for a world renowned flyer, a beloved public icon, could have provided convenient cover for a massive U.S. presence close to Japanese territory. 

However, according to official U.S. records, American personnel never entered Japanese held waters. Officially there was no correlation. But in 1943, well after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, rumors of a connection between the Earhart disappearance and the Japanese menace gained new life. In the film Flight for Freedom, Rosalind Russell portrayed a woman aviator closely modeled on the life and personality of Amelia Earhart. She even sported a version of Earhart's nickname, "Lady Lindbergh." And like Earhart, this lady aviator also lost her life in the Pacific -- but on a secret government spy mission against the Japanese. The message was not lost on the public and in the decades since the movies debut theories linking Earhart's disappearance to the Japanese military have multiplied. Even some U.S. servicemen in the World War II Pacific theater returned home with claims of having found Earhart, her remains, or her affects in Japanese hands. 

Earhart researchers favoring the Japanese interception theory later leaped on these accounts as well of those of South Pacific natives who claimed to have seen Earhart in custody. But accounts about Earhart varied wildly -- she was executed immediately, she died of illness, she was liberated from a prison camp, she was secretly repatriated to the United States, she was really Tokyo Rose, etc. But the majority of seemingly credible accounts do seem to place her on the island of Saipan, as Japanese prisoner charged with espionage. Was it truth or film related hysteria? 

In 1949 Amy Earhart publicly stated that she believed her daughter had been involved in some kind of work for the government. There are even claims that Navy Admiral Chester W. Nimitz shared this view. However thus far no hard evidence has been presented to prove either that Earhart was engaged in reconnaissance or that she was ever in Japanese custody. 

The more commonly accepted theory today, in an era when Earhart's accomplishments no longer loom larger than life, is that she simply ran out of gas and crashed into the Pacific. The plane immediately sank, proponents say, and she and Noonan were drowned. Nothing extraordinary about it. But one group of researchers, TIGHAR (The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery), validate the old vision of Earhart, and Noonan, as unusually capable and resourceful. 

They insist that the flyers managed to land their craft on the reef of tiny Gardner Island in the Phoenix Group in the South Pacific. On this island, now Nikumaroro in the Republic of Kirib, they struggled to stay alive, waiting for a rescue that never came. TIGHAR researchers cite as evidence for this theory human remains and airplane wreckage which were both alleged found on the island in decades past. The group’s examination of the site, involving trained experts in forensics and archaeological excavation, has uncovered tantalizing clues that seem to lend credence to the earlier reports. Did the remains, and the possible airplane, belong to Earhart? They aren't sure, yet. 

Meanwhile the results of TIGHAR's work appear in Finding Amelia: The True Story of the Earhart Disappearance (2006) by TIGHAR Executive Director Ric Gillespie.Tom King’s Amelia Earhart's Shoes: Is the Mystery Solved? also incorporates the findings. TIGHAR members hope that future expeditions to Nikumaroro will decisively answer the riddle of Earhart's disappearance. Other Earhart theorists however believe that only a similar expedition to the jungles of Saipan will provide the answers. 

The mystery of what happened to Earhart, Noonan, and the plane has not yet been solved. In 1999, British archaeologists claimed to have found artifacts on a small island in the South Pacific that contained Earhart’s DNA, but the evidence is not conclusive. Near the plane’s last known location, the ocean reaches depths of 16,000 feet, well below the range of today’s deep-sea diving equipment. If the plane sank into those depths, it may never be recovered.

Sohn Kee-Chung : The Legendary Marathoner

Sohn Kee-chung, and while he may not be well known in the west, his autobiography is part of the school syllabus in South Korea. He died in 2003, but his life is already part of the national mythology. You may not have seen it, but Sohn is the man at the centre of one of the iconic photographs of Olympic history. 

On 9 August 1936, at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin. It shows three athletes on the podium during the medal ceremony of the Olympic marathon. At the back is the British silver medallist Ernie Harper. He is standing tall, shoulders back and head held high, a proud smile on his face. In front of him are two Korean runners, Sohn, gold medallist, and Nam Sung-yong, bronze medallist. 

