Sadako Sasaki was born in Japan in 1943 during World War II. The United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. Sadako lived one mile from one bomb site. Sadako got leukemia. A friend told Sadako of a legend that said if a person folded 1,000 paper cranes, a wish would come true. Sadako died in 1955 at the age of 12. She had folded 644 paper cranes. Her friends finished the rest of the cranes for her.