2019, the call went out for 10,000 tsuru or paper origami cranes.  

Diagonal fold, unfold, turn, diagonal fold, unfold, flip. 

Cranes live for one thousand years. Folding one thousand paper cranes, one for each year of its life,  grants one wish. Senbazuru. 

We folded a thousand paper cranes for Uncle Ray’s 60th birthday and hung them in long strands from  the ceiling to wish him a long life. We folded a thousand golden cranes for Mika’s friend’s wedding to  wish the couple a long happy marriage. We also folded cranes in Chinese and Taiwanese language  school. 

Twelve year old Sadako Sasaki of Hiroshima folded a thousand cranes with a wish to be cured of  leukemia, caused by the Americans’ atomic bomb dropped on her city when she was 2. When she was  not cured, she folded 300 more. Children today fold and send thousands of cranes to Hiroshima each  year. You can see her statue holding a golden crane at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and in  Seattle too. 

Horizontal fold, unfold, turn, horizontal fold, unfold, diamond fold. 

In 2019, families were detained at America’s southern border and children were being separated from  their parents. The Japanese American community stood up and said “Never Again is Now.” 

Tsuru for Solidarity called for 10,000 tsuru or origami paper cranes and received 25,000 from around the  country and around the world.  

Japanese American organizations and Buddhist temples across the country organized tsuru paper crane  folding parties. People folded tsuru at home with their children and grandchildren out of historic  photographs and wrote messages of hope inside. A bride, happily married now for 40 years, donated the  thousand golden cranes she had received as a wedding gift. Here in Michigan, folks at Washtenaw  Community College, Ann Arbor District Library, Ann Arbor Art Center, Detroit Historical Museum folded  too. A box of tsuru was hand carried from Hiroshima.  

Squash fold, squash fold, flip, repeat. 

These delicate paper birds carry heavy wishes on their wings for peace, nonviolence, and hope,  connecting  

∙ the incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans in concentration camps during World War 2  (2/3 of whom were U.S. citizens);

Wang, Frances Kai-Hwa, “Kizuna Means Community” 

∙ the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (110,000 to 210,000 dead and 650,000  hibakusha sick with radiation poisoning);  

∙ all the immigrants and refugees from around the world seeking a life free of war and poverty;  and 

∙ the beauty and power of culture, heritage, art and community action.  

Taiko drums pounded — don doro don don — as 25,000 tsuru flew to Crystal City Family Internment  Camp in Texas, where 4,000 people of Japanese, German, and Italian descent were incarcerated during  WWII. Then they flew to the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley. 25,000 tsuru circled the  fence and taiko drums called out to the people inside — ka ka kara kara don — so that they would know  that people outside were standing up for them, speaking out and fighting for them. 

“We intend to be the allies that we needed then.” 

Now with the lifting of Title 42 and COVID-19 pandemic restrictions at the border, many desperate  families are once again heading for the safety and dream of America who sings, “Give me your tired your  poor.” Like our elders, they will risk anything for their children. Tsuru for Solidarity calls on all of us to  remember and to act. This is not ancient history. “Never again is now.”  

Don doron don don ka ka kara kara don. 

It’s Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander Heritage Month and I am struggling with work,  struggling with family, struggling with hope.  

I come out from my COVID cocoon and go down to the library to hear an elder talk about her  experiences in Rohwer concentration camp in Arkansas, her strategies for handling racists and bullies at  Ford, and how she continues to stand up and fight well into her 90s. And courage comes. 

I think of my grandfather, a famous four-star general in Chiang Kai-Shek’s Air Force who flew the last  plane out of China in 1949. After the war, he opened a small sandwich shop in Niagra Falls saying, “I just  want peace.” 

Pull out the long neck, pull out the tail, press the head, open the wings.  

Puff of air.