SADAKO FROM HIROSHIMA

On August 6th, 1945, the first atomic bomb was dropped, on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. ‘Sadako And The Thousand Paper Crane’, a book by Eleanor Coerr, tells the story of a 2 year old girl called Sadako, who survived the bomb, apparently unscathed, along with her family. When she was 11 years old, however, she became ill with a form of radiation illness. She had to go to hospital. Her best friend came to visit her with a gift. She brought Sadako a folded paper crane, and reminded her of an old Japanese belief: if a sick person made a thousand paper cranes and made a wish on each one, she would get better. Sadako made 642 before she died, but her friends and classmates made the rest and she was buried with a thousand paper cranes. Her statue is in Hiroshima Peace Park — she stands holding an origami crane — and it is her story that has made the folded paper crane a symbol of peace the world over. The song was inspired particularly by a short prayer that Sadako's mother whispers one night as she leaves the hospital bed where her daughter is sleeping: "O flock of heavenly cranes, cover my child with your wings".