A thousand paper cranes

The paper crane is a well-known origami figure. Probably everybody in Japan has made at least one. Since ancient times, the Japanese have viewed the crane as a symbol of finesse, longevity, and fortune.

According to Japanese tradition, if one is able to fold a sembazuru orikata, or a thousand paper cranes within a year, the gods will be so pleased that they will grant you a wish.
One cannot write a story about sembazuru orikata without telling the life of Sadako Sasaki, one, if not the best example of determination and inspiration.

A child of the ashes

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

Though the bomb did not kill her and she suffered no immediate injury, she developed leukemia when she was 11 years old. The doctor who diagnosed ordered immediate hospitalization, and stated that she would have, at the most, a year to live. She was admitted to the hospital on February 21, 1955.

Sadako had heard that a person could make her wish come true by folding a thousand paper cranes. Wishing for good health, Sadako began folding a thousand paper cranes.

Though she had plenty of free time during her days in the hospital to fold these cranes, she lacked paper. She would use medicine wrappings and whatever else she could scrounge up. This included going to other patient's rooms to ask to use the paper from their get well presents.
She died at age 12, before her project was completed, it is said, and her classmates finished folding her cranes for her after she died.

Sadako's classmates also collected donations from schools throughout Japan and used the funds to create a monument to children who had been victims of the atomic bomb. Piles of thousand-crane chains sent by people from all over the world surround the monument.

To people everywhere, the story of Sadako has come to symbolize the hope that no child will ever again be killed by an atomic bomb.

Sembazuru Orikata

I open to you my little red box. It is not a secret anymore that I was supposed to fold a garland of a thousand paper cranes of my own; a garland of a thousand paper cranes to please the Shinto gods; and in turn, for the gods to grant me a single wish.

One can look at it at so many ways, fold it in infinite creases, or try it for so many times, but the message was clear. Maybe, just maybe, the gods wanted me to wait this time around.