Chizuko came to visit her friend Sadako in the hospital. She had a piece of gold paper that cut into a large square.
"Watch!" she said, and she folded the paper over and over, and it turned in to a beautiful crane.
"If a sick person folds one thousand paper cranes," Chizuko siad, "the gods will grant her wish and make her wall again."
The girl handed the crane to Sadako. "Here's your first one." Sadako Sasaki was only twelve years old when she died. She was two when an atom bomb was dropped on the city of Hiroshima in japan, where she lived with her family. Thn years later, she had leukemia as a result of radiation from the bome.