Forwarded for the Japanese American National Museum and the USC Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture
A special screening at the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) in downtown Los Angeles will showcase two documentaries by NHK World-Japan about acts of human goodness in response to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The event is part of the museum’s ongoing exhibit, Under a Mushroom Cloud: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Atomic Bomb, commemorating this year’s 75th anniversary of the bombings of the two Japanese cities during World War II.
The program will begin at 2:00 pm on Saturday, March 14, 2020 at the JANM National Center for the Preservation of Democracy.
Houses for Peace: Exploring the Legacy of Floyd Schmoe focuses on the life and work of Floyd Schmoe (1895-2001), Mt. Rainer National Park’s first full-time naturalist and a Quaker pacifist.
In the years immediately following World War II, he organized an interracial/interfaith team of American and Japanese volunteers to build houses in Hiroshima and Nagasaki for survivors left homeless.
Schmoe’s mission of peace had these objectives, which were posted on a sign at a building site: “1. To build understanding 2. By building houses 3.
That there may be peace.” Through interviews with former volunteers and residents, the documentary examines the legacy of Schmoe’s efforts to bring diverse people together on a cooperative project of friendship and goodwill.
A lifelong grassroots activist, Schmoe had earlier helped Japanese Americans incarcerated in camps by the US government during the war.
Helping Hands: The Lives of Atomic Bomb Orphans traces the fates the thousands of children left wandering the streets of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after losing their parents in the atomic bombings.
Some died of hunger and disease, but others were able to survive thanks to a network of helping hands. At a time when US law forbid the legal adoption of Japanese children, a group of Americans backed a movement to support the orphans through “moral adoption.”
The idea arose after Kiyoshi Tanimoto, minister of a church near the epicenter of the blast, helped spread the word in the US about the devastation.
Among his supporters were the novelist and Nobel laureate Pearl Buck and Norman Cousins, editor in chief of the Saturday Review of Literature.
One boy ended up in South Korea. There, a struggling widow with four children raised the orphan from Hiroshima as her own. This documentary about children orphaned by the A-bomb tells a story of love and healing in the aftermath of war.
Immediately following the screening, the directors of the documentaries, Ms. Kumiko OGOSHI TAKAI of NHK Global Media Services and Ms. Sawako OKODA of NHK Hiroshima, will take questions from the audience.
The program is included in the price of museum admission; however, advance registration is required. Please RSVP at janm.org/events. For more information, please contact publicprograms@janm.org