In the 1936 Olympics Games, Sohn's was just as defiant a victory. And if history has forgotten that, it is because it was many years before the wider world realised the significance of what he did. Between 1910 and 1948 Korea was part of the Japanese empire, who suppressed the indigenous culture and language. The flags that were raised and the anthem that was played to salute Sohn and Nam were not Korean, but Japanese, and the press and the IOC did not award or record the victory as a Korean triumph, but a Japanese one. Sohn was not even allowed to compete under his own name, but went by the Japanese transliteration, Son Kitei. 

During his stay in Berlin Sohn tried to tell the would that they should not think of him as Japanese. He would sign his name in Korean characters, and would often draw a small picture of his country alongside his autograph. After the race he tried to tell the newspapermen again and again that he was Korean, not Japanese, but his minders refused to translate his remarks. Montague's mistake was repeated right around the world, with one conspicuous exception. 

Back in Korea the newspapers blurred the Japanese flag out of the photographs of Sohn. The Korean daily Dong-A Ilbo, which still exists today, carried the photo – with the Japanese flag scratched out – on its front page on 25 August. Immediately afterwards the Japanese government shut the Dong-A Ilbo down for nine months and arrested, then tortured, eight of its journalists. 

Early Life 

Sohn was born in Sinuiju, in what is now North Korea, in 1914, four years after the country was annexed by Japan. In school he was taught Japanese, and had to learn his own language in secret. He began to run, racing against friends on bicycles, and when his teachers realised how talented he was they sent him to study in Seoul. There he was coached by Lee Sun-il, who used to make him run with stones strapped to his back and his pockets filled with sand to help him build his strength and stamina. 

Beginning lives as a runner 

The regime worked well. When he was 17, Sohn won his first marathon. And in the next five years, between 1931 and 1936, he would run in 12 more, winning nine of them. In November 1935 he ran the Tokyo marathon in 2hr 26min and 42sec, a world best, five minutes faster than the time that won Argentina's Juan Carlos Zabala gold at the 1932 Olympics. 

The next year Sohn finished third in the Olympic trial, behind his countryman Nam. The Japanese had made a lot of noise about how they intended to finish third in the medal table. They were happy to send the three Koreans to Berlin, a 12-day train journey away, to represent them in the marathon, so long as they ran under Japanese names and in the Japanese kit. 

Zabala was the favourite for the race itself. He led the field out from the Olympic Stadium, the 56 runners trailing in his wake through the Grunewald forest. His fast pace meant he stretched out ahead of the pack. Sohn, 90 seconds behind after three miles, considered making a move to catch him. But as he set off he heard a voice come over his shoulder. It was Harper, the Englishman. "Take it easy," he said, "let Zabala run himself out." Sohn couldn't speak English, but he understood the sentiment. For the next 14 miles he and Harper ran together. And then, after 19 miles, the exhausted Zabala tripped and fell. Sohn and Harper passed him. Staggering and stumbling, Zabala dropped out two miles later. 

Harper began to suffer with blisters, and his shoes filled with blood. Montague wrote afterwards that "Harper's performance, the last 10 minutes of it with a blistered and bandaged foot, can vie with Owens' sprinting as the finest performance of the Games." Sohn kicked on, racked with pain, his leaden legs pounding the tarmac track. "The human body can do so much," Sohn said later. "Then your heart and spirit must take over." 

Heart and spirit carried him up one final slope, back into the stadium and across the line. As athletes always do, Sohn looked up at the scoreboard as he finished. He did not see his name, but the Japanese transliteration of it, and alongside it was not his nationality, but that of his nation's conquerors. 

Conflict with the Japanese coloniser 

Soon after the race the Japanese athletes held a party to celebrate Sohn's victory. But neither he nor his team-mates were there. Instead they were at the house of An Bong-geun, a prominent member of the Korean nationalist movement. At An's house Sohn is said to have seen the Korean flag, forbidden from use, for the first time in his life. He was overcome with shame at the memory of being forced to wear the Japanese Rising Sun emblem in Berlin. 

Serve as a National Marathon Coach 

After the war, Sohn became the head coach of the Korean marathon team. Fourteen years on from Berlin, after Korea had been liberated from Japan and then occupied by the US and the Soviet Union, Sohn led a team of South Korean runners – the first athletes ever to wear the Korean flag on their kit – to a clean sweep in the 1950 Boston marathon. He was still coaching 42 years later, and was in the stadium in Barcelona to watch his protege, Hwang Young-jo, win South Korea's second Olympic gold in the marathon. 

