Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Day 300 – October 12, 2014

Named Open Heart 12 PEACE Cranes

Friday’s news that the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Malala Yousafzai, a remarkable young woman from Pakistan who risked her life to speak up for equal education opportunities for girls reminds me of another young girl named Sadako Sasaki who died of leukemia ten years after the atomic bombing in Hiroshima during World War II.

Sadako was two years old when she was exposed to the A-bomb. With no apparent injuries, she grew into a strong and healthy girl. However, nine years later when she was in the sixth grade of elementary school she suddenly developed signs of an illness. In February the following year (1955) she was diagnosed with leukemia and admitted to the Hiroshima Red Cross Hospital. Believing that folding paper cranes would help her recover, she kept folding them to the end, but on October 25, 1955, after an eight-month struggle with the disease, she passed away.

Sadako’s death triggered a campaign to build a Children’s Peace Monument to pray for world peace and the peaceful repose of the many children killed by the atomic bomb. Approximately 10 million cranes are offered each year before the Children’s Peace Monument.

Anyone may place paper cranes to the Children’s Peace Monument in Peace Memorial Park. Please send your cranes to the address below. Additionally, you may enter your name and message for peace into the Paper Crane Database so that your desire for peace is recorded for posterity. For this purpose, please fill out this registration form and send it in with your paper cranes.

Peace Promotion Division
The City of Hiroshima
1-5 Nakajima-cho Naka-ku,
Hiroshima 730-0811 Japan