Some claim they crashed into the sea near their intended destination - but residents of the Marshall Islands say the plane came down on Mili atoll

Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan have not been heard of since July 1937 when they took off from New Guinea on 30th leg of round the world flight

Islanders living on a remote Pacific atoll have told MailOnline they are convinced that Amelia Earhart was captured by the Japanese after her plane crashed there nearly 80 years ago.

Friends and descendants of islanders who insist they saw the American aviator and her navigator Fred Noonan after their Lockheed Electra plane crashed in the Marshall Islands have told what they have learned about the adventurous pair who vanished during a round-the-world flight.

Islanders who claim to have seen the couple on board a Japanese ship in 1937 after their plane came down have since died - but not before they relayed stories of seeing Amelia and Noonan in a remote part of the Marshall Islands.

Mystery: Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan had made it most of the way around the world when they disappeared in July 1937 - sparking an enduring hunt to get to the bottom of what happened

Crash landing? Marshall Islanders claim their plane came down here, the Mili atoll, before Earhart and Noonan were captured by the Japanese and taken to Saipan and thrown in prison

Their accounts lend credence to a persistent theory that the U.S. fliers were captured and taken onto a Japanese ship to the island of Saipan, 1,450 miles south of Tokyo, where they were imprisoned on suspicion of being U.S. spies.

Once there, the theory goes, they met grizzly ends. Noonan, some claim, was executed, while Earhart was left to rot in prison, eventually dying of dysentary.

Towards the end of the Second World War, it is claimed, their bodies - which had been buried in the Catholic cemetery - were dug up on the orders of the U.S. intelligence services.

Some claim - including a relative of Earhart - that the U.S. government knew what had happened to the adventurous duo all along, but the strained politics of the years running up to the war prevented them from acting.

All of this, of course, is conspiracy theory which goes against the generally held belief that the Electra crashed into the ocean nearer to Howland Island, their planned destination.

But those who live on the Marshall Islands are absolutely certain of two things: that Earhart crashed onto the small atoll, and that she and Noonan were taken away by the Japanese.

Bilimon Amram went to his grave insisting he not only saw Earhart and Noonan on the Koshu Maru, but also spoke to the navigator about the leg he broke when the plane crashed.

Identity: Locals reported that the woman was American and had 'short hair' and long boots

Abandoned: Despite being a hero, some claim she was left to her fate as the Japanese believed she was a spy

Tales: There are many stories of sightings of a couple of Americans on the Marshall Islands at the time. They include stories told by the late Bilimon Amram (left) to his friend Charles Domnick (right)

Theories: U.S. businessman Jerry Kramer also heard Amaram's story of treating Noonan for a broken leg on a Japanese boat - and was even shown where she was jailed in Saipan by people who swore she was there

Amram's friend Charles Domnick, 73, told MailOnline: 'He told me he saw both of them on the Japanese vessel and spoke to Noonan. They were both sitting on the deck. He had no doubt about that.'

Domnick said he went to Amram's warehouse in the late 1960s, where his friend swore that he had accompanied a Japanese doctor to the Koshu Maru to look after an injured American.

'He told me he was working as a medical assistant at the time but he said they weren't allowed to go inside the vessel. What he was allowed to do was carry the medical kit onto the deck.

'Amram told me that the injured American man and the woman were sitting on the deck and the man had a broken leg - or some sort of serious problem with his leg - and together he and the Japanese doctor fixed it up.

'Amram said the woman had short hair and long boots. He and the doctor didn't talk to her - they just treated the guy, had a conversation about his leg, and then they left.

'As they were leaving, he said he saw on the far side of the ship that there was a plane hanging there, with one wing broken.

'That was as much as they saw - that was what he told me and he had no reason to tell me that and I had no reason not to believe him.'

Domnick said that when he asked Amram if he was sure about what he had witnessed, his friend said forcefully: '"Hey guy" - that's what he always called me - "I know what I saw and I saw the lady!' Domnick recalled.

'"She was definitely American, not Japanese, and I did help fix Noonan's leg".'

Possibilities: If the claims are right, Earhart and Noonan were more than 850 miles off course. They were meant to land on Howland Island (centre), although others say they crashed nearer Gardner Island (bottom, far right). After crashing in the Marshalls, it is calimed they were taken to Japanese base at Saipan (top left)

Route: Earhart was trying to become the first woman to fly around the world - starting in Oakland on May 20

Stories: The late Tamaki Myazoe (left) claimed he was working on a boat on Jaluit when the Japanese captain appeared and cut the ropes in a hurry

With the Japanese setting up bases throughout the Pacific in preparation for an all-out war that was to follow five years later, local people agree today that it would be highly unlikely an American woman would be sitting on board a Japanese ship - unless she was Amelia Earhart.