In his own country Sohn was already a hero. But it took 50 years for the rest of the world to acknowledge what he had done. He was an instrumental member of the Seoul Olympics Organising Committee, and it was only when Korea was awarded the Games that the athletics community rewrote the record books. In 1986 Sohn was invited to a ceremony in Culver City in California, where his nationality and name were changed on a monument to Olympic marathon winners. 

Two years later he carried the torch into the stadium for the opening ceremony of the 1988 Olympics, to a standing ovation from 80,000 of his countrymen. 

"The Japanese could stop our musicians from playing our songs. They could stop our singers and silence our speakers," Sohn said before he died. "But they could not stop me from running."

Tokyo Tower : The story about a mother and her child.

The story of book's unfolds from a young man's recollections of his wild painter father and his hard working mother. His earliest memories are when his mother got fed up with the father's drunken antics and brought him back to her small mining home town to live. Growing up in a fading mining town with summer visits to his father he decides to become an artist like his father. With a little training from his father and unquestioning love and support from his mother he makes it into a regional high school known for its art program. Here he starts a wastrel student life that he continues through high school and even into college in Tokyo. All the while he is living off the hard earned money his mother keeps sending him. 

As the story unfolds in retrospect, through the parallel current narration we learn that his mother is ill and in a hospital. The narration of the past arrives at the point of his having spent the money for going to his maternal grandmother's funeral on partying when he didn't even have rent money. Finding himself with his few posessions out on the street he meets up with a fellow art school student who has graduated but also not yet able to support himself. They team up and eventually are able to sell some illustrations and get off the street. 

While his career is starting his mother's health has been failing. She recovers from a bout of throat cancer but with unfirm health she has lost her little restaurant and can't even keep a job at another restaurant because of days needed for rest or treatment. 

In the initial current narrative we already have seen the narrator make a radio appearance where he made smutty jokes and was treated as a celebrity. We see through the recollection of the past that he went from illustrations and jokes for erotic magazines to writer of jokes and lines for AV starlets until he is offered a regular column of his own. Feeling successful for the first time and also seeing how his mother has been reduced to living off her sisters he invites her to come and live with him in Tokyo. After a little hesitation on both sides she accepts and moves with him into an apartment where she blossoms into a friendly funny mother figure who feeds and entertains all his friends. 

The happiness doesn't last too long (although one of the characters later comments that the mother said she had a year of great fun and a life time worth of being taken care of by her son) before her cancer returns and the narrative of the past merges with the current events of her being in the hospital. 

 

The narrator from the beginning said he would tell how his mother had ended up dying within view of the Tokyo Tower. One recurring image has been a photograph of his father in cowboy regalia standing in front of the still under construction Tokyo Tower. Once when the narrator was driving his car with his mother and his girl friend coming from an enjoyable night on the town, at a stop light they looked up at the tower lit up in the night and the mother commented on how she had never had gone up on the tower. The narrator's words to us have usually come to us as he sits at his mother's bedside looking out at the tower. He again looks out the window as he is beginning to realize that he is losing his mother to her illness. It was on a day when it surprisingly snows even after the cherry trees have blossomed. 

As her condition has grown worse, his father, her estranged husband, arrives and there is a bitter sweet family reconciliation around her death bed. In one scene, even though the mother can scarcely speak or move she urges the father to turn on the radio so that they can hear their son's trade mark raunchy humor program. The son plays an old song on his program with a special but descrete dedication which triggers a fantasy sequence of the mother and father in their youth doing elegant ball room dancing. When the father finds out how much the son is spending to care for his mother he recognizes his son's financial success. Father and son are together in her hospital room when death comes. 

The narrator is devastated by his mother's death but his memories of her encouragement keep him going and even help him meet an editorial dead line during her wake. All his friends have come to the wake and they are sad at her death but also recall the humor and love of life she had. 

As a final sign that he is continuing his life with the strength from the love of his mother, he brings the wood marker with her death name up to the Tokyo Tower observation deck. There he meets his estranged girl friend and they fulfill his mother's desire that they all go up on Tokyo Tower together. 

