One Thousand Cranes

Over a quarter of a million people died because of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Perhaps the best known of them was a young girl named Sadako Sasaki.

Sadako was two years old when the "Little Boy" atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima on August 5, 1945. Although she was only a mile from ground zero, she survived the initial attack with no apparent ill effects. In late 1954, however, lumps developed on her neck and spots began to appear on her body. Taken to the hospital for testing in February of 1955, she was diagnosed with a particularly aggressive case of leukemia and was admitted to the hospital for treatment. Doctors told her parents that she had at most a year to live.

In August, Sadako began creating origami paper cranes, inspired by the Japanese legend that anyone who folded a thousand cranes would be granted a wish. Lacking the necessary paper to create this many cranes, she became an expert at scrounging paper, using packaging from medicine and wrapping from other patients' get-well presents.

Sadako's condition deteriorated and she died on October 25, 1955. Some people say she had folded over 1,300 origami cranes before she passed away. Other people say she only completed 644, and that her friends finished the other 356 cranes for her. In any event, Sadako Sasaki has become the human face of the victims of Hiroshima and the origami crane has become a symbol of the anti-nuclear weapons movement.