Cranes for Hiroshima
your complete guide to participation
Hello everyone,
I’ve been in Tokyo all week, planning some fun for the Peace Crane Project this year. More about that soon. I’m back at my desk now, with more details about the Cranes for Hiroshima project.
The goal is, together with all of you, to fold 1,000 cranes to deliver to Hiroshima by August 6, the 80th anniversary of the bombing. I, along with Noël Southall, a superstar educator in Tokyo and member of the Peace Crane Project board of directors, will be traveling to Hiroshima to join the Sasaki family at this year’s memorial service in Peace Park.
This photo, taken by Noël Southall, shows the blue and gold cranes his 6th grade class delivered to Hiroshima this week, pictured here inside the display case in Peace Park. The precision his students are achieving is incredible and quite inspiring!
The Park has a series of display cases behind the statue of Sadako Sasaki, designed to showcase the many cranes brought to Hiroshima. Your cranes will be displayed in one of the cases. When they are removed to make room for more cranes they will be recycled into new origami paper and other paper products, allowing them to take flight again. More about Hiroshima’s recycling efforts in another post. Meanwhile, here are the guidelines. I’ve changed the guidelines slightly from my preliminary post about this so thank you for reading carefully…
Sign up for the Peace Crane Project. Only those registered can participate. If you want to only send cranes for Hiroshima and not exchange cranes with another group, please type CRANES FOR HIROSHIMA ONLY in the notes section.
Please send only ONE CRANE per participant. Depending on how many arrive here, we will assemble as many as possible to take to Hiroshima. Packages containing more than one crane per participant will not be used for the project.
Please fold using paper that is either 3” or 7.5 cm square. This will allow us to string and stack uniform cranes into a senbatsuru (千羽鶴, senbazuru.)
Please follow the senbatsuru folding style, as these more easily stack into the senbatsuru. This is different from how many of you fold now, including myself. It is mostly the same but involves not pulling the neck and tail out too far from the body and keeping the crane flat. We will assemble the senbatsuru here, so please do not do that part. But review this video so you understand how they are assembled and what the cranes look like. Please fold your cranes like the ones in this video. Cranes not folded in this size and way cannot be included.
The paper you use will represent you. Please make it unique! Using local newspapers or magazines, or other unique paper products that represent your community might work well. Color selection can also be used to represent your school or country. What you choose is up to you!
Write a message directly on the crane. Do not send separate letters. There is no place to display or deliver letters for this project. Your message can include a personal wish for the world, for Sadako, the Sasaki family, all hibakusha (bombing survivors,) visitors to Hiroshima, or whatever you decide is appropriate to display at the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima at the end of WWII.
All cranes must arrive here no later than June 12th, allowing time for me to get them strung. While I hope to deliver each and every crane that arrives here, the sooner they are here the more likely they will be to be included. Thank you for understanding. Please send me an email letting me know your location and how many cranes you are sending. I will reply with my address.
That’s it for now. Lots in the works here. I’m looking forward to sharing more with you as the year unfolds. Have questions? Post them in NOTES on Substack for everyone to see, if you’re able. Thanks.
Thanks for keeping the cranes in flight.
Sue DiCicco Smith