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Sadako is energetic, determined, and ready to do anything to make the junior high running team the following year. Her family remembers those who died due to the atom bomb on August 6, 1945; many lives were lost that day, and others are still being lost as a result of illness because of the poisons from the bomb.

Sadako learns that she has leukemia, otherwise known as the “atom bomb disease”. She is hospitalized and at the urging of her best friend, Chizuko, she begins folding paper cranes to save her own life. It is said that cranes live for a thousand years, and if a sick person folds 1,000 cranes, they will become healthy again.

Sadako’s health worsens and she dies on October 25, 1955. She has made 644 cranes. Her classmates fold the remaining 356 cranes so that she can be buried with 1,000 of them. Three years later, a statue of Sadako is unveiled in Hiroshima Peace Park, honoring her and those who died as a result of the atom bomb.