Sadako Sasaki

Sadako Sasaki was a Japanese girl who is remembered through the story ‘Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes’.

Sadako Sasaki was only 2 years old when the atomic bomb ‘Little Boy’ was dropped on Hiroshima on the 6th of August 1945. The bomb exploded on 2 kilometres away from her home. Most of her neighbours died that day but Sadako was seemingly unhurt.

Up until the time she was in 7th grade (which was in 1955), Sadako seemed to be a normal, happy girl. However, after helping her team win an important relay race, she began to feel very faint and fatigued. She put that feeling down to exhaustion of just running a relay race. This was until she experienced these symptoms more frequently.

One day during school, she was so dizzy, she was unable to stand. Her classmates alerted her teacher and Sadako went to the hospital later that day. Tests were done and it was discovered that Sadako had leukemia.

Sadako was a good student so naturally she wanted to be at school learning and hanging out with her friends. Instead, she had to spend her time in hospital where she cried.

Shortly after she was diagnosed with leukemia, her best friend Chizuko visited her in the hospital. She brought a gift of origami paper. Chizuko told Sadako of a legend that is she folded 1,000 paper cranes, she would be granted 1 wish. Instinctivly, Sadako started making paper cranes and wished for good health.

Sadako’s family worried about her a lot. They spent many hours at her bedside helping her make paper cranes. After she had folded 500 cranes, the doctors said Sadako was well enough to go home for a short period of time. However, by the end of the first week, Sadako’s symptoms had gotten worse and she was returned to hospital.

At the hospital, Sadako continued to fold paper cranes even though she was in immense pain. On October 25, 1955, Sadako passed away peacefully in her hospital bed with her family by her side. She had folded a total of 644 paper cranes.

Everyone at her school was saddened by Sadako’s death. 39 children even formed a paper plane club to honour her. Word spread quickly. Students from 3,100 schools and from 9 foreign countries gave money to the cause. On May 5, 1958, almost 3 years after Sadako had died, enough money was collected to build a monument in her honour. It is now known as the Children’s Peace Monument, and is located in the center of Hiroshima Peace Park, close to the spot where the atomic bomb was dropped.

Children and adults from all over the world still send folded paper cranes to be placed beneath Sadako’s statue. In so doing, they make the same wish which is engraved on the base of the statue:

This is our cry, This is our prayer, Peace in the world“.