Japan’s Hidankyo Delegate Carried Thoughts of Deceased A-Bomb Survivors; Student-Made Copper Orizuru Cranes Symbolize Peace

The Yomiuri Shimbun

10:59 JST, December 10, 2024

The youngest of the three co-chairs of Nihon Hidankyo (Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations) who will accept this year’s Nobel Peace Prize at the award ceremony on Tuesday in Oslo, carried with him orizuru cranes made of copper.

Toshiyuki Mimaki, 82, experienced the atomic bombing of Hiroshima when he was a small child. He has little recollection of the incident, so he was initially reluctant to talk about it. Nevertheless, Mimaki has led the group’s activities in Hiroshima.

In attending Tuesday’s ceremony, he intended to carry with him the thoughts and feelings of deceased atomic bomb survivors who previously led Nihon Hidankyo.

Mimaki was 3 years old when Hiroshima was struck. At the time, he was staying in Imuro Village — which is currently Hiroshima’s Asakita Ward — to avoid bombings. The day after, he and his mother went to Hiroshima to look for his father and were exposed to radiation.

Mimaki started to be fully active as a hibakusha atomic bomb survivor about 20 years ago. He felt embarrassed for a long time because he has few personal memories of the bombing to talk about, compared to older survivors who delivered powerful messages based on their own experiences.

Those older survivors include Ichiro Moritaki, the first co-chair of the atomic bomb survivors’ group, who claimed that “human beings and nuclear weapons cannot coexist.” He died in 1994 at the age of 92. There was also Sunao Tsuboi, who took the lead in the hibakuksha movement with a spirit of “Never give up.” Tsuboi died in 2021 at the age of 96.

In 2022, when Mimaki succeeded Tsuboi to become a co-chair of Nihon Hidankyo, he thought, “I should ask others for help.” What came to mind then were copper orizuru cranes.

Copper cranes first appeared in 2005, in a mechanical science class in a Hiroshima municipal high school. Teacher Kazunori Sawada, 56, came up with the idea as a way to get his students to enjoy crafting. The meticulous design, which looks exactly like an origami crane made by folding paper, caught people’s attention.

Copper cranes were presented to the Dalai Lama, another Nobel Peace laureate, in 2010 and Pope Francis in 2019.

When he attended international conferences, Mimaki asked Sawada to make copper origami cranes to take with him, thinking: “Orizuru cranes are a worldwide symbol of peace. With them, I can convey our message of atomic-bombed Hiroshima to the world, even without words.”

When Nihon Hidankyo won the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize, Mimaki was hesitant to attend the award ceremony due to heath concerns. However, he changed his mind, believing that “living hibakusha survivors must speak for those who are no longer with us.” He asked Sawada to make copper cranes for him to take to Norway.

In late November, Mimaki received 15 copper cranes — each measuring about 9 centimeters wide and about 4 centimeters high — made by Sawada and two students at Hiroshima Municipal Hiroshima Mirai Sousei Senior High School where Sawada teaches. They spent about a month handcrafting them.

When Sawada and the students gave Mimaki the cranes, one of them said, “Please convey the history of the atomic bombing [to the rest of the world].” In response, Mimaki said, “I will tell them that they are a symbol of peace made with the greatest care by high school students in Hiroshima.”

Mimaki was to give the cranes to Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, and people related to the Norwegian king before the award ceremony. “I can’t speak English or give vivid testimonies, but I would like to extend my feelings as a hibakusha,” he said.