At the beginning of August, I always think of Sadako, & hope I have the opportunity to sing about her somewhere. Tomorrow morning (Aug 4) I’ll sing the song I wrote about her at Concordia College (Highgate, SA).
1. She saw the Thunderbolt in the sky
like a million suns, it prickled her eyes;
she saw the Thunderbolt in the sky -
two years old, it prickled her eyes.
But now she sits making paper cranes,
paper cranes, paper cranes.
Now she sits making paper cranes -
Sadako from Hiroshima.
2. She was a runner, swift and strong …
5. This is our cry, this is our prayer,
"May the crane of peace fly everywhere!"
This is our cry, this is our prayer,
"Crane of peace fly everywhere!"
Our kids brought the book home in 1984 (via the book club) when they were in primary school. Our Kristin was turning 11 that year, the same age as Sadako when she went to hospital.
On August 6th, 1945, the first atomic bomb was dropped, on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. ‘Sadako And The Thousand Paper Crane’, a book by Eleanor Coerr, tells the story of a 2 year old girl called Sadako, who survived the bomb, apparently unscathed, along with her family. When she was 11 years old, however, she became ill with a form of radiation illness. She had to go to hospital. Her best friend came to visit her with a gift. She brought Sadako a folded paper crane, and reminded her of an old Japanese belief: if a sick person made a thousand paper cranes and made a wish on each one, she would get better. Sadako made 642 before she died, but her friends and classmates made the rest and she was buried with a thousand paper cranes. Her statue is in Hiroshima Peace Park — she stands holding an origami crane — and it is her story that has made the folded paper crane a symbol of peace the world over. The song was inspired particularly by a short prayer that Sadako’s mother whispers one night as she leaves the hospital bed where her daughter is sleeping: “O flock of heavenly cranes, cover my child with your wings”. (We recorded the song for ‘God. Version 1.0’ in 1998, & we’re doing a fresh recording for a collection for kids we hope to have out early 2011)
