The Hockaday School is a private, all-girls school where students from around the world gather and learn. Ms. Dee Mayes, artist and visual arts teacher at the lower school, saw the “seedlings from the bomb survived persimmon tree” at the Venice Biennale in 1999 and proposed planting of the tree to the school. Although some raised voices against taking part in the project that is involved in the atomic bomb, she appealed that by growing the “seedling from the bomb survived persimmon tree,” children will feel in their daily lives the importance of peace and will also help understand different cultures, and she finally won the support from the school.
The tree planting ceremony took place in the lobby of the school. Ms. Dee made preparations for the ceremony with a number of prior workshops on the persimmon tree. On the day of the ceremony, children from the first to fourth grades gathered around the tree and sang a song of peace in English and Japanese. After speeches made by Mr. Ebinuma and an executive committee member, there was a workshop to make origami persimmons. Children already made many origami cranes beforehand and gave them to children in Japan. The rest of the origami cranes were delivered to Hiroshima Peace Memorial.
In the letter that Ms. Dee sent us later, one of the students after taking part in the project wrote as follows: “The making of peace begins deep in your heart. When you open your heart to others, peace makes its way through everyone.” Very impressive. Then, an article on the Kaki Tree Project by Ms. Dee Mayes that appeared in the education magazine “Teaching Tolerance” produced a lot of reaction, which resulted in many applications for the tree planting from educators in the USA.
