Sister cities Cupertino, Toyokawa promote peace with bell ringing

A bell-ringing ceremony Aug. 6 kicked off Peace Week for Cupertino and its sister city of Toyokawa, Japan.

Cupertino-toyokawa Sister Cities, Inc. (CTSC) hosted its second Bell Ringing for Peace Ceremony at Memorial Park in observance of the end of WWII in 1945.

Vice Mayor Liang Chao, Councilmembers Jon Willey and Hung Wei, CTSC president Alysa Sakkas and Cupertino Union School District Superintendent Stacy Yao joined Japan’s Consul General Toru Maeda and many Cupertino citizens for the ceremony with a bell in each of their hands.

They rang them in front of the Stone Lantern — a gift from Toyokawa — and a display of 1,000 origami cranes crafted by CTSC student delegates.

Sakkas said the display is a Japanese cultural tradition featured in the book “Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes,” a true story about a young Japanese

girl who, after developing leukemia from the Hiroshima bombing, folded 1,000 cranes in hopes of being cured. Since then, origami cranes have become a symbol for peace.

On U.S. the dropping atomic bombs on Japan during World War II, Maeda said, “It’s a very somber moment for us; it’s a solemn remembrance because most of the victims and their relatives and the offsprings still live in Hiroshima. It’s important for us to learn a lesson from it. It’s a tragedy not to repeat again.”

To that end, Maeda was impressed by what the bell-ringing ceremony represented.

“This kind of multigenerational, massive multiethnic gathering is wonderful,” he said.

Representatives from all of Cupertino’s sister cities — Copertino, Toyokawa, Hsinshu and Bhubaneswar — attended the ceremony. Sakkas said their presence highlighted the importance of maintaining peace through the ceremony.

“We’ve been sister cities with Toyokawa

for 43 years now, and it’s been amazing that we’ve had former delegates become adult delegates on the exchange,” she said. “When you look at someone in another country, you may feel you have nothing in common, but once you get to know them one on one, you realize how similar we all are.”