‘Rhonda and The Paper Crane’ has its genesis in a completely different piece. I was writing a song called ‘Brighter Than The Sun’ about the dropping of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on 6th August. During my reading for this I came upon the story of Sadako Sasaki, a Japanese girl who lived near Misasa Bridge in Hiroshima, and who was only two years old when the atomic bomb was dropped on her city. She was hospitalised in January 1955 with leukemia, a direct result of the bombing.
On August 3, 1955, the hospital was sent a gift of one thousand origami paper cranes donated by the people of Nagoya as a "Get Well" gift. Inspired by the cranes, Sadako started folding some herself spurred on by the Japanese saying that one who folded a thousand cranes was granted a wish. Though she had plenty of free time during her days in the hospital to fold the cranes, she lacked paper. She would use medicine wrappings and whatever else she could scrounge up.
A popular version of the story is that she fell short of her goal, having folded only 644 before her death on October 25th 1955, and that her friends completed the 1,000 and buried them all with her.
Sadako has become a leading symbol of the impact of a nuclear war, and is a heroine for many young girls in Japan.
I didn’t complete the writing of ‘Brighter Than The Sun’ realising that it didn’t really fit within the scope of American Images, but I couldn’t get the story of Sadako and the paper cranes, out of my head.
It was in the early autumn of 1962, with the advent of the Cuban Missile Crisis, that the United States came closest to experiencing what it must have been like in Hiroshima on that clear August day in 1945.
In her book: “Awaiting Armageddon: How Americans Faced the Cuban Missile Crisis.” Alice L. George tells of how U.S. citizens absorbed the nightmare scenario unfolding on their television sets. An estimated ten million Americans fled their homes; millions more prepared shelters at home, clearing the shelves of supermarkets and gun stores.
And of course much of that fear was fueled by the fact that Americans now knew exactly what the consequences of nuclear war were, they’d seen it when they’d destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Rhonda and the Paper Crane is set in small US town in October 1962 and is about the response of a teenage girl to the unfolding crisis.
The ‘newsreader’ on the track is M.J. Gray, a native of Kentucky but now living in the NW of the UK.
lyrics
Down at The Waterfront, the fly girls tilt and dance the night away,
While Rhonda folds a paper crane, and hopes it’s not too late to save the day.
And in the background on the TV, is the face of JFK,
But no-one’s paying much attention and someone says “Where’s Cuba anyway?”
Rhonda counted stars that night and wished upon the one furthest away
Down at the water’s edge, she answered to the river’s pull and sway.
No-one noticed she was missing, everyone’s afraid they’ll get the blame,
No-one wants to take the fall out for just another teenage runaway
Float down the river around the bend,
Float down the river around the bend,
(Oh, where are all my friends.)
Her mother puts a bright light in the window, but the candle burnt away,
And her friends began to realize they didn’t really know her anyway.
Someone says she’s gone to California, to seek her fortune in L.A,
But Sheriff Wright’s of the opinion that it’s just some kind of schoolgirl escapade.
Float down the river around the bend,
Float down the river around the bend,
(Oh, where are all my friends.)
Rhonda kept her bedroom door locked, she kept her secrets hid away,
And when they finally broke the door down, they found a thousand paper cranes.
Float down the river around the bend,
Float down the river around the bend,
(Oh, where are all my friends.)
supported by 6 fans who also own “Rhonda And The Paper Crane”
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