It’s fitting that the Pearl Harbor Visitor Center will be the site of an exceptionally meaningful gesture on this day, celebrated by more than 200 nations around the world as the United Nations’ International Day of Peace and Nonviolence, devoted to promoting the ideals of world harmony.
A tiny paper crane is being unveiled at the center, which supports the USS Arizona Memorial. The origami is one of the last few pieces made by Sadako Sasaki, the Hiroshima girl who had hoped to survive leukemia by folding 1,000 paper cranes, appeasing the gods and earning her fondest wish, as legend held.
The 12-year-old did not survive, dying in 1955 of cancer caused by radiation exposure she had suffered as a 2-year-old, when the United States dropped the atomic bomb on her hometown to help end World War II.
Sasaki’s greatest legacy is as a reminder of the toll of war, and as a symbol of the desire for peace. Her valiant struggle has made her an icon of a worldwide movement to ban nuclear weapons. Books and movies about her short life engage children, especially. Family members share Sasaki’s precious paper cranes as tokens of peace — one is displayed at a museum in Austria, another sits at the 9/11 Tribute Center in New York City — and also as emblems of reconciliation and healing, making the Pearl Harbor exhibit all the more resonant.
The decision to display the paper crane and two information panels detailing Sasaki’s fate after the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 was made neither lightly nor without controversy.
Even 68 years after the war, with the United States and Japan long the closest of allies, Pearl Harbor survivors and descendants of those who died on Dec. 7, 1941, are understandably protective of the museum’s focus. Dedicated in 1962 to "Remember Pearl Harbor" and to memorialize those lost in the Japanese attack that plunged the United States into World War II, the museum’s scope has expanded in recent years to include more historical information from the Japanese perspective, before, during and after the war.
The addition of this newest exhibit is the natural extension of this philosophy, carried out with sensitivity and with no chance of overshadowing the museum’s original intent. Perhaps this poignant display may inspire a reciprocal effort in Japan, where the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park documents the ravages of the atomic bomb attack and its horrible aftermath, but provides scant American perspective on the years leading up to that terrible day.
True reconciliation comes only from seeking to understand one another’s point of view. Seven decades later, there’s ample room for that conversation to continue.
