Tynan Elementary students to send 1,000 paper cranes to Hiroshima

Grade 4 students at the Joseph P. Tynan Elementary School in South Boston will mail 1,000 paper cranes and their own Haiku poems about peace to Japan next week in remembrance of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The students have been studying the events of World War II and reading the book Sadako, about a young girl who lived in Japan when the atom bomb was dropped. Sadako Sasaki created more than 1,000 paper cranes in the hope of being granted a wish that she would be cured of leukemia. (For more information, visit www.sadako.org/sadakostory.htm.)

Tynan students were so moved by the story that they decided to send paper cranes to the Mayor of Hiroshima to be placed at the foot of a statue of Sadako in the Hiroshima Peace Park. Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino has written a letter to accompany the shipment, sending greetings from the people of Boston. Mayor Menino participates in Mayors for Peace," a coalition of more than 1,800 Mayors from around the world, founded by a former Mayor of Hiroshima, in support of abolishing nuclear weapons. www.mayorsforpeace.org

Prior to mailing, the cranes are on display at the school, strung on garland in the students' classrooms. The Post Office will pick up the cranes in a special collection at the school:

Monday, November 19, 2007
12:30 p.m.
Tynan Elementary School
650 E. 4th St., South Boston, MA

4 schools, and recently won the Broad Prize for Urban Education as the top city school district in the country.

Fourth grade students at the Joseph P. Tynan Elementary School in South Boston recently mailed 1,000 paper cranes and their own Haiku poems about peace to Japan in remembrance of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Teachers Phyllis Simon and Shawn O'Neill have been teaching the events of World War II through the book Sadako, about a young girl who lived in Japan when the atom bomb was dropped. The Tynan students mailed their cranes and poems to the Mayor of Hiroshima, accompanied by a letter from Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, and asked that they be placed at the foot of a statue of Sadako in the Hiroshima Peace Park. Pictured here are Christine Nguyen (left) and Kayla McColgan.