Yesterday we celebrated Remembrance Day and when I went to work my boss suggested we do something more hopeful with the girls. She had the story of the girl and the 1000 peace cranes and instructions on how to fold an origami crane.
We haven't folded anywhere near 1000 but it was an excellent opportunity to spread some hope for peace.
Here is the story and an excellent video of the folding technique.
Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes is a
non-fiction children's book written by
American author
Eleanor Coerr and published in
1977.
The story is of a Japanese girl,
Sadako Sasaki, who lived in
Hiroshima at the time of the
atomic bombing. She developed
leukemia from the radiation and spent her time in a nursing home folding
paper cranes in hope of making a thousand, which supposedly would have allowed her to make one wish, which was to live, or so she thought. On
August 3,
1955, Chizuko Hamamoto — Sadako's best friend — came to the hospital to visit and cut a golden piece of paper into a square and folded it into a
paper crane. At first Sadako didn't understand why Chizuko was doing this but then Chizuko retold the story about the paper cranes. Inspired by the crane, she started folding them herself, spurred on by
the Japanese saying that one who folded 1,000 cranes was granted a wish. A popular version of the story is that she fell short of her goal of folding 1,000 cranes, having folded only 644 before her death, and that her friends completed the 1,000 and buried them all with her. This comes from the book Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. An exhibit which appeared in the
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum stated that by the end of August, 1955, Sadako had achieved her goal and continued to fold more cranes.
Though she had plenty of free time during her days in the hospital to fold the cranes, she lacked paper. She would use medicine wrappings and whatever else she could scrounge up. This included going to other patients' rooms to ask to use the paper from their get-well presents. Chizuko would bring paper from school for Sadako to use.
During her time in hospital her condition progressively worsened. Around mid-October her left leg became swollen and turned purple. After her family urged her to eat something, Sadako requested tea on rice and remarked "It's good." Those were her last words. With her family around her, Sadako died on the morning of
October 25,
1955.
After her death, Sadako's friends and schoolmates published a collection of letters in order to raise funds to build a memorial to her and all of the children who had died from the effects of the atomic bomb. In 1958, a
statue of Sadako holding a golden crane was unveiled in the
Hiroshima Peace Memorial, also called the Genbaku Dome. At the foot of the statue is a plaque that reads, This is our cry. This is our prayer. Peace in the world.
The following
haiku was attributed to Sadako. It translates into
English as:
I shall write peace upon your wings, your heart and you shall fly around the world so that children will no longer have to die this way
There is also a statue of her in the
Seattle Peace Park. Sadako has become a leading symbol of the impact of a nuclear war. Sadako is also a heroine for many girls in Japan. Her story is told in some Japanese schools on the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. Dedicated to her, people all over Japan celebrate August 15 as the annual peace and love day.
Every day more cranes continue to arrive at the memorial from children all over the world in the hope for peace.
