"August 6 "
This was the first digital piece I created. It's subject is the little girl, Sadako, who was one of those who died slowly of radiation poisoning in Hiroshima after the bombing August 6, 1945.There is an ancient Japanese story that if you are ill and create 1000 paper cranes, you will recover. So little Sadako began to fold her paper cranes. As she declined and lost her strength, her classmates began to make the cranes for her.
Today there is a memorial in Hiroshima where people leave thousands of strings of cranes every year.
This image incorporates some of the words that came to me along with the image as I created it. The words later became a poem
will a thousand
thousand paper prayers
offered with the hands of innocence
turn the raging fires
from our hearts
when generals cross
the lines that cannot be
uncrossed each cross
will bear the bodies
of our children
we throw our anger
out to meet the anger
thrown on us and find
it is ourselves
that burn
one small girl
in Hiroshima stands
fiercely urging tiny bird-prayers
to fly and God
returns weeping to Gethsemani