A member of a Denver-based veterans support group has accused "Hawaii Five-0" of insulting a group of Pearl Harbor survivors last week when it visited the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl.
Steffan Tubbs, a board member of the Greatest Generations Foundation who led the group of 24 veterans to Punchbowl on Friday, said Monday that "Five-0" should have stopped production during the ceremony, especially when the national anthem and taps were played.
Tubbs was also critical of the way he says the "Five-0" crew treated the men after the 2 p.m. ceremony. The group brought 24 roses to place on graves.
"There was this production guy walking just feet from the veterans, who are old, in their 90s, hushing them up, telling them to keep it down and rushing them along," said Tubbs, a co-host of a Denver morning radio program. "It was disgraceful."
Tubbs said he was also unhappy that the "Five-0" crew had set up their equipment on graves.
Many of the veterans were unaware of what was going on until Tubbs told them as their bus was about to leave. He then instructed them to give the TV crew a one-fingered salute, which many did as they drove by, he said.
"If I had to do it over again, I would do something different," Tubb said. "But my feeling of anger remains the same."
He posted a description of the incident on his Facebook page Saturday that was picked up by a blog, theblissindex. His comments generated debate on Facebook and Twitter.
On theblissindex a person who identified himself as Peter M. Lenkov, "Five-0" executive producer, initially apologized to Tubbs and said he would question the crew as to what happened. Lenkov later emailed Tubbs and said he spoke with about 30 people who were there and was told the production crew respected the veterans and their ceremony, the blog said.
Cemetery Director Gene Castagnetti said Monday that there should not have been any conflict because he had placed the veterans and the "Five-0" crew in locations that did not face each other. But because the ceremony was conducted without much direction from Punchbowl — which is allowed, Castagnetti said — the rose-laying by veterans came as a surprise.
The veterans, some in Punchbowl golf carts, dispersed to scattered locations in the cemetery, he said.
"That’s what took them into the area where ‘Hawaii Five-0′ was filming," Castagnetti said. "We were not given any advance notice they wanted to go into those areas. We would have coordinated with the film crew."
The "Five-0" production crew, which was preparing to start filming at 3 p.m., was told beforehand that veterans would be in the cemetery, and the crew planned to take a lunch break to coincide with the ceremony, Castagnetti said.
"We had a schedule that was provided by ‘Hawaii Five-0′ outlining what they planned to do, and I approved that," he said. "It did not look like it would interfere with the ceremony."
He said that walking on graves is an unavoidable fact of life at Punchbowl, where all the markers are flush to the ground. And while cemetery workers are instructed to stop whenever the national anthem and taps are played, Castagnetti said he does not expect such conduct from others at the cemetery.
This was the fourth time that "Five-0" has shot at Punchbowl.
"We were surprised to hear this report and are looking into the matter," a CBS spokesman said in a statement released Monday.
