“Let there be peace on Earth and let it begin with me” may not only be a slogan for Sadako, Japanese toddler, but obviously for every universal peace lover.
August 6, 1945 is a day of disaster for Japan as bombing in Hiroshima and Nagasaki jeopardized the nation as a whole and it’s for the little girl, Sadako Sasaki in Hiroshima too. When bomb was dropped on her home city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 Sadako was as little as two years of age, seemed to be out of any ill effects after her exposure to bombing, but pitiable girl acquired ill-fated, so called atom bomb disease, leukemia ten years later. As she was seriously ill in the hospital, a friend told her about an old Japanese legend saying that if she folded 1000 origami cranes, she would be granted a wish that she would become well again. The crane is a Japanese symbol of longevity, but Sadako was able to fold six hundred and forty-four cranes before she died at her age of 12 in 1955. The remaining three hundred and fifty-six cranes were finished by her classmates so that one thousand were buried with Sadako.
A statue of Sadako with an origami crane atop of the statue was built in 1958 as a peace monument through contributions from school children in Hiroshima Peace Park in memory of Sadako and all children killed by the atom bomb. Every year on Peace Day, August 6, thousands of paper cranes are placed beneath Sadako's statue by people in remembrance of Hiroshima disaster and to express their hopes for a peaceful world. The prayer that has been incised at the base of the statue is as follows:
This is our cry,
This is our prayer;
Peace in the world.
Let us solicit and pray for peace in the world. Let our hopes come true at some point.
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