In November 2024, staff and students at Downside School (near Bath in the UK) went off curriculum for a War and Peace Week. Among other activities, they spent time exploring our virtual Museum of Peace – and afterwards, they submitted the interview that follows for us to feature among our other entries.
This is youth advocacy and peacebuilding in action! Rako, a student at the school, took the lead in sharing her knowledge of war and peace through growing up in Nagasaki. In particular, she shared the story of Sadako Sasaki, a young girl who developed leukaemia as a result of her exposure to the radiation released by the atomic bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki in 1945. With no effective treatment available, Sadako Sasaki made lots of origami cranes – a symbol of peace in Japan – while praying for a cure. Taking inspiration from her, Rako set up the Thousand Cranes Project at Downside School, challenging fellow students to make as many cranes as possible. She then took some of the paper cranes made at Downside back to Japan, to hang in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. In the interview below, Rako explains the background to this project and what she hopes will follow from ongoing peace education.
A big thank you to Downside School, and especially Rako and staff-member Janet Craig, for engaging with and contributing to our Museum of Peace in this way. Peace education is a vital part of peacebuilding, and it is all the more effective when young people take the lead.[1]
CONTENT WARNING
Images below show people injured by the atomic bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki.
- Interviewer: Could you please tell us about yourself?
- Rako: My name is Rako
- Interviewer: You are 15?
- Rako: Yes and I’m here because I want to share something from Japanese culture, origami. I appreciate that some of you have made paper cranes before, it’s just that cranes symbolise what peace is and symbolise hope through the experience that the Japanese people had because of the atomic bomb during the Second World War.
- So how early were you aware of peace and the importance of peace? Is it something you grew up with?
- Yes.
- How is the importance of peace incorporated into your school, your culture?
- I’m from Nagasaki, and maybe some of you are not aware of what an atomic bomb is. During the Second World War there were two atomic bombs dropped, that is on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Hiroshima was the first one and Nagasaki was the second one. Nagasaki had a bigger atomic bomb called Fat Man. Loads of people died because radiation was emitted and there was a wave of really high heat; those kind of stories are not nice to listen, and to be honest, are really grotesque. Am I able to describe this, or not?
- If you want to hear more about it, we can talk about it afterwards, if you want to. It was not good and if you were there at the exhibition last year, you were able to see some of the photos.
- But it was hell, I think hell is a nice word –
- Yes, I think that works very well. So, instead of coming out of something so horrible with anger and hatred, how has the community and culture of Japan come out of that, instead of being so angry?
- Because I am living in Nagasaki, it is not optional, it’s on the curriculum. It’s right to have education about atomic bombs and war. All I learned is what the atomic bomb has done, what human has done to human, more than what country to what country or what context there is behind the facts. Since kindergarten we have it in our heads that it’s wrong, all the time, never could be right thing.
- Rako added later: The discussions we have in school are hopeful, wishing that Nagasaki would be the last victim of the atomic bomb. And thinking what we could do about it.
- Interviewer: It’s created a pacifist community against war and promoting peace.
- Rako: Yes, we are positive. I would say Nagasaki and Hiroshima have many exhibitions where they try to spread knowledge of the experience. They try to look past what has happened to what comes next, while not trying to forget what human has done to human, which is cruel, way too cruel. It’s very hard to face it.
- We’re coming up to 80 years since the bomb, so we are losing the first-hand experiences. It’s through things like this and hearing people’s stories that we are able to keep all that alive. So why don’t we talk about the cranes? Do we know when this started? And where? And why?
- There was a girl in Nagasaki (Sadako Sasaki) who had been attacked by the atomic bomb, but she survived. Because of the radiation, cancer had occurred. Leukemia. There was no proper medication or treatment for that disease, so she started to make cranes with origami. She didn’t even have paper, so you know when you push medicine out of packets –
- The foils —
- She made cranes with that little piece of paper. She made thousands of cranes, thousands, out of those little bits of paper. The final piece would be about that small. (Rako gestures to show the tiny size) She kept making, kept folding and kept praying that she was going to get better as soon as possible, that she can have a longer life, be a grandma, that was what her hope was. Well, eventually that couldn’t come true. However, that story is recorded and there’s a photo of her and, if you want, you can search it up. It’s a very beautiful story. There are loads of stories but that’s the initial story, that’s where the idea of a thousand cranes comes from. And the reason why it’s cranes, is that cranes generally symbolise peace in Japan.
- I left (Japan) two years ago. I originated the ‘Thousand Cranes Project’ at Downside and it was magnificent. Everyone made cranes and we had a thousand two hundred, didn’t we?
- We had way more than we thought we would have.
- Once you’d had the idea of ‘Oh I want to bring this to Downside’ how did you make that a reality, because it went extremely well, much better than anyone expected. Outside the mirror (in the Main Hall) after every break —
- I didn’t expect it
- there was always a group that was just making cranes. How did it come from an idea to that reality? What did you do?
- In Japan, I think that the idea is not global enough. I think they tried to keep a record (of what happened) and keep exhibiting, but this is still something that is kept apart from other countries. I think it’s carried out only inside Japan which I found meaningless, because, you know, that’s not peace really. So, I decided that it’s the greatest chance to make sure that everyone is aware of peace, not just inside Japan but outside Japan, so we can share all the context behind. You guys are all different nationalities. We can re-think and we can gather in unity and I think that the idea of this place (Downside) is very global with loads of other voices and this motivated me to resolve to start this project.
- Okay! Do you guys want to make a crane now? You want to? Try?
- YEAH!!
[1] Members of the Visualising Peace team discuss youth-lead approaches to peace education in ‘The Visualising Peace Project: Youth-led Peace Education’, an article for the journal of the Association for Citizenship Teaching, issue 59, 2024: ‘AI, Elections and Citizenship: what is the future of democratic participation?’.