The 6th grade learned about Japan during WWII as a part of our school-wide Asia study. Over 200,000 people died as a result of the US bombing of Hiroshima. We read the book Sadako by Eleanor Coerr. Sadako developed leukemia, the atom bomb diseae, ten years after the bombing. Prior to her death, Sadako was attempting to make 1,000 paper cranes and make a wish for peace. She died after making 644 cranes. Her friends and classmates folded the final 356 cranes and Sadako was buried with one thousand cranes in the hopes that her wish would come true. Young people in Japan collected money to create a monument for all the children who were killed by the bomb and they used Sadako s story as inspiration. Today there is a statue of Sadako in Hiroshima Peace Park standing on the Mountain of Paradise, holding a peace crane. Engraved at the base are these words:
This is our cry,
this is our prayer:
Peace in the world.
The Sadako story inspired us as well, and the 6th grade students have completed their first 1,000 cranes. The students have expressed a desire to continue making cranes for the remainder of the school year.