In the end, the future is uncertain, but we are encouraged to live life fully. 

My investment, bone and the thrustee

I don't have a bone with the thrusters, y seem to make sense - common sense. But I have some issues with the plans for the thrusters. They seem rushed. I don't believe they would bring a quantum leap in the Malay's economic power. I believe the think-tank could think and come up with something better from their tank. 

Before we go on, there is something that we must be clear in our head. I am talking about the Malay economic power (in saying Malay, I am including the Bumiputera as well) AS A SOCIETY, rather than individual or a segment, a caste. When a policy benefits a few individuals and they get extremely rich from it, it does not translate into Malay Economic power unless they give back much more to the Malay community. 

We must look at the society as a whole, from the poorest to the richest. In that regard, we must also understand the demographic of the Malay society that while it is true that past policies have created a larger pool of middle class Malays, the society is still dominated by largely the poor, both in terms of financial education as well as the financial itself. 

This society is by and large, poor and heavily subsidized. Lets start with the ASB2; RM10 billion of it. And here are my issues: ASB is attractive only because it is a superhigh-return savings scheme. The guarantee of the capital makes it risk free (better than bank deposit (?), maybe, because PIDM has a limit on the guaranteed savings amount) and it gives an equity-based return (way higher than the deposit rate of around 3% per annum). That would just make people switch their long term fixed deposit into ASB (those poorer ones who needs to withdraw cash regularly cannot benefit because you need to lock the amount in ASB to fully enjoy the yearly dividend). Who has one year long term deposits? 

Certainly not the poorer Malays nor even the middle class Malays. It will definitely benefit the richer Malays, those who have maxed out their ASB1. So it looked like this plan would benefit the already rich Malays first. But their number is not that big. In my opinion, this ASB does nothing to promote active economic management of the Malays. Instead it is training the Malays to be passive owners of equity. The term "reign but does not rule" comes to mind. I don't believe that passive ownership of equity would make the society any better at creating and managing economic power - that one comes from owning and operating businesses. 

ASB does not directly and significantly help the Malay society in owning and operating businesses. The moneys in ASB would have to be placed in secure investments so that the managers could manage the risk and give the expected return. Among others, they would be invested in companies owned by non-Malays (because they still dominate the real economy, they own the businesses) and when this happens, the capital flows to enhance the economic power of the original owner. They would use the much needed cash to build more businesses and when it has grown big enough, they would then go for listing again - and the cycle continues. 

So, I ask myself, does the Malay businesses really benefit from the ASB? Does the Malay society as a whole benefits from ASB?. Do Malay entrepreneurs benefit from ASB? I have great difficulty to say a resounding yes, "Menang sorak, kampung tergadai". ASB1 was relevant back then, to tilt some Malays into middle income class and some middle income Malays into rich ones. 

It was a quick fix to create purchasing power within the society. But now we need something different. We need production power!...

Fuel price hiked and the "Robin Hood economy".

I was stunned when the announcement was made but more amused at the reasoning given by the Prime minister, Najib Razak. First of all I just would like to know from your good-self, is there such thing as young consultants hired by the government similar to 4th floor boys during prime minister Abdullah Badawi's time. Some bloggers have pinpointed that such group exist. They are suppose to be the cream of Malaysia Brain. Najib Razak listen to the them such as Mustapa Ong of Petronas. 

Next is what happened to our Administration and Diplomatic Officers(PTD) in Economic Planning Unit(EPU), Socioeconomic Research Unit(SERU), Prime Minister's department, National Treasury and Implementation Coordinating Unit(ICU). Are they being marginalized due to their Mediocrity.Had the idea of raising the price of petroleum RON 95 being discussed in EPU, I am sure the officers will speak up their mind.

The idea of raising the price is to be compensated by the increase of BRIM payment.Is the BRIM is the ingrain part of our economic foundation. The money is supposed to be used in capacity building of the low income group but not to subsidize their life style. You take the money from the middle income family and give that to the low income people. This is Robin Hood economy!. The government should create wealth so that the people can increase their income without too much depending on government help.I was shocked to hear that so much money is spend on oversea trip that are not productive, no wonder.

