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Lisa Commander, executive director of The History Museum of Hood River County, listens as Linda Tamura, local historian, author and Willamette University professor, speaks at the Sept. 27 Rotary Peace Pole event. This event was in conjunction with the new exhibit at the museum “Sadako & Paper Cranes: Through Our Eyes.” Tamura spoke about the atomic bomb and her family’s stories about the bombing, and subsequent peace.   

HOOD RIVER — The History Museum of Hood River County hosted a Rotary Peace Pole dedication on Sept. 27. The free public event also included a look at the museum’s newest exhibit, “Sadako & Paper Cranes: Through Our Eyes,” on loan from the Japanese American Museum of Oregon, which opened the same day.

Sadako Sasaki was a young girl whose family lived in Hiroshima. While she was an active child, in 1954, she started showing symptoms of Leukemia, and died in October 1955. She was one of many who died of “atomic bomb disease,” as it was often called then. Before her death, she attempted to fold 1,000 origami paper cranes, believing the story a friend had told her, that folding 1,000 cranes would grant her a wish. She died before she finished; her classmates and friends finished the project for her.