1000 Cranes for Peace

This has been a difficult, tumultuous week. For me, the last week of the calendar year tends to be an optimistic week where I look forward to the awesome potential the coming new year holds in store. I have had a very difficult time keeping my optimism afloat after the brutal murders in Pakistan that included the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. It is a wiggly world we live in and our future as a viable species continues to remain dismal. My hope is that our leaders will reflect upon the course that has brought us to this point and perhaps consider reconciliation as an option to retaliation.

Our children are going to inherit a world that is increasingly dominated by conflict. It is important that they learn Peace Education as part of their overall strategy of self defense. There is a project I was planning to initiate at the start of the Year of the Rat but in light of everything that is happening today, I feel it may be more appropriate to begin the project now.

A truly inspiring example of reconciliation over retaliation is the story of Sadako Susaki. Sadako was two years old when the atomic bomb was dropped on her hometown of Hiroshima. In 1955, at the age of eleven, Sadako was diagnosed with the atom bomb disease - Leukemia. Sadako’s best friend told her that there is an old Japanese legend which states that anyone who folds one thousand paper cranes would be granted a wish. Sadako began folding origami cranes with the wish to be healthy again. Her drive and determination so inspired her schoolmates that when Sadako died on October 25, 1955, her schoolmates began a project to build a monument to Sadako and all the children of Japan who were killed by the atomic bomb. School children throughout Japan and nine other countries got involved and helped raise funds for the project.

In 1958, the city of Hiroshima unveiled the Children’s Peace Monument in Hiroshima Peace Park. This “Tower of a Thousand Cranes” has the children’s wish inscribed in its stone pedestal: “This is our cry. This is our prayer. Peace in this world”. Today, people all over the world support this call for peace by folding one thousand paper cranes and sending them to Sadako’s statue in Hiroshima Peace Park.

The project that I am initiating will be a yearly project. My goal is to inspire Silent River Kung Fu students to fold one thousand paper cranes by Canada Day in the name of peace. We will send the one thousand cranes to the Mayor of Hiroshima to be placed at Sadako’s statue on August 6 - the anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

Our world could be on the brink of another nuclear conflict. A conflict that has been fueled by intolerance and xenophobia. The potential of the human race is limitless. Perhaps this project will evoke reflection over reaction and reconciliation over retaliation and maybe, just maybe, someday there will be peace in this world.

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace."
- Jimi Hendrix (1942 - 1970)