Last summer I had the strangest dream. It was sometime after the Aug. 6-9 commemoration on the Greenfield Common of the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The dream was so unusual — and inspiring — that it keeps coming back to me. Here’s what I remember.
The scene was an elementary school where a fifth-grade teacher named Mrs. Orueta, or “Mrs. O,” has asked her students to browse through a stack of magazines and choose an interesting news story, take some notes, and then make an oral presentation of the story the following day.
The next day a girl in the class named Abigail says she read about a big group of “mostly young people” from lots of different countries who won a famous prize for trying to “get rid of nuclear bombs.”
“What’s a nuclear bomb?” someone in the class wants to know. Before Mrs. O can explain it, a kid named Hugo calls out, “I know what it is! It’s the kind of bomb we dropped on some cities in Japan a long time ago. Lots of people were killed!” After an awkward moment of silence, Mrs. O says, “Yes, that’s right, Hugo.” And then, “So who else has a news story?”
But before anyone can answer, little Maya blurts out, “I know what nuclear bombs are! We read a book about that at the library, called ‘Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes.’” And then another kid pipes up with, “WE know how to make paper cranes! Mr. Lewis taught us how in art class!”
The next day Mrs. O has invited Maya to tell the class the story of Sadako, the 9-year-old Japanese girl who was dying from “radiation sickness” caused by the atomic bomb dropped on her city of Hiroshima. Maya explains that Sakako’s friend told her about an old Japanese “legend” in which anyone who folded a thousand origami “paper cranes” got whatever she wished for. She said that Sadako’s wish was “to live.”
“Did she do it? Did she live?,” anxiously ask several of her classmates. Maya, with a very sad face and tears in her eyes, replies, “No,…she died…She only folded 644…She was too weak to fold any more.” For several moments, the classroom is completely silent. Then the bell rings for recess.
Later that day Mrs. O, after some quick on-line research, explains that atom bombs are also called “nuclear weapons” and that now eight other countries besides the United States have them. And she says the “big prize” Abigail mentioned is the famous “Nobel Peace Prize,” which was given to a group call “I-CAN,” which stands for “International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons,” and that I-CAN has thousands of members from many different countries. And that Abigail was right about many of them being young people.
“And here’s the really good news,” she says. “After years of getting people from all over the world to sign petitions and write letters, I-CAN finally persuaded the United Nations in New York to vote — 122-to-one! — to support an international agreement, known as a ‘treaty,’ that would get rid of all nuclear weapons everywhere!”
“Did OUR country vote for it?” Hugo demands to know.
Mrs. O pauses, then says, apologetically, “Unfortunately, all nine countries with nuclear weapons refused to even vote.”
“OUR country refused, too?!” someone else asks. “Yes, I’m afraid so,” Mrs. O replies. Which causes several students to call out at once, “WHY?! WHY did we refuse?!” Feeling more than a little flummoxed, Mrs. O says she really doesn’t know why.
Sometime later — and this was the most amazing part of the dream — her students decide to research the names and addresses of the leaders of all nine nuclear-weapons countries and to send each one a big, colorful letter signed by everyone in the class, asking them to “PLEASE!!” sign the treaty — with a “P.S.” saying “We want to live!” They also decide to fold their own paper cranes — “peace cranes” — to enclose with each letter. Suddenly Maya exclaims, “We should call this our ‘SADAKO PROJECT!’” And they do.
Word spreads and soon an article about their “Sadako Project” appears in the town newspaper. Then kids in other elementary schools nearby hear about it and decide to do their own Sadako Projects. Soon there’s an on-line story about the Project and before long it “goes viral.” Dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of Sadako Projects spring up all over the country, and in other countries, too. Soon, there are feature news stories about the nine heads of state becoming overwhelmed and embarrassed by the stacks of kids’ passionate letters and mountains of “peace cranes” piling up in their offices.
As the Project keeps expanding and the publicity keeps building, the president of the United States suddenly announces that she’s ready to sign the treaty, and she urges the other eight leaders to do the same thing. At first, only North Korea agrees to follow her lead but before the year is out, all of the remaining seven leaders, under increasing pressure from their own people – including millions of schoolchildren – have persuaded their governments to sign onto the treaty. And that, in turn, initiates a crash program to dismantle and dispose of every single nuclear weapon on the face of the earth. (End of dream.)
It’s been said that dreams sometimes foretell reality. May it be so.
Randy Kehler lives with his wife Betsy Corner in Colrain. During the early 1980s Randy was the National Coordinator of the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign, considered the largest disarmament movement in U.S. history. He is currently on the Advisory Board of the Treaty Compliance Campaign.