Domnick said Amram's credentials were impeccable and he had no reason to make up such a story.

Years later, he worked as a doctor in Majuro and he was also in charge of what later became the Department of Public Health.

Domnick wasn't the only person to hear Amram's tales.

A relative of Amram, who has asked not to be identified, recalled how he had been trained by the Japanese to be a medic.

The relative added: 'I remember him telling how he got on the boat and he saw the American lady and a guy.'

Jerry Kramer, a U.S. businessman who has lived on Majuro since the 1960s, told MailOnline he had been a good friend of Amram and could 'absolutely confirm the story that he told about helping to treat the navigator and seeing Amelia Earhart'.

But he goes one step further with the story.

Asked if he believed that the American aviators came down on Mili, Kramer said: 'Absolutely! In fact, after I first came to Majuro in 1962, the next year I went to Saipan and then people there showed me where she was in jail.

'And they told me they'd followed the story of her voyage from the Marshalls.'

More hints: It is claimed wheels like these were used by the Japanese to take the plane off the island

Off course: Dick Spink (pictured on the island) and Les Kinney hope are hoping to conclusively prove the Mili atoll was where the plane came down after finding a piece of metal which could have been on the aircraft

Not impossible: Many said it would be impossible to reach Mili in Earhart's plane, but Spink claims this fuel report proves it would have been possible - lending more credence to their claims

Artifacts: These are other pieces of metal found on Mili. Most have been discounted as not coming from Earhart's plane, but the long piece of metal on the left may be significant and is being tested

As MailOnline previously reported, islanders have claimed that the damaged aircraft was hauled across the island from the ocean side to the lagoon side on rail car wheels similar to those used by Japanese troops to move bombs. Rusty remains of those trollies are still to be seen on the island.

Kramer's son Daniel, who joined a team of 11 researchers on an expedition to Mili atoll last January, pointed the team towards an area where the shorter trees indicated their relative youth compared to taller, older trees.

the find seems to support the theory that the aircraft was towed across the islands on the trolley by some 40 Marshallese villages, with trees having been cut down to make way for the rails.

'While others were looking down with their metal detectors, searching for parts of the plane Daniel was looking up at the trees,' said Kramer.

'He told the team that this was nearly 80 years ago and the old palm trees were quite tall. But there was a patch of trees which were younger and shorter and he said he believed this was where the palms had been cut down to make a track for the plane.'

Domnick has also heard reports of an American woman and man crashing on one of the small islands lying to the north of the Mili atoll from his uncle Tamaki Myazoe.

At the time of Earhart's disappearance, Myazoe - who was half-Japanese, half-Marshallese - was helping load the Koshu Maru with coal.

At that time the tramp steamer was stationed on another nearby atoll, Jaluit, which was being used for the Japanese headquarters in the Marshall Islands.

But then Myazoe and his colleagues were interrupted by the captain, who came back on board in hurry.

'The captain and the other crew came up and cut the ropes to the dock and they took off in a rush,' Domnick recalled his late uncle telling him.

'My uncle told me he was bunkering the ship along with the other Marshallese and all of a sudden the captain gave the order to leave.

'He didn't know it at the time, but years later my uncle told me that he had learned that the ship had left in a hurry in a bid to find a couple of American aviators on remote Mili, about 130 miles away to the east.

'My uncle said he asked his father where they had gone to - and why so fast. He was told that an American aviator was lost in that area and that they'd searched all over but couldn't find them.'

Prisoners: Earhart, pictured arriving in Southampton, is said to have been taken from Mili Atoll by the Japanese, who - in some accounts - executed Noonan before she died of dysentery on Saipan

Testimonies: One islander said: 'She landed on our island and my uncle watched her for two days'

But two weeks later, his uncle told him, the Koshu Maru returned to Jaluit - only this time it did not berth at the dock. Instead, it anchored a long way out in the lagoon.

Locals tell how shortly after arriving back in Jaluit, the Koshu Maru sailed off, first to Kwajalein Atoll, in the northern part of the Marshall Islands, and then on to Saipan.

Mili atoll landowner Chuji Chutaro, 76, today also supports reports that the Lockheed plane came down on the tiny island which adjoins the atoll.

