8$: Under the American Sun – Camp Roxas Film Project

8$ is a series which occasionally highlights interesting crowdfunding projects. Every day, the 8Asians team is inundated by many worthy pitches. We are unable to highlight every one that comes our way, or even the ones we might individually support. The projects selected for 8$ are not endorsements by 8Asians. (To be considered for 8$, we highly suggest you not harass the writers or the editors of 8Asians.)

WHO: Bernadette Provido Schumann, Producer; Josephine Garrido, Associate Producer; Burt Sardoma Jr., Director; Alfred Flores, Associate Producer

WHAT: Indiegogo project: Under the American Sun – Camp Roxas Film Project

Under The American Sun, a documentary film, is currently in post-production. They are raising funds for its completion and 2014 premiere.

WHEN: Deadline to contribute is Friday, December 20, 2013 (11:59pm PT).

WHY:

For many Filipino laborers from the western Visayas, their lives would be forever changed by the ending of World War II, one of the most significant events of the 20th century. They were of humble peasant stock from the island of Panay and its environs, hardened by back-breaking farm work under torrential rains and blazing tropical sun. They came from the lush green provinces of Iloilo, Antique, Capiz and Aklan. Others came from nearby neighboring provinces of Guimaras Island, and Negros Occidental, located across the Guimaras Strait, and its thriving capital city, Bacolod.

Throughout the recruitment period, an estimated 10,000 young Visayan laborers, mostly men and a few women, migrated to the island of Guam, beginning with the first 40 laborers in 1946, as civilian recruits for the U.S. Navy and its subcontractors. Their new home, Camp Roxas, carved out of tangantangan trees by men wielding razor-sharp machetes in Agat, Guam, grew from an impromptu tent city to a fenced settlement of neatly aligned metal-grey Quonset huts. Their lives were filled with challenges typical of migrant workers, but with the spirit of of bayanihan, the Pinoy custom of working together as a unified community for a common purpose, the laborers overcame their struggles in a new land. In the years to follow, they changed lives and contributed to the landscape of Guam, their new home.

In 2006, Director Burt Sardoma Jr., Producers Bernadette Provido Schumann and Josephine Mallo-Garrido set out on a journey to preserve the rich history of Camp Roxas through the personal stories of their fathers, mothers, uncles and aunts who were part of this great migration. They discovered the post-World War II immigrant labor force on Guam is an amazing microcosm of the never-documented global history of the Filipino diaspora linking four generations of Camp Roxas descendants.

Through the lens, raw film footage uncovers a hidden history filled with personal never-documented stories of foreign workers’ plight on the island of Guam, a far-flung strategic United States military outpost in the midst of the Pacific Ocean. The film is a quest to understand the immense political, social, economic and international forces that shape individual destinies of Filipino immigrant laborers and their families.

This modern-day story is now a desperate race against time. During the seven years spent filming and researching this project, many laborers, already frail with age, have passed on, taking with them untold memories forever lost to the next generation.