Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.
Ever since he was a kid, Scott Freund has had a bit of an
obsession for that place and historic date when the Japanese
military launched a surprise attack on America.
Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.
Ever since he was a kid, Scott Freund has had a bit of an obsession for that place and historic date when the Japanese military launched a surprise attack on America.
“It’s just something that fascinates me,” the Hollister resident said. “When I was a little boy growing up in Michigan, there was something about it that drew me to it. I don’t know exactly what the cause was. I started collecting books and videos and everything. I’d save my allowance and started buying books on Pearl Harbor.”
After he graduated from Morgan Hill’s Live Oak High School in 1984, Freund journeyed to Hawaii to see the Pearl Harbor Memorial – a floating monument over the site where the USS Arizona now rests. He felt a wrenching surge of emotions during his visit of what is truly an American shrine. When the Arizona sank after being hit by a Japanese aerial bomb, 1,177 sailors and marines lost their lives.
While attending Gavilan Community College in Gilroy, Freund decided to join the military service. And what better day for a Pearl Harbor amateur historian to sign up and get sworn in than on Dec. 7. He told the Army recruiter that was the day.
Even though Pearl Harbor served as the naval home to the United States Pacific Fleet, Freund decided against becoming a sailor. “I couldn’t join the Navy because I’m petrified of ships,” he said with a laugh. The Hollister resident’s fascination with the Pearl Harbor attack eventually led him to join with Sunnyvale filmmaker Tim Csabanyi in interviewing many of the surviving witnesses for a detailed three-hour video documentary.
“Pearl Harbor: The Real Story” gives people who experienced the attack the chance to personally – and often emotionally – describe what happened on a day forever seared into the American conscious. The video is unique because it focuses only on the 24-hour period of the attack.
“When we went to put this video together we noticed all the other documentaries (on Pearl Harbor) covered the same thing,” he said. “I told Tim we needed to do something different. I thought, we shouldn’t have a bunch of historians telling the story. No, we should have the survivors telling it.”
Most Pearl Harbor films focus on the more dramatic elements such as the wide-spread damage on Battleship Row. But Freund’s documentary points out other sites besides Pearl Harbor itself that were also hit.
Military installations on Oahu devastated by Japanese warplanes include Hickam, Wheeler and Bellows airfields, the Ewa Marine Corps Air Station, the Kaneohe Bay Air Station and the Scholfield Barracks.
Hundreds of American planes were destroyed and hundreds of men were killed or wounded at these various sites.
Freund spent countless hours in the National Archives in Washington, D.C., searching for Pearl Harbor film clips. His history documentary incorporates much actual footage shot by the Japanese fighter pilots from their warplanes.
“The Japanese were filming as they came in,” he said. “They filmed the entire attack pretty much.”
While editing, Freund and Csabanyi chanced to discover – in one short clip of 18 frames taken from a high altitude bomber – the actual moment when aerial bombs hit the Arizona.
“They were making a bombing run of the Arizona,” Freund said. “If you watch the video, you see the splash of the bombs as they hit the water.”
Last week, Freund traveled to the state of Arizona to attend an annual reunion of the survivors of the Pearl Harbor attack. He tries to go every year because he’s made friends with many of them. One man Freund interviewed for the documentary even requested a copy of the video be included in his coffin when he died.
“Pearl Harbor: The Real Story” took the video historians more than two years to complete. They produced it while working their regular day jobs and spent more than $50,000 in research and traveling to survivor meetings.
“We met hundreds and hundreds of people who wanted to take part in this,” Freund said.
Last month, a half-hour portion of the documentary was shown at the Poppy Jasper Film Festival in downtown Morgan Hill. It received high praise from the festival’s audience members.
Freund said he thinks of the date Dec. 7 as equivalent to that day in 2001 when terrorists flew commercial airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Both surprise attacks generated a huge shock – as well as feelings of patriotism – across America.
“If you think about September 11th, look how many people joined the service because of that,” he said. “They thought it was the right thing to do. Pearl Harbor was just like that.”
“Pearl Harbor: The Real Story” can be purchased on line at www.moviemix.com. It costs $25 for VHS format and $30 for DVD.
