Origami and Flexagons

The Sawtooth library has a wonderful book about Sadako and the Thousand Cranes by Eleanor Coerr. I read this to second graders one year and taught cranes to second through fifth graders in Ms. Mila’s art classes. We never quite made our thousand cranes though. Cranes are lucky and long lived creatures according to legends and to fold 1000 cranes – it is said you could have a wish granted. Sadako Sasaki became sick from the radiation after the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan at the end of World War 2. When she was sick and in the hospital – her friend came to cheer her up and brought paper and they folded cranes together.They folded and wished for Sadako to gain back her strength and health. Sadako folded over 600 cranes, but became too ill to complete all of them. Her family and friends created the rest and today school children still make cranes to put on the Peace Monument every year.

Japanese tradition says that if one creates a thousand cranes, they are granted one wish. Sadako’s wish was to have a world without nuclear weapons. Thousands of origami cranes from all over the world are offered around the monument. They serve as a sign that the children who make them and those who visit the statue desire a world without nuclear war, having been tied to the statue by the story that Sadako died from radiation-induced leukemia after folding just under a thousand cranes, wishing for world peace. (Image and text from Wikipedia)