2) Sadako and the thousand cranes
Children's Peace Monument (Photo courtesy of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum)
"Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes" is the story of a girl who died of leukemia. on August 6, 1945, when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Sadako Sasaki was just two years old. Though the bomb did not kill her and she suffered no immediate injury, she developed leukemia when she was 11 years old. Sadako had heard that a person could make her wish come true by folding a thousand paper cranes. Wishing for good health, Sadako began folding a thousand paper cranes. But she died at age 12, before her project was completed, it is said, and her classmates finished folding her cranes for her after she died.
Children send in cranes they have folded in prayer for peace. (Photo courtesy of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum)
Sadako's classmates also collected donations from schools throughout Japan and used the funds to create a monument to children who had been victims of the atomic bomb. Piles of thousand-crane chains sent by people from all over the world surround the monument. To people everywhere, the story of Sadako has come to symbolize the hope that no child will ever again be killed by an atomic bomb. (219 words)
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