2016 / Obama left a peace inscription and paper cranes at a war memorial museum in Hiroshima

Paper cranes Obama left at the museum on May 27. (Source: NHK World)

Obama’s Inscription at a guestbook in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. (Source: NHK World)

Los Angeles Time

On Friday (May 27, 2016), the president spent only a few minutes inside the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, which featuring disturbing relics, including signed and torn clothing worn by students burned in the bombing, and even nails and skin of a junior high school boy that were kept by his mother after he died.

There he viewed a display for Sadako Sasaki, a young girl who survived the bombing and, while battling the leukemia she contracted as a result of radiation exposure, would fold paper cranes, a symbol of longevity in Japan.

A traditional belief among some Japanese is that by folding 1,000 paper cranes, one can achieve long life. Children present wreaths of paper cranes in the park in Hiroshima in Sadako’s memory; Obama gave two of his own to local schoolchildren, and left two more alongside his inscription in the museum guestbook.

“We have known the agony of war. Let us now find the courage, together, to spread peace, and pursue a world without nuclear weapons.”