Sadako Sasaki and a Thousand Cranes (3)

(image credit)

 

"Thousand Cranes," by the jazz band Hiroshima, is a memorial to Sadako Sasaki, who was only 2 years old when the US dropped an atomic bomb in Hiroshima. That was August 6th 1945. Amazingly Sadako survived the devastation, and grew up seemingly normal and healthy. But nine years later, she came down with Leukemia.

The following is the story about her and a thousand cranes:

In August of 1955, after two days of treatment, she was moved into a room with a roommate, a junior high student who was two years older than her. It was this roommate that told her the Japanese legend that promises that anyone who folds a thousand origami cranes will be granted a wish and she taught Sadako how to fold paper cranes. [a] A popular version of the story is that Sadako fell short of her goal of folding 1,000 cranes, having folded only 644 before her death, and that her friends completed the 1,000 and buried them all with her. This comes from the book Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. [b] An exhibit which appeared in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum stated that by the end of August 1955, Sadako had achieved her goal and continued to fold more cranes.

Though she had plenty of free time during her days in the hospital to fold the cranes, she lacked paper. She would use medicine wrappings and whatever else she could scrounge up. This included going to other patients' rooms to ask to use the paper from their get-well presents. Chizuko would bring paper from school for Sadako to use.

During her time in the hospital her condition progressively worsened. Around mid-October her left leg became swollen and turned purple. After her family urged her to eat something, Sadako requested tea on rice and remarked "It's tasty". Those were her last words. With her family around her, Sadako died on the morning of October 25, 1955 at the age of 12.

Reference: Sadako Sasaki.