About Children’s Peace Monument
The statue of the son of the atomic bomb victims, also known as the “Son of the A-bomb” statue, is located in the Peace Memorial Park in Nakajima-cho, Naka-ku, Hiroshima City, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan, and was erected on May 5, 1958 (Children’s Day in Japan). The statue is based on a Japanese girl, Sasaki Reiko, who suffered from leukemia at the age of two due to radiation from an atomic bomb. Fear of death has tormented Sachiko since she knew life, and a fellow patient told her that she could be cured by folding a thousand paper cranes.
The well-intentioned deception brought hope to the young girl, and the frail girl kept folding paper cranes until she left this world at the age of 12, but she still had not folded all 1,000 of them. After her death, her devastated classmates appealed to the nation to “build a memorial for all children who died as a result of the A-bomb 0,” and received support from students at more than 3,100 schools nationwide and nine countries around the world to build a statue of the A-bomb 0’s sons.
The statue of the son of the A-bomb is 9 meters tall, with a bronze statue of a young girl holding a golden crane at the top of the triangular circle-shaped base, and young girls and boys on the left and right, symbolizing a bright future and hope. The stone monument below the statue is inscribed with the inscription “This is our cry, this is our prayer for a peaceful world.
How to get there
From Hiroshima Station, take Hiroshima Dentetsu Line (streetcar) and get off at “Genbaku Dome-mae” stop.
Immediately west of Motoyasu-bashi Bridge.
Tips
A bronze statue of a young girl holding a golden paper crane as an offering stands atop a tripod domed pedestal, and on either side are statues of boys and girls symbolizing a bright future and hope. The inscription on the stone monument below the statues reads, “This is our cry, this is our prayer, to create peace in the world.
The statue was created by Kazuo Kikuchi, a professor at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music at the time.
Website
https://hiroshimaforpeace.com/en/childrens-peace-monument/
