"Making the cranes is easy for me," said 9-year-old Lee Ann Seratt. "I made seven cranes in one hour, and I've been making them at school and at home."
Danielle Farrell, 9, said making cranes is getting easier, "but the first time is the hardest."
"We're making them for peace, and we want our wish to come true," Danielle said.

Kathy Wierzbicki, the school's learning center coordinator, said she stumbled upon the "Cranes for Peace" project while searching the Internet for information about Eleanor Coerr's book "Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes."
"It is a beautiful true story, and while searching I came across 'Cranes for Peace,'" said Wierzbicki, who is orchestrating the project at the school. Elementary schools in Hiroshima hold a ceremony every Aug. 6 at the site of the Sidako Children's Memorial in Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima, she said.

Coerr tells the story of Sadako, who was 2 years old when the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. Sadako died at age 12 from radiation sickness, or what was referred to as "the bomb disease." Before Sadako died, a friend reminded her of the crane legend, and Sadako began making cranes. She made 650 cranes before her death and her classmates finished the rest. Sadako was buried with the 1,000 cranes. The Sadako Children's Memorial was erected in her memory in 1958 as a memorial to all the children who died as a result of the bombing.

Today, students around the world make thousands of paper cranes and send them to the museum.
Wierzbicki said her students' cranes will be strung together in groups of 200 and mailed to Hiroshima elementary school teacher June Tahara, who has been communicating with the class by e-mail. The paper cranes will be placed at the Sadako memorial in August. Wierzbicki said the effort is part of the "Million Cranes for Peace" project that wants to collect the cranes by Jan. 1, 2000. A color photograph sent by Tahara shows the Sadako memorial draped with thousands upon thousands of rainbow-colored cranes. After watching a videotape of the Sadako story, students watched a video showing the 26 origami folds needed to make a crane. Some students had a little difficulty getting the corners and folds straight, but all 27 third-graders in teacher Brian Fogarty's class were able to complete their cranes.

"Some of the instructions are tough. So we made some cranes last week so they would become familar with the folds," Fogarty said. Nine-year-old Ernie Langham said he memorized the instructions and had already made 11 cranes, some of which he gave away. "I tried to make mine fly outside, but they don't," he said, "I'm going to make millions as soon as possible."

Christopher Reyes, 9, said he had made his first crane, and planned to make 10 more at home to bring to school. Fogarty said he discussed Coerr's book with his students prior to making the cranes.
"We discussed that time and why things happened like they did," Fogarty said. "The students were saddened and touched by the story of a girl getting sick and dying because a bomb was dropped.
"They are too young to understand anything else about the conflict between Japan and America. The only thing they understand is that a child died."