This started in memory of Sadako Sasaki, who was two years old when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, and later died of leukaemia caused by the exposure to nuclear radiation.
Following a Japanese saying that whoever folded 1,000 paper cranes would be granted one wish, Sadako began to do so, in the hope that it would help her recover. She kept folding them until she passed away on October 25th, 1955, after an eight-month struggle with the disease. She had folded just 644 cranes by this time, so her friends completed the 1,000 and buried them all with her.
Sadako's death inspired a campaign to build a monument to pray for world peace. The Children's Peace Monument was built with funds donated from all over Japan. Now, approximately 10 million cranes are offered each year before the Children's Peace Monument.
