A thousand paper cranes

UNESCO Courier, August, 1986

A thousand paper cranes

THIS story starts in 1945. A girl named Sadako Sasaki was living in a Japanese city called Hiroshima along with about half a million other people. When she was two years old the first atomic bomb ever to be used against human beings was dropped on Hiroshima. Most of the city was completely smashed and burned to the ground. Sadako was about a mile and a half away from where the bomb exploded, but she wasn't burned or injured at all, at least not in any way people could see.

A few weeks after the bomb, people in Hiroshima began dying from a sickness even the doctors couldn't understand. People who seemed perfectly healthy would suddenly get weak and sick and then just die. It was so strange and new that no one knew what to do. In fact, even today no one really knows exactly what radiation does or what it might do to a particular person.

By the time Sadako was in seventh grade, she was a normal, happy, twelve-year-old girl going to a regular school and studying and playing like everyone else. Ten years had passed since the bomb and she was thinking about other things. One of the things she thought about most was running.

One day after an important relay race that she helped her team win she felt extremely tired and dizzy. After a while she felt better, so she thought it was just that she was so tired because of the race. Over the next few weeks she tried to forget about it, but the dizziness kept coming back, especially when she was running. She didn't tell anyone about it, not even Chizuko, her best friend. Finally, one morning, it got so bad that she fell down and just lay on the ground for a while. This time everyone noticed. They took her to the Red Cross hospital to see what was the matter. No one could believe what they found out. Sadako had leukaemia, a kind of cancer of the blood. At that time quite a few children about Sadako's age were getting leukaemia, which the people then called "the A-bomb disease". Almost everyone who got the disease died and Sadako was very scared. She didn't want to die.

Soon after Sadako went to the hospital her best friend, Chizuko, came to visit her. She brought some special paper and folded a paper crane. Chizuko told Sadako about a legend. She said that the crane, a sacred bird in Japan, lives for a thousand years and if a sick person folds a thousand cranes, that person will get well. Sadako decided to fold a thousand cranes. Because of the leukaemia she often felt too weak and tired so she couldn't work all the time, but from that day on, whenever she could, she folded cranes.

Sadako actually folded her thousand cranes, but she wasn't getting any better. But instead of getting angry or giving up, she decided she would fold more cranes. She started on her second thousand. Everyone was amazed by how brave and patient she was. On 25 October 1955, surrounded by her loving family, she went to sleep peacefully for the last time.

But this story doesn't end with Sadako's death. She had a lot of friends who loved her and who missed her very much. And they didn't only feel sad about Sadako. Lots of other children in Hiroshima had died or were dying of the A-bomb disease. Her friends wanted very much to do something for Sadako. So thirty-nine of her classmates formed a club and began asking for money for a monument for her. The word spread quickly. Students from 3,100 schools in Japan and from nine other countries gave money, and finally, on 5 May 1958, almost three years after Sadako died, they got enough money to build the monument. It's called the Children's Peace Monument and it is the Peace Park which is in the middle of Hiroshima right where the atomic bomb was dropped.

The movement to build this monument became so famous and popular that a movie called "A Thousand Paper Cranes" was made about it. About sixty children from Hiroshima and about twenty children from Tokyo helped to make the movie, and when it was finished they wanted to stay together as friends so they started a new club called "The Paper Crane Club". The purpose of this club was to help children get together to think and work for peace. This club has continued to exist for almost thirty years. The members take care of Sadako's monument, visit atomic bomb survivors, people who were in Hiroshima when the bomb was dropped, and who are getting sick and old or who just need help for some reason.

One other thing they always do is fold cranes. They use the cranes in many ways. Sometimes they hang them on Sadako's monument and other monuments in Hiroshima's Peace Park. Sometimes they send them to world leaders as a way of reminding those leaders that the children of the world want to get rid of nuclear bombs. And whenever world leaders or atomic bomb survivors or people working for peace come to Hiroshima, members of the Paper Crane Club greet them and put a wreath of cranes around their necks to welcome them and to help them think about the meaning of Hiroshima.

But the meaning of folding cranes, and the meaning of Hiroshima and the Paper Crane Club are perhaps best summed up in the words carved on the granite base of the Children's Peace Monument: THIS IS OUR CRY THIS IS OUR PRAYER TO BUILD PEACE IN THIS WORLD