One Thousand Cranes

Over a quarter of a million people died because of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Perhaps the best known of them was a young girl named Sadako Sasaki.

Sadako was two years old when the "Little Boy" atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima on August 5, 1945. Although she was only a mile from ground zero, she survived the initial attack with no apparent ill effects. In late 1954, however, lumps developed on her neck and spots began to appear on her body. Taken to the hospital for testing in February of 1955, she was diagnosed with a particularly aggressive case of leukemia and was admitted to the hospital for treatment. Doctors told her parents that she had at most a year to live.

In August, Sadako began creating origami paper cranes, inspired by the Japanese legend that anyone who folded a thousand cranes would be granted a wish. Lacking the necessary paper to create this many cranes, she became an expert at scrounging paper, using packaging from medicine and wrapping from other patients' get-well presents.

Sadako's condition deteriorated and she died on October 25, 1955. Some people say she had folded over 1,300 origami cranes before she passed away. Other people say she only completed 644, and that her friends finished the other 356 cranes for her. In any event, Sadako Sasaki has become the human face of the victims of Hiroshima and the origami crane has become a symbol of the anti-nuclear weapons movement.

"To Encourage the Others"

250 years ago today, the English Admiral John Byng was executed on the deck of HMS Monarch in Portsmouth harbour. He had been found guilty of failing to do his utmost against the enemy, in this case a French naval squadron at the battle of Minorca.

Byng's squadron was transporting army troops to reinforce the garrison on Minorca when the French arrived. When the battle was joined the next day, the British were bloodied before the French attempted to escape. Although the fleets were roughly even in size, Byng was content to keep his squadron intact and he elected not to pursue the French. Byng failed to land the troops and, lacking reinforcements, the fortress eventually capitulated.

Byng's failure of nerve proved fatal. He was court-martialed and condemned for not having done his utmost against the French squadron, although he was acquitted of charges of personal cowardice. Sentenced to death, he became the last admiral executed in the Royal Navy.

Ironically, Byng may be best known thanks to a resident of France. Voltaire famously satirized Byng's execution in his novel Candide. The eponymous protagonist witnesses the execution of an officer by firing squad and is told that "it is wise to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others".

Anniversary of an Arrest

Sixty-two years ago today the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg was arrested in Budapest. Officially, Wallenberg was the First Secretary to the Swedish legation. In reality, Wallenberg's primary business during the period between July of 1944 and the liberation of Budapest had been to save Hungarian Jews from deportation to Nazi extermination camps.

He managed this by issuing them with bogus "protective passports" that identified the bearer as a Swedish subject awaiting repatriation. When the fake documents failed to influence Nazi functionaries, Wallenberg was not above threatening them with prosecution for war crimes after the war ended. Yad Veshem, Israel's official Holocaust memorial, credits Wallenberg with saving thousands of Hungarian Jews.

The Soviet Army arrested Wallenberg shortly after they entered Budapest. Supposedly, they thought he had been spying for the United States, but no charges were ever published. As for the validity of the accusation, the US government has never confirmed whether or not Wallenberg was a US agent.

Wallenberg was transferred to the notorious Lubyanka prison shortly after his arrest. What happened to him after that is any body's guess. The Soviet government claimed that he died of an illness in 1947, but prisoners in the Soviet gulag system reported seeing him as late as the 1990s.

There is a bitter irony in Wallenberg's fate. He fought tirelessly and at great personal risk by one totalitarian regime, only to be incarcerated by another one. His legacy, however, did not die with him. Wallenberg not only saved thousands -- he inspires millions. As United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said, Wallenberg is a model for us to "act when we can". We may not be able to save numerous lives, but we can all be a force for good in this world.

Requiem for a Lost Soul

89 years ago today, a 41 year old exotic dancer and courtesan named Margaretha Geertruida Zelle was executed by a French firing squad. Better known by her stage name -- Mata Hari -- the Dutch dancer had been convicted of spying for the Germans.

There is something incredibly sad about Margaretha's life story. A woman of mixed Dutch-Javanese descent, she was born in the Netherlands and moved to Java at 18 with her naval officer husband. They had two children, but she lost custody when the couple divorced.

Margaretha moved to Paris after the divorce, where she eventually became famous -- or infamous -- as an exotic dancer and a courtesan. Although she was well-known for displaying her body, one of the many sad legends about Mata Hari says that even though she was skilled at making love, she was so sensitive about her small breasts that she never uncovered them for her lovers.

As can be expected from an engaging, exotic courtesans, Margaretha had relationships with a number of important men from a number of countries. Before 1914, this only added to her legend. After the war broke out, however, it reeked of treason, even if Margaretha was a neutral citizen, being Dutch.

1917 was a bad year for the French. Casualties were high after slaughterhouses like Verdun and army units mutinied across the length of the front. When the French intercepted and decoded a message implicating the infamous Mata Hari as a German spy, they seized her and tried her for treason. Some people argue that the evidence against Margaretha was weak or even fabricated, but the French authorities had little trouble finding her guilty and sentencing her to death.

The misfortunes of Margaretha did not end with her death. Because her family did not claim the body, it was used for medical study. The head, which had been preserved and sent to an anatomy museum in Paris, disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

I have no idea if Margaretha was guilty or innocent of the espionage charges. It would not surprise me if the French decided to use a foreign woman of "questionable" morals as a scapegoat to distract the masses from the realities of war going sideways. (The French army, after all, had executed men who had refused to fight any longer after having endured three years of indescribable terror.)

What I do know, however, is that Margaretha Geertruida Zelle had an unhappy end to difficult life, and I wish her peace.