But military expert Matthew B. Holly​ told AFP the photo appeared to have been taken about a decade earlier.

“From the Marshallese visual background, lack of Japanese flags flying on any vessels but one, and the age configuration of the steam-driven steel vessels, the photo is closer to the late 1920s or early 1930s, not anywhere near 1937,” he told AFP.

Holly, an American living in Majuro, has spent decades identifying the locations of lost US aircraft and the identities of American servicemen killed in action in the western Pacific nation.