For $1, or 82.99 yen, a student, staff or faculty member can help bring some relief to Japan.
Rosie Nelson, a sociology graduate student, started Mississippi Origami Cranes of Hope after researching a way to help out the relief effort in Japan. “I went to
DoSomething.org, and saw they were having a drive to collect photographs of 1,000 different cranes so they could show a lot of different people showing their support for the Japanese after the tsunami,” Nelson said. “When reading more about that, I thought, why don’t we try and do something like that here at Ole Miss, where we can show as a community that we are interested in helping Japan and showing our support by sponsoring 1,000 cranes of our own?”
An origami crane can be purchased for $1. Once a crane is sponsored, the next step is to write a special message of hope for the people of Japan. The group plans to send the cranes to Japan by way of the Japanese Consulate.
Naomi Yamakawa, who works with the Japanese Outreach Program, came up with the idea of sending money to Japan while talking to other members of the Japanese community the day after the earthquake.
“The day after the earthquake, I was teaching a class at the North Mississippi Japanese Supplementary School, and we were talking about how we could help Japan together with the parents and the kids,” said Yamakawa, who was born and raised right outside of Osaka. “And we came up with the idea of doing something together. When someone really close gets sick or injured, or when we wish something special, we make cranes.”
Yamakawa said the children in her program are concerned about Japan.
“The children here are also worried about Japan,” Yamakawa said. “They were raised here in the United States, but they were also heartbroken after watching that terrible scene in Japan. Even they felt like they wanted to do something to help.”
The group, which is sponsored by the Office of International Programs at Ole Miss, has raised over $500, with UM students sponsoring over 250 cranes.
Local Japanese school children have also contributed cranes of hope, and combined with Ole Miss students, the group already has over 1,000 cranes to send out.
The crane is a mystical creature in Japanese culture, and it is believed to live for 1,000 years.
The legend of
origami cranes, known as senbazuru in Japanese culture, says that if someone makes 1,000 cranes, that person’s wish for long life will come true.
The 1,000 Cranes of Hope will be set up outside the Student Union for the rest of the week between 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., and next week they will be set up at the Union from Tuesday through Friday at the same times.
For more information, contact Yamakawa at
nyamakaw@olemiss.edu.
The death toll from the disaster is now more than 11,000, with more than 16,000 still missing, according to Japanese officials. In traditional Japanese culture, dead bodies are cremated, but the Miyagi and Iwate prefectures have begun to bury bodies due to crematoriums being overwhelmed.
The Miyagi prefecture has begun to post information on over 2,000 bodies so that friends and families can possibly identify their loved ones.
Greet Provoost, director of the Office of International Programs, issued a statement regarding the disaster in Japan.
“On March 11, all of us at the Office of International Programs woke up to the events in Japan with deep consternation and concern,” Provoost said in a statement.
“An immediate call-out to our Japanese students and scholars here on campus helped us to affirm that their families and friends were — considering the circumstances — safe, and to reinforce that the OIP is available to assist the international community on campus in all ways it can.”
Provoost said OIP is behind Mississippi Origami Cranes of Hope.
“OIP extends its deepest concern for all the Japanese people as they grapple with the crises posed by the earthquake, tsunami and the radioactive threat,” he said.
“We also uphold our deepest respect and awe for their collective power of patience and perseverance, orderliness and harmony, endurance and discipline.”
The Japanese government reported that the damages have so far totaled
over $300 million, with the expected amount of total damages to reach upward of $275 billion.
Several nuclear plants were also damaged by the disaster, and recently Japanese officials at the International Atomic Energy Agency have discovered radioactive iodine–131 and cesium–137 in seawater samples taken less than 30 km from land.
In an attempt to cool some of the nuclear reactors, Japanese scientists used local seawater, and officials said some of that water may have been put back into the sea.
The IAEA also reported that three people working on the plant after the disaster had been exposed to elevated levels of radiation.
Two of the workers were actually taken to the hospital with severely contaminated feet.
Quake experts say that recent earthquakes have come along the Pacific Ring of Fire, the area in the Pacific with the most active earthquakes and volcanoes, and that next would likely be near San Francisco.
