They're not at 1,000 yet, but they're on their way.
A week after nine-year-old Aedan Osika asked Nelsonites to help him fold 1,000 paper cranes for those affected by the Japanese tsunami, volunteers have produce more then 300 pieces of origami.
The smallest cranes have been made into pins, which can be picked up at the Nelson and District Community Complex, That Craft Store and KC Restaurant for a donation of $1 to $2.
"A lot of people have taken paper home and we're getting as many pins made as we can," says Aedan's mother, Kim Oskia, adding the group is also working to produce 1,000 larger cranes, which will eventually be strung together.
Volunteers continued to fold cranes Saturday at the Library, and will do so again at the NDCC from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. Sunday, the Nelson library from 1 to 4 p.m. Monday, and Mary Hall from 1 to 4 p.m. Tuesday.
Paper cranes are a Japanese symbol of hope and peace: an ancient story promises that anyone who folds 1,000 origami cranes will be granted a wish. And they will be folded in great numbers tomorrow in Nelson.
Aedan says the idea came to him after his mother told him the story of Sadako Sasaki, who was two when the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
In 1955, she developed leukemia and was given less than a year to live. Her best friend came to the hospital and folded a crane for her.
There are conflicting stories whether she achieved her goal of folding 1,000 before her death. One version says that her friends completed the task and that she was buried with them.
“I just want to fold a ton of small cranes to make pins out of and bigger ones to hang and sell,” Osika says. (He says his surname is often mistaken as Japanese, but it’s actually Polish.)
He has friends he met in Sacramento who were returning to Japan when the earthquake struck. “They’re still alive, but we haven’t heard anything more since Friday,” he says.
He’s hoping other kids can get involved — “It’s fun to fold paper” — and that it can raise funds for relief efforts.