3. Other visits to Gardner island revealed little or no evidence of Earhart
Over the years several visits to Gardner Island (which is today Nikumaroro, part of the Republic of Kiribati) were undertaken to prove the hypothesis that Earhart reached the tiny atoll. In 1940 a British colonial officer discovered bones on the island and had them sent to Fiji for what equated to analysis at the time. They were measured, and the report on the incomplete skeleton presented it as being from “a short, stocky, muscular European…” The bones were then stored in Fiji, and evidently lost forever. Another finding, a sextant box, later became linked to USS Bushnell, a naval ship which performed surveys of the atoll and other islands. When the sextant box finding was announced speculation immediately linked it to Earhart.
During World War II, the US Coast Guard established a communications base on the island, which was by then populated with colonists from the Gilbert Islands. The American personnel were forbidden interaction with the Gilbertese, and mostly remained restricted to the base on the atoll’s southeast coastline. The station remained in commission until July, 1946. None of the men stationed there reported any evidence of the airplane (a Lockheed Electra), nor its occupants on the island. But speculation that Earhart and Noonan landed on Gardner Island, or in the sea near enough to reach the island, continued. In 1985 an non-profit organization calling itself the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) formed. It quickly came to support the theory that Earhart died on Gardner Island.