Amelia Earhart the aircraft came close. "I did not understand it at the time," she said, "but I believe that little red airplane said something to me as it swished by." By 1919 Earhart prepared to enter Smith College but changed her mind and enrolled at Columbia University, in a course in medical studies among other programs. She quit a year later to be with her parents, who had reunited in California. In Long Beach, on December 28, 1920, Earhart and her father visited an airfield where Frank Hawks (who later gained fame as an air racer) gave her a ride that
Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence Electra was at least close to Howland Island, 800 miles away from the Marshall Islands. Author Fukiko Aoki, who researched and wrote a 1982 book, "Looking for Amelia", was similarly critical before the revelations from Yamano. Aoki located an elderly officer, part of the 1937 crew of the "Kōshū Maru", who denied the ship's involvement. Aoki subsequently researched the "Kōshū Maru" ship log, which showed that it was 1,500 miles away at the time of Earhart's disappearance. It was also argued that to reach and somehow land on the remote atoll where she purportedly crashed would have required Earhart, though