It is shocking to hear about the City of Hiroshima dumping the paper cranes into the trash. I have heard something similar from my father (who learned about it from news media) several years ago. Every summer I work at a summer camp where I have the children fold 1,000 paper cranes, but after hearing about the situation in Hiroshima I stopped sending the cranes to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial.
When I was at 6OSME in Tokyo in 2014, each attendee received a survival package, and inside there was a tiny sticky note made with recycled paper made from thousand paper cranes donated to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, presented by an NPO called "Thousand Crane Project For A Hopeful Future." During the same trip to Tokyo, I had an opportunity to visit the office of Sadako Legacy Foundation (an NPO run by Sadako's brother) and received another paper product that is made from thousand paper cranes donated to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. It was then that I learned that City of Hiroshima distributes those paper cranes to different NPOs that want them and they make paper products out of them. It was encouraging to learn this, but I am sure that they still always receive TONS of volume of cranes that they cannot be all recycled to paper products, and it costs money and effort to do so. I still have the children at the camp fold 1,000 paper cranes out of recycled paper every summer, but I no longer send them to Hiroshima Peace Memorial. I have the children take home strands of cranes instead, and they are happy to receive them. If anyone asks if I send them to the Peace Memorial, I explain the situation and remind him/her that it is always the thoughts that counts. I loved President Obama's peaceful gesture of folding paper cranes. Yuki
