Sadako Sasaki was a Japanese girl born on January 7, 1943. Two years after her birth, on August 6, 1945, Little Boy was dropped approximately a mile from her house in Hiroshima, Japan. Despite being sent out of one of the windows of her home by the force of the explosion, Sadako survived the bombing and sustained no apparent injuries or illnesses at the time. Over the next several years she continued to develop like a normal girl, and she even became one of the best runners at her school by age eleven. However, she began to show signs of illness in November of 1954. At this time, she appeared to have mump-like symptoms, with facial swelling, bumps on her neck and ears, and a mild cold. In early 1955, her condition worsened as purple marks began …show more content…
During this visit, Chizuko created a crane out of a sheet of golden paper. She then told Sadako about the Japanese tale that stated that anyone who made one thousand cranes would have one request fulfilled. Following this visit, Sadako began folding origami paper into cranes during her ample free time at the hospital. Despite her excess of free time, Sadako was not always able to create cranes out of origami paper because she would run out, so she would then make the cranes out of various other items including newspapers, wrapping paper from gifts she had received, and wrapping paper from other patients’ get-well gifts. A few months after Sadako began making the cranes, she lost her battle with leukemia, and she died on October 25, 1955. The exact number of cranes that she had folded before she died is up for debate. Some people believe that Sadako fell short of her 1,000 crane goal and finished only 644 by herself, while the other 356 cranes being produced by family members and friends. Others believe that she actually surpassed her goal before her death. Either way, one thousand cranes were buried with