Santa Barbara and Toba, Japan have been Sister Cities for more than 50 years. Although the yearly student exchanges were halted during the COVID-19 pandemic, a new exchange project has provided an opportunity for some 500 students from each city to send each other messages of peace and friendship.
Students from nine Toba elementary and junior high schools, including two island schools off Toba’s shore, sent colorful Japanese paper origami cranes with greetings and messages, inviting pen pal possibilities.
Members of the SB Toba Sister City Organization identified fourth-sixth-grade classes at Franklin, Cold Springs, Peabody, and Santa Barbara Charter public elementary schools, who wanted to join the project. To those schools, Sue DiCicco, founder of the Peace Crane Project, added classes at La Colina and Goleta Valley junior high schools.
The students learned to make paper cranes and wrote their names and messages on the birds’ wings to be sent back to the Toba schools.
“We have a corner of the classroom now where cranes and other origami designs are being folded and hung from the ceiling,” one Santa Barbara teacher wrote.
The origami trainers for Santa Barbara students were DiCicco, Lisa Ishikawa, Takako Wakita, Paula Steinmetz, Linda Mathews and Sally Hamilton.
The Peace Crane Project itself was created in 2013 by DiCicco, Santa Barbara resident and co-author of “The Complete Story of Sadako Sasaki.” The book is the true story of a young girl who suffered, and years later died from, atomic radiation leukemia after the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945.
Sadako vowed to fold 1,000 cranes in a prayer for peace, after an ancient Japanese tradition. The origami crane is a symbol of peace, friendship and hope. Sadako’s efforts and her friends’ involvement were publicized as a way to teach students about the war and nuclear weapons.
Now more than 2 million children around the world have participated, meeting other students, learning geography, practicing their writing, and building an appreciation for the people and cultures of the world. To contact DiCicco, visit peacecraneproject.org or email sue@peacecraneproject.org.
The SB Toba Sister City Organization is hopeful some local students between ages 13-15 will apply to be exchange students to Toba when the program resumes after COVID restrictions end. For more, email wakita964@gmail.com.