Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes

I went to Hiroshima today to visit the A-Bomb Dome site, and the Hiroshima Peace Museum. I took quite a few photos (I made an album on Flickr if your interested in seeing them), but I chose this photo to blip because the story is very famous and really affected me.

Taken from Wikipedia

About 1 mile from the hypocenter of the bomb, a 2 year old girl called Sadako Sasaki was just sitting at home, minding her own business. She survived, and grew into quite an athletic young girl. But, ten years later, she was diagnosed with leukemia, results from the radiation she absorbed as a child. In November 1954, lumps developed on her neck and behind her ears. In January 1955, purple spots started to form on her legs. She was hospitalized on February 21, 1955 and given, at the most, a year to live.

There is a Japanese saying that if you fold 1,000 paper cranes, you would be granted a wish. So, while in hospital, she went to work (my Flickr album shows some of her cranes, donated to the museum by her parents). Wiki says she only got to 644 cranes before she died on October 25, 1955. It says that her friends completed the 356 and buried them all with her. However, the museum says that she completed the 1,000 cranes herself, and just carried on and on until she died, making the cranes smaller and smaller, and using a needle to help with the folding.

The Children's Peace Monument was built to commemorate Sadako, and children continue to make paper cranes and take them to the monument.