Church screening honors artist who documented Nagasaki

On World Peace Sunday, Downey United Methodist Church (DUMC) welcomed producer Mayumi Maynard and director Naoko Fujimura for a screening of their NHK World-Japan documentary, “Silenced Witness: Nagasaki in the Eyes of a U.S. Combat Artist.”

The documentary follows American combat artist and photojournalist Ted Gilien’s transformative experiences in Nagasaki in 1945.

Decades later, his son Jeremy retraces his steps following the discovery of 500 photographs. The film sheds light on Gilien’s postwar antiwar art, including his book “The Price” and his deeply personal masterpiece “Invictus,” as well as his teaching and Hollywood work.

Jeremy is a talented musician, composer and teaching artist who has served as DUMC’s music director for 30 years. He composed two works inspired by “Invictus,” performed by Jeremy on piano and organ, Laura Halladay on flute, Robert Matsuda on violin and Rebecca Yeh on cello.

During World War II, military and civilian combat artists worked across the European and Pacific fronts under assignments from the U.S. military, Life magazine and other sponsors. They risked their lives on the front lines to document the reality of war with cameras, paintbrushes, pens and charcoal. They captured everything from intense battles to the quiet, grueling moments of everyday military life.

Ted Gilien (1914–1967), an American painter, muralist and photographer, was one of those artists.

Gilien studied at the Art Students League and the National Academy of Design before working as a muralist in the Federal Art Project during the 1930s.

Somewhat apolitical, Gilien was 28 when he joined the Army in 1942, entering what he saw as a just war against fascism.

Sgt. Gilien served as an art director for military newspapers in New Guinea and the Philippines, assignments that exposed him directly to the brutal reality of war. He later received approval to transfer to the Combat Artists Project.

Victory in Europe Day was May 8, 1945. The war in the Pacific continued.

On Aug. 6, 1945, the B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped the atomic bomb known as Little Boy on Hiroshima. By the end of that year, an estimated 140,000 people had died.

On Aug. 9, the United States dropped the Fat Man atomic bomb on Nagasaki. By the end of 1945, roughly 70,000 people had died there. Most of those killed in the two cities were civilians.

Japan’s surrender was announced in the United States on Aug. 14, 1945. The formal surrender followed on Sept. 2.

President Harry Truman defended the use of the atomic bomb.

“We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans.”

In September 1945, Gilien was assigned to General Headquarters in Tokyo, joining a unit under Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s command.

The artists were directed to create paintings and illustrations documenting Japan’s rebuilding under U.S. occupation. MacArthur wanted a visual narrative showing a peaceful transition, democratic restructuring and the revival of civilian life under his administration.

But these depictions were tightly controlled. Occupation authorities censored material that criticized their administration or challenged official narratives, including discussion of sensitive issues surrounding U.S. conduct and the atomic bombings. The period combined liberalizing reforms with the realities of rule by a foreign military power.

Gilien arrived in Nagasaki in November 1945 and documented the aftermath of the bombing.

His photographs were not posed. They were personal images of people, taken by an outsider looking in. People remained in the foreground, amid damaged buildings and ruins: displaced families, orphans and victims of radiation.

The atomic bomb destroyed Urakami Cathedral, which stood about 500 meters from the hypocenter. About 8,500 of the parish’s 12,000 members were killed in the bombing.

Gilien joined Japanese Catholics and other local residents at a memorial service held among the ruins on Nov. 23, 1945. His photographs preserved a record of the gathering.

The assignment to portray Japan’s rebuilding created an intense inner conflict for Gilien after his monthlong deployment documenting the horrific aftermath in Nagasaki.

In 1946, the artists returned stateside, where the Army housed them in a hotel and directed them to finish one painting a day for 30 days before their discharge.

Gilien became physically ill as he tried to reconcile the sanitized military art expected of him with the devastating human suffering he had witnessed firsthand. All but one of his paintings were rejected. The accepted painting later disappeared.

In 2010, Jeremy donated 500 of his father’s photographs to UCLA’s archives. The Smithsonian Institution also holds a recorded oral history interview with Gilien, portions of which are heard throughout the film.

What Gilien witnessed in Nagasaki traumatized him. Yet his photographs and paintings also depicted the strength of the human spirit, and he devoted his life to creating art that opposed war.

Gilien drew on his private sketches for his 1951 antiwar book, “The Price,” ensuring that the reality of the conflict would not be entirely lost to official history. He knew the work would be controversial.

He leaned into an allegorical style with a dreamlike aesthetic. The book contained 50 paintings, each accompanied by a personal comment. Among them was “Invictus,” his favorite, along with paintings calling for equal rights for women and minorities.

The painting’s title comes from William Ernest Henley’s poem “Invictus,” which expresses the determination to remain spiritually unbroken despite suffering and hardship. For Gilien, “Invictus” represented the endurance of the human spirit amid the horrifying aftermath of nuclear warfare.

The late 1940s and early 1950s were a dark period in American history, as the country was gripped by the Red Scare and McCarthyism. Sen. Joseph McCarthy made sweeping, often unsubstantiated accusations of communist infiltration, while congressional investigations and blacklisting damaged careers throughout government and the arts.

Gilien continued to paint, exhibit, teach art, and design motion picture sets and posters, including a proposed poster for “Spartacus.”

He died of a heart attack on March 11, 1967, at age 52.

In November 2025, Jeremy was contacted by Maynard, who was researching an NHK World-Japan documentary about his father.

In January 2026, Maynard, Fujimura and their crew arrived in Los Angeles to film Jeremy retracing his father’s story. They also filmed him performing and conducting the DUMC choir.

Following the screening, Fujimura, who had flown in from Tokyo, addressed the audience in English.

Pastor Brad Biggerstaff moderated a panel discussion featuring Jeremy; the Rev. Dr. B. Yuki Schwartz of Claremont School of Theology; and Pastor Yoshi Kuramoto of San Pedro United Methodist Church, who grew up on Kyushu and had family connections to the Nagasaki bombing.

The Methodist tradition’s emphasis on social holiness and active charity is rooted in the theology of its founder, John Wesley. In the 18th century, Wesley developed foundational rules for the Methodist movement that emphasized putting faith into practice.

Biggerstaff shares church leadership with Pastor Christy Anne Clark, the first woman and first Black pastor in DUMC’s 172-year history.