Oklahoma native Candace Goodner, who is a kindergarten teacher in Japan, felt helpless when she saw the devastation of her former hometown of Moore on the news after the tornados of May.
Goodner told the Oklahoman newspaper that one of the customs in Japan when bad luck or illness happens to someone, you send them a "senbazuru", which resembles a mobile made up of a thousand folded paper cranes.
Goodner said children in Japan received senbazuru after the tsunami to cheer them up. So when she told her class what she was doing, her students joined in and soon people from all over Japan were sending her paper cranes, enough to make three. Goodner contacted state senator David Holt who helped her to get the cranes to Oklahoma.
The three senbazuru will be on display through the end of September in the south lobby of the Crystal Bridge Tropical Conservatory in Oklahoma City.
