Michelle Reed and Carly Gutzmann had no ties to the Japanese-American internment experience, nor did they have much exposure to Japanese heritage in their Minnesota homes.

But none of that mattered when these two 14-year-olds established their Paper Crane Peace Memorial Project, in hopes of folding 120,313 cranes to honor each Japanese-American interned during World War II.

They've already made and collected nearly 10,000 cranes, but need more volunteers to help reach their goal.

“;We hope our project will create an awareness of how we must create peace and tolerance in our world,”; Michelle said. “;I want people to be more aware of their attitudes towards other people and cultures and learn to be more tolerant of people's differences.”;

It all started as a project for National History Day on the topic of “;Triumph and Tragedy in History.”; The girls made a documentary, “;The Art and Soul of Topaz Relocation Center.”;

“;The Japanese internment was such an extreme act of racial profiling,”; Carly said. “;Michelle and I noticed that in today's world, the same thing could potentially happen with Muslims and the Iraq war.”;

The first 11,212 cranes will be donated to the Topaz Museum in Utah. Other options are being considered for the remaining cranes.

Carly believes that the fact they are unrelated to any Japanese Americans demonstrates that people can work together, “;no matter where we are from.”;

The idea, Michelle said, is to promote awareness, so “;we won't make the same mistake again. We were sad to discover that most of our classmates and many adults had no idea about the internment camps in America.”;

The idea of the cranes arose when the girls met several former internees at the Japanese American National Museum's National Conference—“;Enduring Communities: Whose America, Who's American”;—in Denver last July. They'd been invited to show their film.

“;The amazing thing is that the girls have no personal ties to Japanese-Americans,”; said Alice Hirai, who was interned at Topaz from age 2 to 5. “;They are leading us on an incredible journey to make the wrong right, and to make sure it doesn't happen again.”;

Hirai sent the girls 49 cranes, each one inscribed with the name of someone she remembered from Topaz.

“;We were all teary-eyed when the package arrived,”; said Mary Reed, Michelle's mother.

Michelle's brother, Staff Sgt. Christopher Baxter, has taken the project with him to Iraq, where his unit is willing to help.

“;I feel that the Japanese-Americans who were living in America at the time when Pearl Harbor was bombed were mistreated ... wrongful racism and they lost everything,”; Baxter said. “;As a soldier, I can relate to why the government did what they did, but this is just one of those things in our history that I wish we could go back and erase.”;

During a 2007 ceremony at which the Topaz site became a national historic landmark, 400 to 500 of the cranes were displayed. Jane Beckwith, president of the Topaz Museum board, said each crane “;represented one person, one human who had been caught in the cross-hair of culture and war.”;