Timmy O’Brien, the Bellevue third grader who organized the folding of 1,000 origami cranes, delivered them to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum in Japan on Tuesday, April 1.

Timmy, a student at Sacred Heart School in Clyde Hill, taught himself the art of origami after reading a book that showed the 24 folds it takes to make the Japanese crane. He and his stepmother, Sayoko Kuwahara, took them to the Sadako Monument at the Peace Memorial Park, which is dedicated to the legacy of the first city in the world to suffer a nuclear attack. Several monuments and buildings throughout the park are dedicated to a different aspect of the bombing.

“I don’t think that I have ever been so deeply touched by someone else’s accomplishment in my life,” Kuwahara said in an e-mail to the Bellevue Reporter. “It brought tears to my eyes.”

The statue is based on a true story of Sadako Sasaki, a young girl who believed that if she folded 1,000 paper cranes she would be cured from radiation poisoning from the bombing. Today, people from around the world fold 1,000 crane collages and present them at the monument representing peace and world fellowship.

At the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, Timmy and Kuwahara ended up participating in a videotaped interview conducted by a TV documentary producer from South Africa, meaning Timmy’s crane project likely will be heard by more people in the world.

“Pretty amazing, isn’t it?” Kuwahara said.

“We are having so much fun in Japan,” Kuwahara said, noting that Timmy found he loves Japanese soup noodles.

“He learned to slurp,” Kuwahara said.