A Remembrance for Peace: Commemorating Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Film Screening and Interfaith Ceremony
Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2023, 5:30 p.m.
Konko Church of San Francisco
1909 Bush Street, San Francisco’s Japantown
To commemorate the 78th anniversary of the atomic bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, the first nuclear destruction of a civilian population in the world, the Nichi Bei Foundation and Friends of Hibakusha will present an in-person program at Konko Church in SF Japantown. The world’s first atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, and another on Nagasaki three days later resulted in the deaths of an estimated 214,000 people by the end of that year, including 140,000 in Hiroshima and 74,000 in Nagasaki.
The program will also be accessible virtually on the Nichi Bei Foundation Facebook channel (www.facebook.com/nichibei/) and YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/c/NichiBeiFoundation)
The program will include:
• The film “Pictures From A Hiroshima Schoolyard” (2012, 58 min.), written and directed by Bryan Reichhardt and produced by Shizumi Shigeto Manale.
• An Interfaith Ceremony led by the Japanese American Religious Federation of San Francisco.
• Lanterns of Remembrance, which will include hibakusha and descendants presenting a lantern in remembrance of victims of the atomic bombings.
• A Message for Peace by Rev. Nobuaki Hanaoka.
• A Litany for Water ceremony led by Rev. Hanaoka and clergy.
Remembrance for Peace 2023 Program Preview
J-SEI participants interested in carpooling to this event in SF Japantown, please email jill@j-sei.org We look forward to joining in this remembrance.
FILM: PICTURES FROM A HIROSHIMA SCHOOLYARD
A collection of surprisingly joyful drawings created by school children living among the ruins of Hiroshima in 1947 becomes the heart and soul of this true, inspiring story about an exchange of gifts between Americans and Japanese after a devastating war. This powerful documentary about reconciliation introduces the children artists (now in their late 70s) who reflect on their early lives amidst the rubble of their destroyed city and the hope they shared through their art. In 2010, the newly restored drawings, buried for decades deep inside All Souls Church in Washington DC, are taken back to Japan where they are reunited with the artists and exhibited in the very building where they were created.