October 22, 2009

All,

I want to give you some advance information on our new project for the Hellships Memorial (and also solicit your help).

In the next couple of weeks the Hellships Memorial Project (www.hellshipsmemorial.com) will launch a campaign to place a memorial marker at Sindangan Point, Mindanao, Philippines near where the Shinyo Maru was sunk.

I will seed the fund raising effort with $US 500 from the Hellships Memorial funds and $100 as my personal donation. Our goal will be $US 5,000.

It will be made of the same beautiful black Italian Granite we used for the Hellships Memorial and have been quite happy with. We have some designs in mind but invite your input.

All fund raising will be completely transparent, through our 501(c)(3) fund managed by FAME, with reporting regularly along the way.

Our objective would be to have the memorial in place by September 7, 2010. That is ambitious but the sum is relatively small and we have plenty of volunteers to do the actual construction.

I would like to have a ceremony there on September 7, 2010 and to go out to the actual sinking site by boat and lay wreaths on the water. For those not able to attend we will accept sponsorship of wreaths (one at the site and one at the memorial.)

Let me know what you think.

Who else needs to know about this?

Regards,
Randy
kjonnnarkoman@yahoo.com