Inter Faith Week: Sadako and the Thousand Cranes
This week in Class 8,9 and 10 we explored the concept of peace. We decided to focus on this because one aim of Inter Faith week is to create peace between different faith communities and encourage everyone to be accepting of others to live in a harmonious world. We explored the human cost of war and how children, so often the innocent victims, can work together for peace. We listened to the story of Sadako and The Thousand Cranes. This is a story of sadness, courage and hope. After Sadako falls ill, her Father tells her the Japanese legend that if you fold one thousand paper birds called cranes you would be granted a wish. Sadako folded 1,000 cranes and wished to get well, and also for her parents to have more money, as they were quite poor. In 1958, a statue of Sadako holding a life-size golden crane, was built in Hiroshima Peace Park. It is called the Children’s Peace Monument. At the bottom of the statue there is a plaque that says: ‘This is our cry, this is our prayer, peace in the world. ” After listening, we took a quiet moment to reflect ourselves on what happened to Sadako before thinking about what we would wish for. Finally, we made our own paper cranes.
