Nawahi students create 2nd ‘lei’ of world peace

After a lei of paper cranes symbolizing world peace was created by Ke Kula ‘O Nawahiokalani‘opu‘u students and brought to Hiroshima, Japan, in 2015, another group of students at the Hawaiian immersion charter school continued the mission by making a lei for Nagasaki.

The students who created the lei were inspired by “Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes,” the story about a young Japanese girl exposed to radiation through the bombing of Hiroshima and developed leukemia.

According to a Japanese legend, if one folds 1,000 cranes, one’s wish would come true. Sadako folded paper cranes in the belief she would be healed from this deadly disease, but unfortunately she died at age 12. Through the story of Sadako, paper cranes have become a symbol of peace.

“Folding 1,000 paper cranes is not an easy project,” said kumu Pilialoha Kimiko Tomita Smith, the Keaau school’s Japanese teacher. “Even though paper cranes get easier with practice, making 1,000 of them is a huge undertaking.”

Last summer, during the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Japan, Smith made the journey to Hiroshima to dedicate Nawahi’s first lei to Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.

This summer, she will hand-deliver the second lei to the Nagasaki Peace Memorial Park, the site where the second atomic bomb was dropped after the bombing of Hiroshima.