Melinda Clarke on her Pilgrimage in Shikoku, Japan.

KAHULUI – The Nisei Veterans Memorial Center is proud to announce its August “An Afternoon with the Author” Zoom talk on Saturday, Aug. 8, at 1:30 p.m.

Author Melinda Clarke will share the back story to her book “Waymakers for Peace: Hiroshima and Nagasaki Survivors Speak.”

Clarke spent several years in Japan interviewing Hibakusha (A-bomb survivors) in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, often times in secret, due to the taboo put upon the topic by the government of Japan.

The talk will also include a showing of the documentary “Lost Generation.”

“Lost Generation” contains footage confiscated by the U.S. Occupation Forces after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

This watch stopped at 8:15 a.m., the exact time the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

The enactment of the Freedom of Information Act in 1976 allowed for the movie footage and photographs to become available for purchase, and in 1980, Tsutomu Iwakura and Kazumitsu Aihara formed the “10 Feet Movement.”

With the help of NHK and a civil campaign of citizens from all over Japan sending in 3,000YEN per person, the men purchased 100,000 feet of footage and photos that were later used in three different movies.

Clarke was gifted those films while she was conducting interviews of A-bomb survivors.

NVMC’s “An Afternoon with the Author” invites fiction and non-fiction writers from around Hawaii and the Mainland into our homes.

By means of Zoom, the center will host a different author each month to talk about their work, the story behind the story and their personal journey while writing their book.

Clarke is an accidental activist who began marching to her own tune after the Three Mile Island incident in 1979.

Having lived in Japan in 1964, she had a calling to move back and began recording the Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors’ stories.

Her world view shifted. and it wasn’t long before she became a passionate advocate for peace.

Inspiring others to live a life of peace and purpose. she recently walked the 900-mile Shikoku Pilgrimage.

NVMC’s mission is to ignite the potential in people by inspiring them to find the hero in themselves through the legacy of the Nisei Veterans.

The Nisei Veterans Memorial Center is a nonprofit organization that aspires to a world where people act selflessly for the greater good.

NVMC owns and manages an intergenerational campus on Go For Broke Place in Kahului that serves as a home for Kansha Preschool, Maui Adult Day Care Center’s Oceanview facility, the Stanley Izumigawa Pavilion and the NVMC Education Center. To learn more, visit www.nvmc.org.