The Friendship Doll Story
In 1924, The United States government passed a law that did not allow people from Asia to come to the U.S. Those already here were not allowed to become cititzens.
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This is how children and concerned adults worked together to change that.
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To make thiings better, Sidney L. Gulick, a Congregational minister, and his friends created the Committee on World Friendship Among Children (where we got our name!) to help children become ambassadors of friendship. American children sent 12,739 dolls as silent envoys with passports, steamship tickets, and letters of friendship to Japan.
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The next year, Viscount Eiichi Shibusawa helped the dolls go to every elementary school and kindergarten in Japan. In return, children donated one sen (a penny) to have 58 doll ambassadors with accessories to send back to the children of America. The dolls in museums and libraries were very popular until the outbreak of World War II in 1941. The dolls were lost, broken, or stored away with their message of goodwill. Most of the Japanese dolls were destroyed on school grounds as enemies of the state.
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In the 1970s, the dolls on both sides of the Pacific were rediscovered. Denny and Frances Gulick renewed their grandfather's mision of peace and friendship beginning in 1986, as have many other people. ​​​​