A Thousand Cranes for Peace
Sadako Sasaki (佐々木 禎子, Sasaki Sadako, January 7, 1943 – October 25, 1955) was a Japanese girl and one of the victims of the United States’ atomic bombing of Hiroshima. She was two years of age on August 6, 1945 and was severely irradiated. She survived another ten years, becoming one of the most widely known hibakusha—Japanese meaning “bomb-affected person.” She is remembered through the story of the more than one thousand origami cranes she folded before her death. She died at the age of 12 on October 25, 1955, at the Hiroshima Red Cross Hospital.
On the dreadful day the atomic bomb exploded, Sadako was at home, about one mile from ground zero. She was blown out of the window. Her mother Shigeo ran out to find her, suspecting Sadako might be dead. Instead, she found her daughter alive with no apparent injuries. While they were fleeing, Sadako and her mother were caught in “black rain,” a liquid type of nuclear fallout.
Sadako grew up like her peers and became an important member of her class relay team. In November 1954, Sadako developed swellings on her neck and behind her ears. In January 1955, purpura had formed on her legs. She was diagnosed with acute malignant lymph gland leukemia (her mother and those in Hiroshima referred to it as “atomic bomb disease”). She was hospitalized on February 21, 1955 and given no more than a year to live. Several years after the explosion, an increase in leukemia was observed, especially among young children. By the early 1950s, it was confirmed that the leukemia was caused by radiation exposure from the bomb. She was admitted as a patient to the Hiroshima Red Cross Hospital for treatment and given blood transfusions beginning February 21, 1955. When admitted, her white blood cell count was six times higher than the average child’s levels.
Sadako’s friend, Chizuko Hamamoto, told her the legend of the healing power of paper cranes. Paper cranes – origami – were brought to her room from a local high school club. Sadako set herself the goal of folding 1,000 of them, a task believed to grant the folder a wish. Although she had plenty of free time during her days in the hospital, Sadako lacked paper, so she used medicine wrappings and whatever else she could scrounge, including scraps from get-well presents of other patients as well as donations Chizuko brought from friends at school. However, her condition progressively worsened. Around mid-October 1955, her left leg became swollen and turned purple. One day her family urged her to eat something. Sadako requested tea on rice and, after eating, remarked, “It’s tasty.” She thanked her family and passed away that morning.
A popular version of the story is that Sadako folded only 644 cranes before her death, and that her friends completed the balance of the 1,000 and buried them all with her. (This comes from the novelized version of her life, Eleanor Coerr’s Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, 1977.) An exhibit appearing in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum stated that by the end of August 1955, Sadako had achieved her goal and folded 300 more cranes. Sadako’s older brother, Masahiro Sasaki, in his book The Complete Story of Sadako Sasaki, confirmed that she exceeded her goal.
After her death, Sadako’s friends and schoolmates organized orizurukai (the folded crane club), comprised of survivors of the atomic bomb and fans of the art of origami. They published a collection of letters in order to raise funds to build a memorial to her and all of the children who had died from the effects of the atomic bomb. In 1958, a statue of Sadako holding a golden crane (below left) was unveiled in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. At the foot of the statue a plaque reads: “This is our cry. This is our prayer. Peace in the world.” Every year during the Obon holiday, a Japanese anniversary to recall the departed spirits of one’s ancestors, thousands of people leave paper cranes near the statue.
