A Thousand Cranes
Ten years after the bombing of Hiroshima, a child named Sadako Sasaki contracted leukemia. She believed that if she could fold 1,000 paper cranes -- a Japanese symbol for life and longevity -- she would recover. She died before she could complete the task.
Her classmates folded the rest of the cranes, and they were buried with her.
After her death, schoolchildren all over Japan collected money for a memorial. In 1958 a statue of Sadako Sasaki was unveiled in the Peace Park in Hiroshima. She stands with her arms outstretched, holding a golden crane. Thousands of cranes folded by visitors and hanging in clusters flutter around her.