Skip Navigation
You Are In: About Us > Consulate Events > 2009 Events > Launch of “War in the Pacific” Film Series Draws a Standing-Room-Only Crowd to the St. Petersburg Consul General’s Residence
Skip Left Section Navigation

2009 Events

Close Window USS Shaw explodes during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, 7 December, 1941 (U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph)
USS Shaw explodes during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, 7 December, 1941 (U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph)
enlarge photo
USS Shaw explodes during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, 7 December, 1941 (U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph)
USS Shaw explodes during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, 7 December, 1941 (U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph)

Launch of “War in the Pacific” Film Series Draws a Standing-Room-Only Crowd to the St. Petersburg Consul General’s Residence

Over 150 people turned up on September 30th to see the first film in the U.S. Consulate General’s new series marking the upcoming 65th anniversary of the end of World War II.  After Consul General Sheila Gwaltney welcomed the capacity crowd – many of whom were forced to stand or sit on the floor as every chair in the residence was occupied, the PAO introduced From Here to Eternity (1953) by describing the events leading up to December 7, 1941 with the help of the Andrews Sisters’ “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” and Hawaiian-style SPAM skewers with pineapple.  Wowed by the many talents of Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Frank Sinatra, Deborah Kerr, and Donna Reed, the crowd of young Russian students surrounded both the CG and PAO at the end of the movie to ask when the next entry in the “War in the Pacific” series would be shown (Tora! Tora! Tora! is scheduled for October 28) as their teachers complimented the PAO by saying that they had learned something about how to make their own classes more interesting.  While one senior Russian contact praised the PAO for being a “master showman,” a U.S. Marine Corps veteran in the audience emailed the CG and PAO to thank them for making him “proud to be an American.”