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Junior Writers Reporting

Hiroshima group promotes folding of paper cranes at restaurants

A citizens’ group based in Asaminami Ward, Hiroshima is working to encourage people to fold paper cranes, a symbol of peace. The group is seeking to give customers at restaurants, including “okonomiyaki” restaurants (a Hiroshima specialty), the opportunity to make paper cranes while waiting for their meals. The members of the group then collect these cranes and offer them to the Children’s Peace Monument in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.

The effort began in the summer of 1996, initiated by the group’s leader, Yoshimitsu Toyohisa, 48, a consumers' co-operative worker who lives in Asaminami Ward. Mr. Toyohisa wanted to create a chance for others to reflect on peace in their spare moments of daily life.

In the beginning, an okonomiyaki restaurant called “Saito,” located in the city of Hatsukaichi, agreed to host the activity. For the first few years, the group pursued their work only at this restaurant. Later, when news of the effort was broadcast on the radio, nationwide, the number of participating restaurants mushroomed and now totals 41, including restaurants in Tokyo and Shizuoka. Early on, only about 300 paper cranes were gathered in a year, but last year, the group collected about 30,000 paper cranes.

In Higashi Ward, Hiroshima, the Hotel Zurich Toho 2001 accumulates about 1,000 paper cranes a year, most of them made by children. Kayo Kawaguchi, 40, a front desk clerk, said, “Folding a crane gives guests from outside Hiroshima Prefecture the chance to learn about our city.”

Two years ago, the group launched a new effort in which young people are provided opportunities to listen to the accounts of A-bomb survivors or sufferers of war. To encourage schools to take field trips to Hiroshima, they also published a booklet which shares the history of the city’s reconstruction, including the birth of okonomiyaki during this era, as well as the story of Sadako Sasaki, a girl who died of radiation-induced leukemia ten years after the atomic bombing.

(Originally published on June 3, 2013)

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