Folding Cranes for Peace began in Japan.
Sadako Sasaki and her family lived in Hiroshima, Japan. Hiroshima was a large city containing a few stone and concrete buildings and many small wooden houses.
Sadako was two on August 6, 1945 when the United States dropped an atom bomb on the city in an effort to end World War II.
The old wooden city disappeared instantly. About 50,000 people died at once. Many more thousands died in the ensuing years.
Sadako lived some distance from the center of the explosion. Her grandmother died, but the rest of her family survived. Hiroshima was left a desert. Nevertheless, people began to rebuild the city and their lives. They built a Peace Park in the center of the ruined city. Sadako and her family went to the park every year to honor her grandmother and those who had died. They and their friends floated little lighted lanterns down the river in memory of their families.
Sadako grew up and went to school. Live began to seem normal again. When she was twelve years old, Sadako was diagnosed with Leukemia, which is often the result of exposure to atomic radiation.
As Sadako began treatment for her illness, a school friend brought her some brightly colored paper to cheer her up. Her friend cut the paper in a square and folded an origami paper crane. She reminded Sadako of the legend that cranes are said to live one thousand years and, if one folds a thousand cranes, one will live to be very old.
Sadako began to fold a thousand cranes. The nurses gave her the wrappers from her medicine. When her brother came to see her,
he said he would hang the cranes from the ceiling for her.
Before long, other children at the hospital who had radiation sickness began to fold cranes with Sadako.
As she folded each crane, she would say, "I will write peace on your wings and you will fly all over the World."
She began to think about the heartache that results when people are not peaceful.
Sadako began to fold more slowly as her body gave in to her disease. When she fell asleep for the last time she had folded six hundred and forty-four cranes.
Sadako Sasaki's school friends remembered her after her death by folding the last cranes to make one thousand. Soon people all over Japan - and all over the world - began folding "cranes for peace."
In 1958, almost three years after her death, they put a statue of Sadako holding a flying crane, in the Peace Park.
For over forty years, people from all over the world have sent garlands of a thousand folded paper cranes to hang about Sadako.
They placed a poem at her feet:
"This is our Cry,
This is our prayer,
That there shall be Peace in the World."
Each crane is a wish for peace and love from the person who folds it.
Sadako had said, "I will write peace on your wings - and you will fly all over the world."
And she did.
Children at the Southwest Harbor Public Library began folding Cranes for Peace in March 1987 with Elise Harvey, a volunteer at the library. Every Monday, after school, the children folded cranes.
By June, they had folded one thousand Cranes for Peace.
By Christmas, the children had folded another thousand in memory of Samantha Smith, a young girl from Maine who had worked for peace between the United States and the Soviet Union before her death.
Folding cranes is a peaceful, meditative, non-political activity. Our children, at the Southwest Harbor Public Library learn, as they fold, what cooperation and a peaceful attitude can accomplish. They have folded about ten thousand paper cranes and have sent them to Hiroshima, Baghdad and Finland.
Folding Cranes for Peace usually happens on Tuesdays from 3 to 4:30 PM, but the Crane Folders are taking a break at the moment. Please call if you would like to come and fold!
CLICK HERE If you would like to learn how to fold cranes at home.