The Quotidian, August 6, 2010 ~ Peace on Earth

“This is our city. This is our prayer. Peace on Earth.”

This is the statement on a plaque at the base of a statue of Sasaki Sadako (January 7, 1943 to October 25, 1955) at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial in Hiroshima, Japan. [The family surname is Sasaki].

On August 6, 1945, a toddler Sasaki Sadako was about a mile from Ground Zero when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Within ten years – in 1955 – she was diagnosed with leukemia. Her mother described leukemia as the “atomic bomb disease.”

Her best friend Hamamoto Chizuko visited her in the hospital, used gold paper to fold a paper crane, and re-told the Japanese legend that a person who folds 1,000 paper cranes is granted one wish.

Inspired by her friend and the legend, Sadako began folding paper cranes. Accounts vary as to whether she folded less than 1,000 or more than 1,000 cranes before she died.

Sasaki Sadako and paper cranes have become symbols of peace around the world. In Seattle there is a small statue of Sadako in Peace Park.

[Source: biographical information from Wikipedia].

Blessings to the memory of Sasaki Sadako and all of the victims of atomic weapons use and atomic and nuclear weapons testing around the world.

[Note: atomic and nuclear weapons have been tested in the western United States, Australia, the south Pacific, central Asia, south Asia, and in the south Atlantic].