These beautiful coloured strings are made up of hundreds of paper origami cranes. They are hung around the Changi Museum which remembers and honours the many thousands of POWs and civilians who died in captivity or were killed during the occupation of Singapore in the Second World War by the Japanese army.
Japanese legend has it that anyone who creates 1,000 origami cranes will have their wish come true. These were made by a little girl in the 1950’s suffering from leukaemia caused by radiation from the Hiroshima atomic bomb. Initially she wished for a cure to her illness but she changed her mind and wished for world peace and an end to suffering. Sadly she never managed to complete her intention so the other children on her hospital ward took on the task and completed all 1,000 cranes in her memory.