To be fair, the government must focus on our economy especially with regard to our national debt, household debt, employment, high cost of living in the coming budget. Giving the BRIM is certainly not a wise way to raise the income or reduced cost of living. Surely PM who is economic graduate know this facts. People will be addicted to this hand out and the opposition will use the same the same tactic to get the support of the people.

Let us have a balance budget,not deficit budget.Cut expenditures that can balance the budget. Why the government have Hari raya open house non stop until today.Whose money are they spending, and I am sure the list can go much longer. I would like to urge the middle class society not to be slighted by the government move to raise petrol price but continue to be productive and efficient in our daily life.

Some time you just lose your motivation but let us pray that Allah will help Malaysia through His special Way. Certainly Government is off tangent with regard to national financial management.

"Happiness be real when we share..."

This book got me riveted in the tragic story of Chris McCandless, a young man who left his family and friends, abandoned most of his material possessions, went to the Alaska wilderness and perished there. The author does a great job of portraying McCandless complex personality through meticulous research based on interviews, letters and journal entries. The writing is so engaging that although it is already clear from the beginning how McCandless' story would end, I was hooked till the last page. Krakauer only digresses when discussing his own high-risk undertaking and those of ill-fated adventurers similar to McCandless — these parts offer comparison to McCandless' character but I found myself getting impatient and wanting them to end quickly, to return to the main story itself which is much more compelling.

Readers have been divided with regard to this story. Some admire McCandless' daring and idealism; some others say he was stupid, reckless and arrogant enough to have gone to Alaska without sufficient preparation. I think he was a human being with faults and merits, but I have to admit I felt something stirring in me when I read this passage, taken from a letter he wrote to a friend:

"...Make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservation... The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure."

The passage resonates with me because my life has been filled with stagnation and inactivity. I am the queen of conservatism. I don't consider myself unhappy, but I'm always afraid of moving outside the comfort zone, of expanding further than my own comfortable little shell. I often don't exert myself to my best capabilities because halfhearted efforts seemed good enough. When I read about McCandless, I noticed that one of his admirable traits is if he wanted something he went out and did it. He was not afraid of challenges, the greater they are the better. Jason Mraz says "live high, live mighty, live righteously". I think that was what McCandless did: he lived up to his ideals.

One the other hand, the greatest tragedy of McCandless' life, in my opinion, was his conflicting feelings toward human intimacy and relationship. He clashed with his parents and others who didn't share his beliefs to the point that he spurned humanity and sought nature and the wilderness instead. But even during his solitary journeys he met a lot of people and connected with them, touching their lives as well as his own. His final odyssey in Alaska had probably made him realize, more than ever, the raw need for companionship, but he didn't survive that trip — causing endless grief to his family. So in the end, if there is something I can take from McCandless story, it is this message: Be bold. Get out there. Do something. But don't forget those who love you.

Tokyo Tower : The symbol of love...

With the height of 333 meters, Tokyo tower was once the tallest tower in the world. It was built in 1958 modeled on Eiffel tower. Since then it has been working both as a broadcasting tower and a symbol of Tokyo. 

But many other taller buildings have mushroomed and made this tower less outstanding. Moreover, the new world’s highest broadcasting tower ‘Tokyo sky tree’ will open this May. Then, what will happen to Tokyo tower?? 

Don’t worry. Tokyoites still love it. According to a survey, many people think they can pay about 9000 yen more as a monthly rent to live in a house with a view of Tokyo tower, while about 7000 yen more for Tokyo sky tree. The survey says many Tokyoites answered that they are proud of Tokyo sky tree but love Tokyo tower still more. 

I do not know how the poll will be after the new tower opens to the public this spring. But I want to vote for Tokyo tower next year, too! Because of this charming mismatch below.

Suddenly It's remind me to this song's ;

Without letting anyone notice, 
Your tears spilled and blended with your sweat-covered smile 
That's why I don't know of your tears 

Having never been extinguished, 
it was lighting up my heart 
I received from you the tender light, 
proof your unconditional love 

While being enveloped by the gentle spot under the sun, 
i whisper into your back even if a day like this comes again 
surely, surely, surely, even if you would be able to understand 

vanishing and blooming, 
this year too the flower bud is waiting for me 
the petal dancing in the wind that my palm can't grasp 
stops on the shoulder lightly skillfully riding it and showing a smile, 
i remember you by myself