Sadako Sasaki was a Japanese girl who lived near Misasa Bridge in Hiroshima, Japan. Sadako was only two years old when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. At the time of the explosion she was at home, about 1 mile from ground zero.

In November of 1954 as a result of radiation sickness, she developed a cold and lumps developed on her neck and behind her ears that slowly moved towards her face. In January of 1955 purple spots started to form on her legs. On February 18, 1955 she was diagnosed with leukemia. She was hospitalized on February 21, 1955, and given at the most, a year to live.

On August 3, 1955, Sadako saw a gift of one thousand origami paper cranes that were donated to the hospital from the people of Nagoya as a "Get Well" gift. Inspired by the cranes, she started folding them herself spurred on by the Japanese saying that one who folded a thousand cranes was granted a wish. A popular version of the story is that she fell short of her goal of folding 1,000 cranes, having folded only 644 before her death, and that her friends completed the 1,000 and buried them all with her." - Wikipedia