'Last Flight Home'
Filmmakers seek war MIAs in Palau
By ROBIN HINDERY
Jennifer Powers and Daniel O'Brien's first documentary"Last Flight Home," follows California research scientist Dr. Patrick Scannon and members of his BentProp Project in the search for missing World War II aircraft and the remains of military personnel. Scannon has a home in Davis, where the film will debut on Feb. 10.
After years of skydiving, film stunt work and other pulse-pounding pursuits, Daniel O'Brien and Jennifer Powers were looking for a new kind of thrill.
They found it halfway around the world, in Palau, where - with a camera, scuba gear and sturdy hiking boots - they spent six years documenting and participating in an unusual form of adventure detective work.
The result is their first documentary, "Last Flight Home," which follows renowned California research scientist Dr. Patrick Scannon and members of his BentProp Project as they search the Palau islands for missing World War II aircraft and remains of the personnel on board when the planes went down.
The film - which has been screened at various festivals and other venues since it was completed in June - will make its Yolo County debut on Feb. 10 in Davis, where Scannon has a home.
"We needed a bigger, badder, better adventure," said Powers, a resident of Browns Valley, of her and O'Brien's idea to make the film. "But it had to have a bigger goal. It had to do some good."
The pair met Scannon through skydiving in the mid-1990s when O'Brien, of Woodland, was the owner of SkyDance Skydiving in Davis and Powers was an instructor. Inspired by Scannon's work, they decided to accompany him to Palau in 2001 and film the experience.
Palau is a chain of more than 200 islands in the southwest corner of Micronesia, located about 1,500 miles from Tokyo. During WWII, the islands were occupied by the Japanese, and became a site of fierce combat between 1944 and 1945. At least 98 U.S. Army, Navy and Marine aircraft were lost over Palau during that period, and many of their crew members remain listed as Missing in Action, or MIA, Scannon says.
Of the 88,000 MIAs listed by the U.S. government, about 78,000 are from the battles of WWII, according to the film.
An avid scuba diver, Scannon initially started off searching for ships sunk throughout Micronesia during the war. Along with a dedicated group of private U.S. citizens, he then began hunting for American aircraft and their crews - men whose contributions Scannon feared had been largely forgotten as the years piled up.
"These men died just as much a death as all of our warriors who died trying to protect our country, and I didn't want them to be forgotten," Scannon said in the film.
Over the course of seven trips overseas, "Last Flight Home" documents the search for three of those missing aircraft, weaving in the emotional experiences of the MIAs' surviving relatives, including Jim Nelson, who lost his father Quint to the tangled jungles of Palau mere months after he was born.
The film follows Nelson from his Texas home to Palau, where he participates in BentProp's search for his father's plane. Though that particular trip proved unsuccessful, it gave Nelson a chance to hold a memorial service for his father - something he and his mother had never done, clinging to a glimmer of hope that Quint was still alive somewhere.
Even for two seasoned adrenaline junkies like O'Brien - who has also worked as a movie stuntman and stunt coordinator - and Powers, the filming process brought unexpected thrills and rewards.
"It really opened our eyes a lot," said O'Brien, describing the close relationships they formed with those they filmed.
Though they assumed most of the film's excitement would stem from the detective work in Palau, "it was our delight to discover the adventure and heart of the story in the U.S. with the families," Powers said.
"I had the assumption that the families were over it," she said of the missing soldiers. "But they tended that wound, they kept it open for 60 years, and they continued to hope."
At the time "Last Flight Home" was filmed, Scannon and his team had located 15 WWII MIAs, and they aren't finished searching yet. A group of them, including O'Brien, is scheduled to depart for Palau Feb. 24. Powers will stay in California, tending to her "babies" - the alpacas she and her husband raise on their property.
O'Brien and Powers said they plan to follow "Last Flight Home" with another film collaboration, though they were tight-lipped about the subject matter.
In addition, the pair has formed a nonprofit, The BentStar Project, to raise money for Scannon to continue his work, which is currently self-funded.
"What started as a once in a lifetime opportunity to follow Dr. Pat Scannon on his quest to find MIAs ... has become a quest of our own to see that Pat's altruistic work can meet it's full potential," O'Brien and Powers wrote on the nonprofit's Web site, http://www.BentStarProject.org.
When You Go
Jennifer Powers and Daniel O'Brien will host a screening of their documentary "Last Flight Home" on Feb. 10 at 11:45 a.m. at the Varsity Theatre in Davis. The screening will be followed by a Q&A session. For more information, visit http://www.LastFlightHome.org or call 758-5264.
© 2005, The Daily Democrat, Woodland, California