At a time when most students were busy writing papers for class, more than 50 students were busy folding paper into 1,000 origami cranes to send to Nagasaki, Japan, one of two Japanese cities hit with an atomic bomb during World War II.
“A thousand cranes is symbolic of a community’s hope and dedication to peace in this world,” said Alex Sklyar ’10, co-founder of ԱƵ Global Citizens for Peace (CGC).
During his visits to Hiroshima and Nagasaki while studying abroad in Japan, Sklyar was moved by the strength of the residents’ hope for peace, which inspired him to bring a bit of that hope to campus.
Working with Shauna Dunton ’10 and Carolina van der Mensbrugghe ’10, Sklyar founded CGC this semester. Its mission is to raise awareness about important issues in international peace activism on campus and to provide students with a path to pursue that interest.
“We hope to change the focus of the club every semester to a different area of peace activism,” said Sklyar. “This semester we’re focusing on nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament and next semester it could be something completely different, and hopefully it’ll evolve from there.”
“I definitely know that this is benefiting the community,” Kaela Chow ’10 said of Thursday night’s event.
Along with folding cranes, students had the opportunity to learn more about nuclear weaponry from posters and information sheets.
There also was a petition-signing to support President Obama in talking more openly about nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament at the nuclear nonproliferation treaty revision session this May at the United Nations. The Japan Club also made sushi for the event.
“We hope that the people who come here feel like they are contributing to the international peace activism movement in a way. Also, by exposing them to Japanese food, Japanese culture, Japanese tradition as well, it’s instilling a sense of community, of global community,” said Sklyar.
Bryan Rasbury ’12 commended CGC’s efforts to raise awareness on this important issue.
“A lot of times people just turn a blind eye to certain things and also once things are in the past, people just forget about them, so it’s great to make people remember and to show them that this happened and we should be aware of it,” he said.
Along with sending 1,000 cranes to Nagasaki this summer, CGC hopes to connect with a sister group in Japan to work together toward peace activism at their respective schools.
They are also planning lectures in April and October with an A-bomb survivor and with someone who has lived with an A-bomb survivor.