Twelve-year-old Sadako Sasaki is training to become the fastest girl in Hiroshima. Her best friend, Kenji, and she run together every day in preparation for the big race. However, while training one day, Sadako becomes ill so her parents take her to the hospital.
The diagnosis: Leukemia—or “The Atom Bomb Sickness.”
Sadako, the audience learns, survived the bombing of Hiroshima by the United States in 1945. She was 2 years old. But the ghosts of destruction still remain in her body and fresh in her mind and the minds of her parents and friends.
Kenji tells Sadako if she folds 1,000 origami cranes the spirits will grant her the wish of health. Filled with hope, the girl begins folding bright, beautiful pieces of paper into little birds.
On Dec. 6, the sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-graders at Orcutt Academy told Sadako’s story in a production of A Thousand Cranes in the school’s cafeteria in Casmalia. The 27-member cast performed a show for their fellow students at 1 p.m. and another show for the public later that evening.
“For a lot of the kids, this is the first play they’ve ever done,” said drama teacher Shauna Wilson, who also teaches kindergarten through second grade at the school.
“They told me they wanted to do a drama piece, which honestly surprised me,” she said.
Wilson selected Kathyrn Schultz Miller’s A Thousand Cranes, which she said ended up being very timely because the students performed it the day before the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
“The play is about the United States’ response to that, which was the bombing of Hiroshima,” she said, “which is a historical event no one ever wants to happen again.”
While she’s in the hospital, Sadako goes on a dreamlike journey with her grandmother (played by Nelly Douglass, pictured left with Adrienne Mathieu as Sadako) to visit her ancestors and the spirits of men, women, and children who died in the explosion.
The students used percussion instruments to represent important elements in the play; the chorus counted the number of cranes folded with rhythm sticks, and chorus leader Robert Johnson ferociously banged on a cymbal to represent the atom bomb.
Wilson split the roles of Sadako and Kenji among three girls and two boys.
Victor Foster, who plays Kenji in the earlier scenes, said he enjoyed performing in a drama because “it engages the audiences more and it evokes a lot of emotions.”
Mathieu, who shares scenes with Kenji, agreed, adding, “In dramas, the audience is always hanging on everyone’s last word.”
Despite the serious subject matter, the students said they had fun practicing and performing the play. They also folded all of the cranes used in the show. Next week, they’ll decide as a class where to send them.
Folding cranes for people who are sick or suffering slowly became a worldwide tradition after the real-life Sadako succumbed to leukemia in 1955. She folded 644 cranes before passing away; her family and friends later folded the remaining 356. A statue of Sadako now stands in Hiroshima Peace Park.
At the end of the play, the cast echoed the words engraved on the statue: “This is our cry, this is our prayer, peace in the world.”
School Scene is compiled by Managing Editor Amy Asman. Information should be sent to the Sun via fax, e-mail, or mail.
This article appears in Dec 13-20, 2012.