Peace is folded into WWII story

Lauren Bruner survived the Dec. 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor attack that left most of his USS Arizona shipmates dead.

Masahiro Sasaki survived the bomb blast and irradiated “black rain” that fell when the United States detonated the “Little Boy” nuclear device over Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945.

A tiny paper crane and the radiation victim who folded it — Sasaki’s sister, Sadako — united the two men Friday, and it’s hoped that a new exhibit featuring that crane at the Pearl Harbor Visitor Center will further unite Japan and the United States 68 years after the end of World War II.

Sadako Sasaki, who folded 1,600 origami cranes in a spirit of hope in the face of the leukemia that took her life at age 12, became an international symbol of innocent lives lost in war and the desire for peace.

Bruner, 92, gave Sasaki, 72, a stars-and-stripes peace crane he folded himself — adding to the peace crane tradition — and heartily shook hands with the Japanese man.

“I hope it (the new Sadako crane exhibit) is the first step in creating peace and goodwill to both nations,” Bruner said, choking up.

“This is everything that I’d like to share with you,” a happy Sasaki said of the connection made with the California man.

On World Peace Day today, both men will speak at an 8:45 a.m. dedication of the new exhibit, which includes the crane folded by Sadako, using a needle and a small piece of medicine paper, as well as a written account of her story, some photos, and description of occupied Japan.

The delicate crane is under an inch wingtip to wingtip, and a magnifier is built into the display to see it better. The ceremony is open to the public and more than 300 chairs have been set up under a tent.

Although seven decades have passed, some strong feelings linger over Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and its aggression in World War II, as well as the United States’ use of atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which ended the war but caused widespread suffering.

President George H.W. Bush, a World War II combat veteran, spoke of the ongoing need for reconciliation at Pearl Harbor on the 50th anniversary of the Dec. 7 attack in 1991.

“I have no rancor in my heart toward Germany or Japan — none at all,” Bush said. “And I hope, in spite of the loss, that you have none in yours. This is not a time for recrimination.”

Daniel Martinez, chief historian for the World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument, which includes the USS Arizona Memorial, said the inclusion of Sadako’s Hiroshima story at the Pearl Harbor Visitor Center would not have been possible in the era that Bush made his comment.

“The political temperament never would have allowed that,” he said.

Paul DePrey, superintendent for the World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument, previously noted that a 2008 proclamation by Bush’s son, President George W. Bush, establishing the monument, called for a broader story to be told “from Pearl Harbor to peace.”

DePrey told Sasaki Friday that the new exhibit offers more of the “peace and reconciliation story that has resulted from the end of the war.”

Sasaki said through an interpreter that any lingering hard feelings “is the very issue that we’d like to stress.”

“The fact that the National Park Service accepted a gift from Hiroshima, that tells you something, a strong message,” Sasaki said. “That’s where (we make) the first step of the end of the war in our hearts that might be still lingering in some people. So that is the first step that Pearl Harbor has accepted this gift from Hiroshima.”

The National Park Service oversees the Pearl Harbor Visitor Center and Arizona Memorial.

Sasaki is expected to express condolences for those lost at Pearl Harbor and during the war.

Sadako Sasaki was exposed at age 2 to radiation just more than a mile from ground zero. Her brother, who was 4, remembered the family fleeing the fire in a boat on a river as rain full of black soot and dust fell.

Hospitalized in 1955, Sadako painstakingly folded the cranes in the hope that she would live. Legend held that by folding 1,000 cranes, the gods would grant her wish.

Masahiro said the family believes his sister folded 1,600 or more cranes. By the end of August 1955, when she was in the hospital, she completed the first 1,000.

Since her death that year, Sadako’s story and her paper cranes have become an international symbol of world peace.

Carole Hayashino, president and executive director of the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii, which helped raise funds for the exhibit, said “for Americans of Japanese ancestry, we grew up hearing the story of Sadako and the 1,000 cranes.”

The new exhibit is a “reminder that out of war can come peace and friendship,” Hayashino said.