Hiroshima & Nagasaki Commemoration Day
Dawn of the Atomic Age
The horror of nuclear warfare was revealed to the World at 8.15 am on August 6th 1945, when the atomic bomb “Little Boy” was dropped from the B-29 U.S. bomber Enola Gay onto the Japanese city Hiroshima. An estimated 70,000 people died from the immediate effects of the blast, and by 1950 the total number of deaths from radiation poisoning was perhaps as high as 200,000 people.
Three days later, on August 9th, a second atomic bomb named “Fat Man” was dropped on Nagasaki, killing 40,000 people that day, and up to 70,000 by the end of 1945. The atomic bombing of Japan will forever be remembered as one of the greatest catastrophes in human history. The suffering and tragedy caused by these two atomic weapons is a sobering reminder of the devastating power of nuclear warfare to human civilization.
For this reason, every year since 1980, LD CND has joined the rest of the World in commemorating Hiroshima and Nagasaki Day. We meet in Market Square, Lancaster, and make paper cranes which symbolize our wish for peace and a future free from the threat of nuclear warfare.
One Thousand Paper Cranes and a Wish for Peace
Sadako Sasaki was just two years old when Hiroshima was destroyed by the atomic bomb. She was at home, about 1 mile from ground zero, when the explosion engulfed her city and she received a large dose of radiation from the fallout. As a result, when she was twelve years old she was hospitalized and diagnosed with leukemia.
One day her best friend Chizuko Hamamoto visited her in hospital and began to fold a golden sheet of paper until she had made a paper crane. She retold the ancient Japanese saying that the one who folded 1,000 cranes was granted a wish. This was an inspiration to Sadako in the midst of her illness, and so she aspired to fold 1,000 cranes to make her wish. In the hospital she lacked paper, so she used anything she could find to make them including medicine wrappings and paper from get well presents. She wrote a simple poem expressing her hopes for peace, but sadly she died on the morning of October 25th, 1955, before she could finish folding all the cranes and make her wish. Before she died she folded 644 cranes, and friends completed the 1,000, and buried them all with her. She became an icon of courage in the face of nuclear war, and a statue of her was erected in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial holding a golden crane. Even today, Japanese children make cranes to commemorate Hiroshima Day and remember her wish.
