Peace Advocate Michiko Pumpian

March 30, 2003

Source: Los Angeles Times,1,3411647.story?coll=la%2Dhome%2Dleftrail

On March 30, 2003 the Los Angeles Times reported that "in the mind of peace advocate Michiko Pumpian, the crane is mightier than the sword -- and, for that matter, more persuasive than protest marches... The tall, graceful bird is a symbol of peace in her native Japan, and the 48-year-old Pumpian has exported the idea across the globe. For the last decade, she has led the World Peace Project for Children, which promotes peace through the creation of origami cranes... While antiwar demonstrators block intersections a few miles from her home and make speeches on nearby university campuses, Pumpian represents another side of the movement -- one that predates the Iraq war and takes a longer-term and understated approach... The Buddhist Peace Fellowship in Berkeley, in existence for 25 years, encourages members to pray and meditate openly about peace -- usually in silence -- making sure not to disrupt any aspect of the community... The Atrium Society of Middlebury, Conn., was founded in 1984 and holds workshops on preventing violent conflict on personal and global levels. Like Pumpian's organization, the society seeks to instill the concept of peace at a young age... Pumpian traces her preoccupation with peace to her parents, who were in Nagasaki when the United States dropped one of two atomic bombs on Japan to bring an end to World War II. She grew up with stories and images of what the bomb had wrought. She talked of desolated cityscapes, burned children, smoking corpses... 'What war is really about,' she said."