A Statue of a 12-Year-Old Hiroshima Victim Has Been Stolen

Thieves have stolen a bronze statue of a Hiroshima victim from a park in Seattle, leaving behind only a pair of small, sandaled feet.

Called Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, the artwork honored Sadako Sasaki, a 12-year-old Japanese girl who died of leukemia in 1955—ten years after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima during World War II.

The statue in Peace Park depicts Sasaki holding a paper crane on an outstretched arm, evoking the hundreds of origami cranes Sasaki folded in her hospital room in the ’50s. When she died, her story moved onlookers around the world, who saw the girl as a symbol of peace.

Quaker activist Floyd Schmoe, who funded the park’s construction, commissioned artist Daryl Smith to create the statue, which was unveiled in 1990. Since then, visitors have placed colorful origami cranes on and around Sasaki’s bronze form.

The details of the theft are unclear, but the statue appears to have vanished by the morning of July 12. Colleen Kimseylove, an office manager for a local Quaker group called University Friends Meeting, tells the Seattle Times’ Caitlyn Freeman that she was “devastated” when she heard the news.

“I wanted to cry,” Kimseylove says. “[It makes] me feel like Floyd’s dream of peace in Seattle is a little further away than it was.”

Between 150,000 and 246,000 people died during the months after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, according to Columbia University’s Center for Nuclear Studies. Many of these victims were killed by the force and heat from the explosion, while many more died from acute radiation exposure. The thousands of children among the victims are memorialized in Hiroshima by the Children’s Peace Monument, which also commemorates Sasaki and her cranes.

As the New York Times’ Hank Sanders reports, Sasaki’s statue in Seattle was beloved by the community.

“Sadako matters a lot to a lot of people,” Kimseylove tells the publication. “The people who know it love it deeply.”

The Seattle Police Department is investigating the theft, per ARTnews’ Tessa Solomon. The crime’s motive is unclear, though many have wondered if the statue was stolen for the value of its metal. The practice isn’t uncommon: Earlier this year, a statue of Jackie Robinson in Wichita, Kansas, was stolen for scrap metal. Around the same time, parts of a Denver statue of Martin Luther King Jr. were discovered at a scrap metal business.

Statues are also frequent targets of politically motivated attacks. However, the theft of Sasaki’s statue was likely a “business decision” rather than an act of protest, as Alan Stein, a historian for HistoryLink.org, tells the New York Times.

“People are stealing this stuff for the bronze value,” he says. “They don’t really care what the statue represents. To them, they just see bronze.”

Kimseylove hopes the thieves will change their minds and return the statue to Peace Park. But if that doesn’t happen, the community is thinking about how to proceed.

“I don’t know how optimistic I am that she comes back,” Nora Percival, another member of University Friends Meeting, tells KIRO 7 News’ Jason Sloss. “I think our fallback position will be to raise the money to have a new statue cast to replace it, because I, for one, want to make sure that Sadako stays in the neighborhood.”

Sonja Anderson | READ MORE

Sonja Anderson is a writer and reporter based in New York City.