Cranes Over Hiroshima
Words and music by Fred Small © 1983

    C
The baby blinks her eye
       Dm
As the sun falls from the sky
    Em
She feels the stings of a thousand fires
       F               G
As the city around her dies
     C
Some sleep beneath the rubble
     F         C         Dm
Some wake to a different world
         G                                C
From the crying babe will grow a laughing girl.


Ten summers fade to autumn
Ten winters' snows have passed
She's a child of dreams and dances
She's a racer strong and fast
But the headaches come ever more often
And the dizziness always returns
And the word that she hears is 'leukemia'
And it burns.


Chorus:
	C
	Cranes over Hiroshima
	Am                Dm
	White and red and gold
	G
	Flicker in the sunlight
	       F                C
	Like a million vanished souls

	I will fold these cranes of paper
	     F        C      Dm
	To a thousand one by one
	         Am   G            C
	And I'll fly away when I'm done.

Her ancestors knew the legend--
If you make a thousand cranes
From squares of colored paper
It will take the pain away.
With loving hands she folds them
Six hundred forty-four
'Til the morning her swollen fingers
Can't fold any more.

Chorus

Her friends did not forget her--
Crane after crane they made
Until they reached a thousand
And they laid them upon her grave
People from everywhere gathered
Together a prayer they said
And they wrote the words in granite
So none can forget.

(repeat 2x)
This is our cry,
This is our prayer
Peace in the world.

(repeat many times)
This is our cry, (No more Hiroshima)
This is our prayer. (No more Nagasaki)
Peace in the world,



From No Limit
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Tagged: nuclear weapons

This song tells the true story of Sadako, a girl who survived the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War II.  Later she got leukemia from the radiation released by the bomb. The words at the end of the song are inscribed at the base of her statue in the Hiroshima Peace Park.