Paper cranes show up in a fair amount of my work, though I don’t get to explain the link or symbolism for me as often as I should….
Origami is the art of paper folding, passed from China to Japan in ancient times, but now is known worldwide. Paper cranes are traditional Japanese symbols of peace, good luck, and good health, along with symbols of fidelity and longevity in relationships. Red-crowned cranes, which origami paper cranes are based off of, are also national symbols in Japan and China. These cranes mate for life and can live for over 70 years. They are also only about 2,000 of these birds left in the wild.
As such, traditional mythology notes that if you make a thousand paper cranes, you’ll get a wish.
After the bombing of Hiroshima, a little girl named Sadako Sasaki developed leukemia and, while in the hospital, decided to make the thousand. Sadako did finish the thousand paper cranes, but, unfortunately, did not receive her wish of recovery. After her passing, her classmates started a campaign to memorialize her and all the other children victims of the nuclear bombs. This created the Children’s Peace Monument in Japan, and started a worldwide movement of paper cranes for peace, a symbol of the need to end and disarm all nuclear weapons.
More specifically, I am interested in paper cranes for a number of reasons: the act of folding itself is very meditative; how to fold a paper crane is fairly easy to teach and pass on; paper cranes themselves can be made easily enough where many can be given out and distributed; they can be bright, colorful, and fun; but most importantly, they act as an symbol and gesture relating to past and current peace and anti-war activism.
I completed my first thousand paper cranes in October 2007 as a gift. 
My best estimate for how many I’ve folded since then (I stopped counting after the first 1,000) is currently around 2,100 total.
