Sadako Sasaki

Sadako Sasaki memorial in Hiroshima, surrounded by paper cranes

Sadako Sasaki (佐々木 禎子) was born on January 7, 1943. Sadako was two years old when the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945. As she grew up, Sadako was a strong, courageous and athletic girl. In 1955, at age 11, while practicing for a big race, she became dizzy and fell to the ground. Sadako was diagnosed with leukemia, the "atom bomb disease".

Sadako's best friend told her of an old Japanese legend which said that anyone who folds a thousand paper cranes would be granted a wish. Sadako hoped that the gods would grant her a wish to get well so that she could run again. She spent fourteen months in the hospital, and she folded 642 paper cranes before dying on October 25, 1955 at the age of twelve. She folded cranes out of her medicine bottle wrapers and any other paper she could find in hopes of getting better.

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