Nanette Napoleon has seen people express the same reaction so often that she has a name for it: "The "Wow! What? Factor."
But the best reaction was the first one, 13 years ago, when Napoleon experienced it herself while going through microfilmed newspapers in the basement of the Hawaii State Library.
"I was so startled," she recalled last week. "I said, ‘What? Hawaiians in the American Civil War?’ I said it to myself but out loud. People started looking at me. A friend ran over and said, ‘What did you find?’ A small crowd started gathering around me."
Her personal discovery, the most amazing in her 30 years researching and writing about Hawaii history, became an obsession for Napoleon, and, if everything works out it will become a documentary titled "Hawaii Sons of the Civil War."
The 62-year-old Napoleon, who is known mostly for her research into cemeteries throughout the state, is serving as producer and research director on the project, which will be directed by Hawaii expat Todd Ocvirk.
Napoleon estimates that 119 young men from Hawaii fought in the Civil War, most of them for Union forces. Among those who fought for the South were sailors captured by a Confederate raiding vessel prowling the Pacific for ships loaded with whale oil, she said.
When Napoleon first started researching Hawaii’s Civil War soldiers, she intended to write a book. She has hundreds of files stored in a dozen big file drawers.
The researcher will be thinking a lot about three Hawaii men who fought at the Battle of Gettysburg 150 years ago this week. One of them was Samuel Chapman Armstrong, the son of Protestant missionaries and a captain in the 125th New York Infantry Regiment. Armstrong left a large collection of letters — the children of missionaries were prolific letter writers, Napoleon said — that described his frightening wartime experiences.
Armstrong led his men into battle, charging to the front lines while on horseback, Napoleon said.
"He talks about how bullets are flying all around him and cannons are firing to the right, to the left, in front of him," she said. "All around him, everything is exploding and the sound was horrific. But he leads his men and keeps them going even though some of them were afraid and wanted to go back."
Such a detailed account, though, is rare. Many of the Hawaii-born soldiers did not write much, and some were illiterate, Napoleon said. She has enlistment papers for some that are signed only with an "X."
The filmmakers are raising money for preproduction work — scripting and a production plan — and the documentary needs $70,000, said Napoleon, who launched a crowd-funding campaign last week on Indiegogo.com.
The entire budget, which includes $17,500 already donated by Pacific Islanders in Communications and the Hawaii Council for the Humanities, is $350,000. Finding money is daunting, Napoleon said.
"Making the film is easy compared to raising the money," she said. "In documentaries that is always the biggest challenge and the hardest work to be done, especially in today’s funding market. Grant sources are down. Corporate funding is down."
Ocvirk, 42 and a Los Angeles resident, is an unlikely partner in the project. The Kamehameha Schools and University of Southern California film school graduate is known more for his work in low-budget horror films and a comic book series. This is his first documentary.
But he loves the story and comes to it in the most natural of ways. In January 2011 he saw a plaque at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific that was dedicated to Hawaii’s Civil War soldiers and sailors. He just happened to look down and see it.
"I was just completely blown away," Ocvirk said. "I had never heard of this before. I asked around, and nobody seemed to know about it, either. And they all had the same reaction I did."
Wow! What?
AND that’s a wrap …
Mike Gordon is the Star-Advertiser’s film and television writer. Read his Outtakes Online blog at honolulupulse.com. Reach him at 529-4803 or email mgordon@staradvertiser.com.
