Mark your calendar and join us for a special reception and screening with the film's director and producer present on Sunday, Sept. 20 at 12:15 p.m. The film will be shown at 12:45 p.m. A second screening will also be offered at 4 p.m. The reception is sponsored by the Association of Universalist Women.

On this 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing that ended World War II, we ask ourselves, "How could the children of Honakawa School create such joyful, colorful drawings while living among the ruins of Hiroshima in 1947? The powerful documentary "Pictures from a Hiroshima Schoolyard," is an inspiring story of how one Unitarian Universalist minister's critique of the atomic bomb led to post-war gifts to Hiroshima school children and the cycle of peace and reconciliation that followed. The film introduces the children artists, now in their late 70s, who reflect on their early lives amidst the atomic rubble of their destroyed city and the hope they shared through their art. 

In a postwar response for help in 1946, All Souls Church, Unitarian in Washington, D.C., collected and sent a half ton of school materials to Hiroshima schools. Pictures by the schoolchildren, drawn with these gifts of paints, crayons, pencils and paper, were sent back to All Souls as a thank you for the materials. The children's pictures were received gratefully and then placed in a drawer. In 1995, the drawings were re-discovered and professionally restored. In 2010, as a message of peace and reconciliation, members of All Souls Church took the pictures back to Hiroshima where they were reunited with the artists in an exhibit in the very building where they were created.

Drawings in the exhibition are from All Souls Church, Unitarian, Washington D.C. Sponsored by the U.S.-Japan Foundation. Support comes from the Saint Paul-Nagasaki Sister City Committee and First Universalist member Lynn Elling.