In an effort to promote peace among young people, the University of Hawaii at Hilo Japanese Student Association will present “A Mother’s Prayer,” a film from the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, with screenings in Hilo and Kona.
In an effort to promote peace among young people, the University of Hawaii at Hilo Japanese Student Association will present “A Mother’s Prayer,” a film from the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, with screenings in Hilo and Kona.
The documentary film, part of Voice of Hiroshima 2015 events, will be shown at 3 and 5 p.m. Friday and 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. Saturday at UH-Hilo University Classroom Building 100, and 1 p.m. Sunday in the Konawaena High School cafeteria in Kona.
Admission is free and there will be other activities such as crane (orizuru) folding. The cranes will be sent to the Peace Park in Hiroshima, Japan.
Featuring footage captured immediately after the blast, “A Mother’s Prayer” calls for the abolition of nuclear weapons and world peace from the viewpoint of a mother in Hiroshima.
Seventy years ago, on July 16 1945, the first atomic bomb exploded in New Mexico at the Alamogordo Test Range, and the nuclear age began. Recalling that first atomic bomb test, physicist Julius Robert Oppenheimer said, “We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. … Now, ‘I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.’”
In 2009, the exhibit “Voice of Hiroshima: Before and After Atomic Bomb” was presented at the Hawaii Japanese Center. More than 500 people came to see what happened in Hiroshima and what people had done to promote peace after World War II.
For more information about Voice of Hiroshima 2015 events, email the Japanese Student Association at jsa.uhh@gmail.com, or Masa Honda, chairman of the UH-Hilo Languages Department, at masafumi@hawaii.edu.