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Sadako’s
Cranes A short, powerful film, Sadako’s Cranes
was shot when Yvette O’Neill was in Japan with her son in
2001. It is the story of Sadako Sasaki who was three years old when
the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. As a result, Sadako contracted
leukemia, known in Japan as the atom bomb disease. While in the
hospital, hoping to be cured and to return to her family and friends,
Sadako tried to fold one thousand origami paper cranes which, according
to legend, would make one’s wish come true. She died before
her project was completed and her friends and classmates folded
the rest for her so she could be buried with one thousand cranes.
In 1958, at the Peace Park in Hiroshima, a shrine was erected to
the children who died as a result of the atomic bomb and an image
of Sadako stands at the top. Every year, on Peace Day, thousands
of children come to the shrine and leave paper cranes in memory
and with a spirit of hope. O’Neill had read the story of Sadako
and was moved by it. She had visited the Peace Park in the 1970’s
and wanted her son to see it, too, so she returned with him in August
of 2001 while a memorial exhibit about Sadako was installed in the
Peace Park museum. The message of the children’s monument
is: Biography: Yvette O’Neill won her first prize in photography in the fifth grade in Manhattan Beach, California, and has been a photographer ever since. O’Neill holds a B.A. in Art History from the University of California, Berkeley, and an M.A. in Art History from California State University at Long Beach. She owned and operated a folk art gallery in Lincoln City, Oregon, for several years and worked as a director at Lawrence Gallery Salishan, the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, and the Cascade Head Festival in Oregon. Yvette’s video Art, Poetry and Stories: Their Gifts to Friendship was narrated by poet Tess Gallagher and focused on the connections and relationships among the works of Gallagher, Raymond Carver, Alfredo Arreguin, and Susan Lytle. Contact Information: Yvette O’Nell
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©2003 United Nations Association Film Festival