'Some time in the 1960s I was sitting with some elders on an island in Mili and they said they'd heard a plane had landed all those years ago,' he told MailOnline.

'They didn't see it, but they did hear about it.

'Also, I had a friend called Kekmen Lang, who is from Nallu Island, part of Mili atoll. He told me that he had found a piece of a plane on a small island and he said it was probably part of Amelia Earhart's plane.'

There is also the astonishing account given by modern-day U.S. researcher Dick Spink, who has told of a moment years before when he was at a party with friends in the Marshall Islands.

'Didn't Amelia Earhart disappear in this part of the world?' he had asked.

'Yes,' a local man answered. 'She landed on our island and my uncle watched her for two days.'

With the stories of the aviators crashing in the Marshall Islands - some 2000 miles from the area in the sea where other Earhart sleuths believe the plane crashed after running out of fuel - refusing to go away, an investigation is continuing in the US that might hold the key to the pair's fate.

Parker Aerospace is testing a number of pieces of metal picked up by the researchers on Mili in January, some of which have been discounted as coming from the Lockheed, others which might be from the aircraft.

Results of the tests are not due for several months.

But confirmation that just a single piece is likely to have come from the aircraft will be powerful evidence supporting claims that the couple crashed on Mili atoll and that the stories of them being taken away on a Japanese ship deserve further investigation.

AMELIA EARHART'S DISAPPEARANCE: THE COMPETING THEORY The US group TIGHAR - The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery - believes Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan, crashed on uninhabited Gardner Island, now known as Nikumaroro in the Republic of Kiribati in the central Pacific. The pair had intended to fly to Howland island, but because of bad weather and low fuel they ended up on Nikumaroro, surviving the crash landing and living as castaways. Search parties: Gardner Island, now known as Nikumaroro, was flown over in the initial searches, but now pilot Ric Gillespie says that his team found part of Earhart's plane on the small uninhabited patch of land Determined: Gillespie (left) has been criticized by some for his theory that focuses on the island (right). His team has combed through the beaches and jungles, but have found little tie to the 1930s on his expedition According to the group’s Earhart Project, for the next several nights they used the Lockheed’s radio to send distress calls and while US navy search planes flew over the island a week later the calls had stopped and rising tides and surf swept the plane over the edge of the reef. The group says that Navy pilots saw signs of recent habitation. Earhart and possibly Noonan, the group claims, lived for a time as castaways on the waterless atoll, relying on rain squalls to drink and catching and cooking small fish, seabirds, turtles and claims. Discoveries: Gillespie's team found an aluminum plate thought to be from the Lockheed Electra's window on in 1991, but it has never been proved it belonged to the plane Underwater: A team from The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (pictured) are using scuba divers, land parties and an underwater drone in attempt to find clues about Earhart's 1937 disappearance Amelia is said to have died at a makeshift camp on the south east of the island but the fate of the navigator remains unknown. ‘We know that in 1940 British Colonial Service officer Gerald Gallagher recovered a partial skeleton of a castaway on Nikumaroro,’ says Richard Gillespie, the group’s executive director and author of the book Finding Amelia. ‘Unfortunately, those bones have now been lost.’ Added to the group’s belief that the island is where Amelia died has been the discovery of a woman’s shoe, an empty bottle and a sextant box whose serial numbers are consistent with a type known to have been carried by Noonan. The items, says TIGHAR, were all found near where the bones were discovered. Advertisement

Wally Earhart, Amelia's fourth cousin, said in 2009 that the U.S.government was continuing to perpetrate a 'massive cover-up' about the couple and he insisted they had died in Japanese custody.

'They did not die as claimed by the government and the Navy when the Electra plunged into the Pacific - they died while in Japanese captivity on the island of Saipan in the Northern Marianas,' said Mr Earhart, who did not reveal his sources.

He claimed that while in captivity on Saipan, Fred Noonan was beheaded by the Japanese and Amelia died soon after from dysentery and other ailments.

Earhart investigator Les Kinney and other enthusiasts believe the Electra was dumped into a large pit in Saipan, along with Japanese aircraft, by US marines at the end of the war.

That pit is said to be under a runway that is still in use and one investigator is trying to get permission to dig and extract aircraft parts.

The official held belief is that the aircraft is 'on the bottom of the Pacific', 18,000 feet down but close to Howland, said Tom Crouch, senior curator at the U.S. National Air and Space Museum.