A Community Remembrance & Film Event
This August, Columbia Friends Meeting invites the community to remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and to sit with a question that has never stopped being urgent: what do we owe the people who survived, and what do we owe the future?
On Sunday, August 9 at 5:00 PM, we’ll gather at Columbia Friends Meeting for a simple remembrance of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — a chance to pause, reflect, and hold space together as a community.
On Tuesday, August 18 at 6:30 PM, we’ll screen Atomic People at the Nickelodeon Theatre — a BBC documentary built entirely from the testimony of hibakusha, the survivors of the atomic bombings. The film doesn’t summarize history from a distance; it lets survivors speak in their own words about what they lived through, and what they’ve carried since. Following the screening, we’ll host a moderated panel discussion.
Why This Film, Why Now
Atomic People isn’t only a look back. South Carolina sits at the center of a very live national conversation about nuclear weapons today — from the Savannah River Site’s role in producing plutonium pit cores for the U.S. arsenal, to the ongoing cleanup of decades-old nuclear waste, to a recently revealed state proposal to explore burying highly radioactive spent fuel in South Carolina soil. The ethical questions hibakusha testimony raises about targeting, proportionality, and the human cost of nuclear weapons are not confined to 1945 — they’re actively being debated in our own backyard.
Our Panelists
Tom Clements is director of Savannah River Site Watch, a public-interest nuclear watchdog based in Columbia. For decades, he has tracked U.S. nuclear weapons production, proliferation policy, and environmental issues at the Savannah River Site, and will help ground the evening’s conversation in what’s actually unfolding in South Carolina right now.
Dr. Christopher Olaf Tollefsen is a professor of philosophy at the University of South Carolina, specializing in natural law theory and the ethics of killing, including questions of just war and moral theology. His work brings a rigorous ethical lens to the questions this film inevitably raises about the bombings and about nuclear weapons more broadly.
Together, they’ll help carry the evening from historical testimony into the moral and practical questions we’re still living with today.
Join Us
Whether you come to remember, to learn, or simply to be part of a community wrestling honestly with hard questions, you’re welcome here. Come witness. Come talk. Come hope.
Details: Tuesday, August 18, 6:30 PM, The Nickelodeon Theatre, 1607 Main Street, Columbia, SC 29201. Presented by Columbia Friends Meeting, the Columbia Peace Pole Project, and community partners.
