Paper Crane Arrives

       More Letters From Paradise

          Paper Crane Arrives

       I know the story, and you probably do too. It's the story of the young Japanese girl    named Sadako Sasaki, from Hiroshima, who while suffering from leukemia, made paper cranes. She prayed that the gods would spare her, if she folded 1,000 paper cranes. She had been two years old, and one mile from the center of the bomb blast. She was hospitalized in 1955, and died eight months later at age 12.
       One of her paper cranes was donated to the Pearl Harbor Visitor Center, which supports the Arizona Memorial. The exhibit was mostly funded by both the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii, and the Japan Foundation of New York.
A ceremony will be held this Saturday with prayer blessings, taiko drums,and  origami folding will be offered. The exhibit is to remind visitors that war injures more than just soldiers. (All of this information I stole from the excellent article by William Cole, "Symbol of Peace" in our local paper.)
      I can't help wondering just how long that small paper crane will survive amid all the exhibits of war?
      And another thing. This story remined me of a drawing of a butterfly on a wall I saw somewhere in Europe. It was drawn by a little Jewish girl who was gassed in Auschwitz.
      Tomorrow is Peace Day.

              Aloha
              Grant