Hiroshima Childrens Peace Monument
Children's Peace Monument, Hiroshima, Japan
This is perhaps the most moving of all the monuments in the park. It was inspired by a ten-year-old girl named Sadako, who died of Leukemia several years after the bomb. Cranes are a symbol of longevity and happiness in Japan and she had been told that if she could make a thousand paper cranes she would be cured of her disease. She made hundreds of the cranes (perhaps more depending on who tells the story), but died before making her goal. She was an inspiration to other children throughout Japan, and many school kids made cranes which were buried with her. Since then it has been tradition for school children throughout the country to make these paper cranes and leave them at the memorial here as well as in Nagasaki, the site of the other atomic bomb explosion in Japan.
©Bill Yeaton