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Power of peace

In the mid-1950s, an 11-year-old Japanese girl Sasaki Sadako developed leukaemia as a result of her exposure to radiation as a baby during the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945.

Tradition holds that if you made a senbazuru (a thousand paper cranes) and made a wish after completing each one, your wish would come true.

Sadako set about making the tsuru (crane), wishing for her own recovery. (The crane is supposed to be one of the most complex designs in origami.)

But as she continued, Sadako began to wish instead for world peace. She died when she had made only 644 and her school friends completed the full number and dedicated them to her at her funeral. The story helped inspire the Children's Peace Memorial in Hiroshima and a statue of Sadako in Seattle.

Each year on Peace Day (August 6), thousands of children from all over the world send origami tsuru to Hiroshima.

Source: www.japan-zone.com

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