A 102-Year-Old Pearl Harbor Survivor on PBS
Behind a documentary interview and sunrise shoot for the National Memorial Day Concert on PBS — filmed across the San Francisco Bay Area and atop Mount Diablo.
Earlier this year, our team at The Bureau Media spent two days documenting one of the last living survivors of Pearl Harbor for a segment that aired nationally on PBS. This is the story of that shoot — a documentary interview in the Bay Area and a sunrise on Mount Diablo — and why work like this is the reason we do what we do.
On January 17, my collaborator Jesse Frisch and I filmed Earl J. "Chuck" Kohler, a 102-year-old Pearl Harbor survivor, for the National Memorial Day Concert, produced by Capital Concerts for PBS. Some shoots you remember for the logistics. This one you remember for the man in the chair, and a story he has carried for more than eighty years.
Meeting Chuck
Chuck enlisted in the U.S. Navy at sixteen. A few months later, on the morning of December 7, 1941, he was at Pearl Harbor when the planes came in. While the harbor burned, he manned a .50 caliber machine gun and fought back. In the decades since, he has made it his work to keep the memory of the men who didn't come home alive.
A good documentary interview depends on getting out of the way. Chuck spoke plainly, without performance, and the room went quiet around him. Sitting with someone who lived through that history, and being trusted to record it, is the part of cinematic interview work that never gets routine.
Making a Hard Room Work
We filmed at the senior living community where Chuck lives. The room we were given was a windowless conference room — no natural light, flat walls, the kind of space that fights you the moment you walk in. That's most of the job on location. We shaped our own light and used the Sony FX6 to hold the detail in his face without making him feel staged. By the time we rolled, the room had disappeared, which is always the point.
Sunrise on Mount Diablo
The next morning we drove out to Mount Diablo for sunrise b-roll and aerial work, flying the DJI Mavic 4 Cine drone as the light came up over the Bay Area. One image from that morning stays with me: Chuck, at 102, out on the summit at dawn, moving with more presence and energy than people a quarter of his age. The drone footage over Mount Diablo gave the piece its visual backbone, but it worked because the man at the center of it was so alive in it.
Why This Kind of Work Matters
We do a lot of corporate and branded work across San Jose, Silicon Valley, and the wider Bay Area, and I love that side of the craft. But documentary projects like this one are where the stakes feel most human. You sit with someone, you listen, and you do everything you can to get it right, because a story like Chuck's deserves nothing less. Seeing his account reach a national PBS audience, in his own words, is exactly why we got into this.
Work With The Bureau Media
The Bureau Media is a video production company in San Jose, working across the Bay Area and Silicon Valley on documentary films, corporate documentary storytelling, cinematic interviews, and documentary-style branded content — including national broadcast work for PBS. If you have a story worth telling properly, we'd like to hear about it.