ID :
399935
Fri, 03/11/2016 - 08:52
Auther :

Ukrainian Students Fold Paper Cranes for Fukushima

Kiev, March 10 (Jiji Press)--A movement to make paper cranes to wish for Japan's recovery from the March 2011 meltdown at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s <9501> Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power station is spreading at schools across Ukraine. More than 50,000 paper cranes have already been made under the project. A total of 100,000 paper cranes are expected to be sent to the northeastern Japan prefecture of Fukushima, which suffered most in the unprecedented nuclear disaster. In Japan, paper cranes became a symbol of peace after Sadako Sasaki, a girl from Hiroshima who died at the age of 12 in 1955 due to the 1945 atomic bombing in the western Japan city, made the "origami" cranes out of paper. On March 1, a lecture on making paper cranes and a presentation ceremony to send them to Fukushima were held at a primary school in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev. At the ceremony, Bohdan Nikitenko, 11, a fourth grader at the school, said in Japanese that he prays people in Japan will be able to live happily. Svitlana Shulika, 38, a teacher at the school, introduced the history of the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and another western Japan city of Nagasaki as well as the nuclear accidents in Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union in April 1986 and in Fukushima. Japan and Ukraine have shared the tragedies, she said. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident in the region that is now Ukraine. Students worked seriously at making paper cranes using two kinds of paper, featuring the national flags of Japan and Ukraine, respectively, after they were told by the teacher to put their thoughts into them. After receiving the paper cranes, Anna Logvynenko, a 21-year-old former student of the school and an official at the Ukraine-Japan Center, pledged to ship them to Fukushima. Under the program, initiated by a Japanese nonprofit organization to exchange paper cranes between Ukraine and Japan, primary school students in Japan are also making the symbol of peace, for presentation to the Eastern European country. END

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