Remembering Sasaki Sadako & the Paper Cranes

 

                                                            

                                                               Children's Peace Monument 

1 Make me a channel of your peace:

where there is hatred, let me bring your love;

where there is injury, your healing power,

and where there's doubt, true faith in you:

2 Make me a channel of your peace:

where there's despair in life, let me bring hope;

where there is darkness, only light;

and where there's sadness, ever joy.

O Spirit, grant that I may never seek

so much to be consoled as to console,

to be understood as to understand,

to be loved as to love with all my soul.

It did not occur to me during or immediately after watching the film Oppenheimer on Friday that Sunday and yesterday marked the anniversaries of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Several times through the years Ruth, my wife, created origami paper cranes which we distributed to children and others who were in worship on the closest August Sunday to these terrible events. This was a reminder of the tragic story of a girl from Hiroshima who survived the blast but died a decade later of leukemia. According to Wikipedia: 

Sadako Sasaki (佐々木 禎子, Sasaki Sadako, January 7, 1943 – October 25, 1955) was a Japanese girl who became a victim of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States. She was two years of age when the bombs were dropped and was severely irradiated. She survived for another ten years, becoming one of the most widely known hibakusha—a Japanese term meaning "bomb-affected person". She is remembered through the story of the more than one thousand origami cranes she folded before her death. She died at the age of 12 on October 25, 1955 at the Hiroshima Red Cross Hospital.

                                                                                Sasaki Sadako 

At the Peace Park in Hiroshima there is a Children's Peace Monument which includes a  statue honouring Sasaki Sadako. Was it "permissable" to bomb these cities because of the sense of the "other" for Japanese people? They had different coloured skin and facial features. They were supposed of another religion, although Christians and their churches were indiscriminately destroyed as well.  While the Americans dropped the bombs they did so after consultation with Britain and other allies. Canada participated in developing these nuclear weapons in a number of ways. It should be noted that the fire-bombing of Tokyo in March of 1945 killed 100,000 in one night, more than either of the atomic weapons. 

I recall that we also sang the hymn Make Me a Channel of Your Peace on at least one occasion, and the message is powerful still. 

3 Make me a channel of your peace.

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

in giving to all that we receive,

and in dying that we're born to eternal life.

Here is a powerful editorial written by Christian activist Dorothy Day a month after the bombs were detonated. 

                                                                Dorothy Day in the Catholic Record