Hot Springs cares for sister city

Funds, clothes, paper cranes going to Hanamaki, Japan

— A paper crane can mean a lot.

As the one-month anniversary of the March 11 Japanese earthquake and the following tsunami approached, the city of Hot Springs raised more than $17,000 for refugees and survivors fleeing to its sister city, Hanamaki, Japan.

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Along with monetary support and material donations, Hot Springs residents are also hoping to send something that shows their concern and hope for the people they’ve grown close to over the past decade and a half.

Mary Neilson, coordinatorof the Hot Springs Sister City program, said the city is working on making 1,000 origami cranes to send to Hanamaki. The simple paper cranes may seem like an out-of-place gesture for people who lost their homes, possessions and in some cases their loved ones.

To the Japanese people, however, a thousand cranes is a powerful gesture.

“Paper cranes have a profound meaning in the Japanese culture,” said Deleen Davidson, who traveled to Hanamaki with the sister city program as a representative of the Hot Springs arts community.

“When you want to wish someone good fortune, a blessing, a healing; when you want something urgently, a desire of goodness, making 1,000 paper cranes is a way to manifest that wish.”

Julie Tyler, a Jessieville High School sophomore who visited Japan in September with the help of the sister city program, said that when she heard about the earthquake, she immediately began tryingto contact her host family in Hanamaki and the families of the two girls who had stayed with her family in Hot Springs less than two months before the earthquake.

She finally was able to get word that everyone was OK, by checking the Facebook page of the Hanamaki sister city coordinator, who was posting updates and answering questions whenever he could, because the electricity had gone out in Hanamaki.

“I was so worried about their families and whether they were OK,” she said. “I sent e-mails to the addresses I had and a letter to my host family because I only had an address. Once I started seeing the Facebook updates, I was really relieved.”

Tyler’s mother, Carol Ann Tyler, and her younger sister, Bethany Tyler, are also hoping the paper cranes have a physical effect on the refugees.

Carol Ann Tyler leads her youngest daughter’s Girl Scout troop and was looking for a way for the girls to make a difference for the refugees and for the sister city. They began making paper cranes and taking pictures to send to the children’s clothes maker OshKosh B’Gosh.

The company pledged to send one piece of children’s clothing to Japan for every picture of a paper crane posted on its Facebook page or mailed to the company’s headquarters.

The spiritual significance of the cranes is a reciprocal gesture for Hot Springs. Citizens of Hanamaki sent 1,000 cranes to the city of Hot Springs in 2005, when refugees and survivors of Hurricane Katrina started flowing into the city.

Hanamaki school children also raised about $3,500 by bringing in spare change to school collection sites, which was donated to help Katrina survivors in Hot Springs.

School districts in the Hot Springs area are also making a reciprocal gesture by raising money with change drives. The ABC Barbers’ College also has kept change jars out on its counters, and one day earlier this month, the money from every haircut was given to the Sister City fund.

Davidson is also one of several Hurricane Katrina refugees who made her way to Hot Springs a few days before Katrina took its toll on New Orleans. Davidson and her family owned a vacation house in Hot Springs and decided it was the safest place to be. She has since made Hot Springs her permanent home.

“At the time I didn’t know the people of Hanamaki,” she said. “I did benefit from the help they sent to Hot Springs. They made some amazing gestures of unity and mutual caring.”

Davidson, who is a classically trained opera singer and founder of the arts nonprofit The Muse Project, is planning to hold a musical benefit for the survivors in Hanamaki on April 28. She will be joined by several other musicians and artists who are survivors of Hurricane Katrina, as well as other area artists.

“We’re going to present several Japanese traditional songs that have a connection with what’s happening right now,” she said. “There will be a lot of different kinds of performances and a lot of talented people helping us raise money to help our sister city. They’re just beautiful people with grace and kindness.”

While many residents are pitching in to help raise money for the beleaguered city, Neilson and the alumni of the sister city program are watching the country’s recovery closely. Many hope to someday go back to the country they fell in love with and to visit the people they formed close ties with on their trip.

There are others who hope to be able to make the trek for the first time as part of the program’s annual exchange.

Neilson said deposits for the annual trip, which takes place in September, were supposed to be due by May 1 before the earthquake hit. The program has put off setting a strict deadline until they have a better idea of whether a trip in September would be safe and feasible.

The program is still holding public meetings to let people know the cost and specifics of the trip and to take applications for scholarships to send students abroad. If the trip is not deemed safe, it would not be postponed, Neilson said.Instead, it would be canceled until the next year, when officials with the program would again re-evaluate the safety of the trip.

“I am worried,” said Julie Tyler. “It’s hard for me to think about what the country looks like now. I see photos and I can’t really make the connection that it’s the same beautiful place I got to see and fall in love with.”

Neilson said the group and its alumni will continue to hope for the best for their sister city and continue to find ways to raise funds to help handle the influx of people seeking refuge.

“I don’t know exactly how many people are taking refuge in Hanamaki, but I received pictures of just one day of refugees arriving and there were more than 200 people in that day,” she said. “We’re going to continue to raise funds and do what we can to help our sister city and our friends.”

Arkansas, Pages 7 on 04/11/2011

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