Press

Documentary About Child Survivors of Pearl Harbor Seeking Funding

 

Bowling Green, OH 22 February 2012

 

Home Stand, an Ohio television production group, is working to bring a new kind of survivors’ story to history lovers, one from from the perspective of children who watched the bombing of Pearl Harbor, changing their lives forever as their families became the first Americans to fall under the shadow of World War II.  Producers Glenn Burris and Jerry Sisser are using the Internet site Kickstarter (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/childrenofpearl/children-of-pearl) to raise funds to finish their film.

 

Burris, who usually works on federally-funded educational projects, started the documentary by videotaping his mother-in-law’s story. Anne Shambaugh recounted the experience of her father Commander Joseph Hubbard looking up at what he thought was a practice air battle in December of 1941, not realizing it was a Japanese attack until his car was struck by machine gun fire.  Immediately he raced to base; Anne and her brother Joe never saw their father again. “My mother-in-law is routinely asked to tell her story. It never gets old. I realized there must be many other stories like Anne’s that have never been told. Historians seem to focus only on what happened to the adults.” Soon Burris found Joanne Adams, who stared into the eyes of a Japanese pilot from the front yard of her military-base home. And Joe Estores tells an extraordinary tale of his mother driving him and his siblings directly through the Japanese target zone. Burris’ partner in Home Stand, Jerry Sisser, said, “Imagine the thoughts of the youngsters that looked skyward that morning, only to see fighter planes spitting bullets at their homes.”

 

Only about 150 of these “Children of Pearl”, to use the documentary’s title, are known to live today. In 2010, Home Stand started crisscrossing the country collecting the stories of those child survivors waiting to tell them.  To date, all the production costs of the project have come from their own resources, but they need more money to finish the project and deliver it to public television, museums, and the Internet. Burris said, “Without our film, we’re afraid that a valuable historical record may never be visualized.” There are still numerous child survivors waiting to be interviewed all over the US. Since Home Stand started a blog this year, another half-dozen survivors have come forward, eager to tell their stories. Home Stand hopes to raise $69,000 by April 1st using an innovative web site called Kickstarter.

 

About Kickstarter.com

Kickstarter.com is the world’s largest funding platform for creative projects. Kickstarter allows regular people to support creative projects like music, literature and film. It’s not an investment method. Pledges to projects are rewarded with items like DVDs. The website allows creators to post a project for only 60 days, so Children of Pearl must find it’s funding by April 1st. Without pledges to the full amount needed for completion, no money will be awarded to the project.

 

About Home Stand LLC

Home Stand is a production group rooted in the fifty-plus years of experience shared by the principals, Jerry Sisser and Glenn Burris. Both producers have created dozens and dozens of programs in nearly every facet of presentation for corporations, schools, and broadcasters. Home Stand is a partnership of producers and associates – A place where they come from separate corporate and broadcast assignments to explore subjects of our interest and present the results to the world. Projects like Children of Pearl are not designed as much from the perspective of business as from dedication to the topic.

 

YouTube:                     youtube.com/childrenofpearl

Project Blog:                childrenofpearl.com/

At Kickstarter:              kickstarter.com/projects/childrenofpearl/children-of-pearl

Facebook:                    facebook.com/childrenofpearl