Public art agencies across Seattle are working to repair and recover numerous bronze statues that have been stolen or vandalized in recent years, with thieves targeting valuable metal artwork throughout the city. The most recent high-profile theft occurred in July 2024 when the beloved Sadako and the Thousand Cranes statue was sawed off at the ankles and stolen from Peace Park in Seattle's University District, leaving only small bronze feet surrounded by lavender bushes and scattered paper cranes.
The stolen statue commemorated Sadako Sasaki, a Japanese girl who died of leukemia ten years after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945. While hospitalized, she folded 1,300 paper cranes, which represent peace, hope, and healing in Japanese culture. The statue, erected in 1990, had become a powerful symbol in Seattle, with visitors regularly hanging strings of paper cranes all over it.
"Almost everything that's left out in the open around here gets taken – that's just the fact of urban life. But people are also leaving things, like I see a number of artificial flowers around her feet," said Jonathan Betz-Zall, a member of the Quaker Church's University Friends Meeting, who visits the site weekly and is helping with replacement efforts.
Seattle's Office of Arts and Culture recently published a blog post explaining how to report stolen bronze public art, responding to 14 reports of artwork that have been either stolen or vandalized since 2020. Most of the stolen pieces are believed to have been sold to scrap yards, with authorities often finding few leads to identify suspects in these cases.
The theft problem has particularly affected works by renowned Seattle artist George Tsutakawa. In May, a petal was sawed off the tall Naramore Fountain located downtown near 6th Avenue and Seneca Street, which Tsutakawa created and installed in 1966. The fountain, part of the city's public art collection, has been removed and placed in storage for safety. This marks the second Tsutakawa piece targeted since 2020, when his Memorial Gates sculpture at the Washington Park Arboretum was stolen and destroyed.
"There's sadness and, you know, outrage at this," said Jason Huff, the city's public art collection manager. "But it's just sort of an understanding and knowing that we're working with them, and working to find solutions for the future so that we can preserve this." Huff confirmed that the city aims to repair and replace the fountain and is collaborating with the parks department to determine the best approach.
The University of Washington campus also experienced theft in July when strips of copper were pried from a recently installed artwork titled "Nourish / Enrich / Nurse Log." The cement sculpture, designed to resemble tree rings, lost approximately 10 pounds of intricately stamped copper around July 23. Janae Huber, collection manager for the Washington State Arts Commission, which maintains the piece, emphasized the unique nature of the stolen material.
"There is a pattern, a stamped pattern in that copper that is a unique pattern that is not easily replaceable for us," Huber explained. Prior to this incident, the state art collection had not experienced theft since 2004 at Poulsbo Middle School, where two of three bronze figures from a gymnastics-themed sculpture by late artist Phillip Levine were stolen.
"Anytime we have a loss of those, it's not an offense against me as an individual. These are publicly owned cultural assets that we want to take care of," Huber said. The agency has asked residents to report missing or damaged artwork by calling (206) 684-7171 or through the Find It, Fix It app, allowing officials to alert scrap metal facilities in hopes of recovery.
Back at Peace Park, plans are underway for the Sadako Renewal Project, which will attach the remaining bronze feet to a new aluminum sculpture created by Seattle artist Saya Moriyasu. The reimagined Sadako will be depicted smiling, with outstretched hands for hanging cranes and wearing a yellow kimono similar to one her parents gave her after her leukemia diagnosis.
"So I thought, 'Well, why don't I put a kimono on Sadako,'" Moriyasu said. "But let's imagine her as the young girl that never got sick and was enjoying her kimono. And feeling the freedom of the kind of wing-like feelings of the kimono, which kind of also reflects the cranes that she was folding." The new design will include three ginkgo leaves standing over the figure, symbolizing the trees that survived the atomic bomb and became symbols of hope and resilience in Japan.
The project aims to make the site more inviting with benches and lighting while paying homage to Peace Park founder Floyd Schmoe, a Quaker peace activist. In 1988, Schmoe received the Hiroshima Peace Center's Kiyoshi Tanimoto Peace Award and donated the more than $4,000 prize toward creating Peace Park. The original statue was commissioned and funded by the now-defunct Fratelli's Ice Cream Company.
Moriyasu's replacement statue is being crowdfunded through the Sadako Renewal Project, which aims to raise at least $300,000 to cover the work and maintain it for several decades. Betz-Zall hopes small donations will help the project succeed, creating a shared sense of community responsibility for protecting the artwork.
"If all these people contributed to it, then I believe that there's going to be all this psychic energy, kind of standing guard around it, upholding it, spreading the message," he said. The replacement statue is planned for installation by August 2026, coinciding with the 81st anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. When asked to describe his feelings about the project in one word, Betz-Zall chose "solidarity."
