A relative of Sadako Sasaki, a Japanese girl known for the numerous paper cranes she folded until radiation-induced leukemia cost her life following the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima, said Friday he aims to list her cranes and other items on a UNESCO documentary heritage program.
Yuji Sasaki, a 52-year-old nephew of Sasaki, said he hopes to apply next year for inscription on the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's Memory of the World Register, with the goal of having the items registered in 2025, the 80th anniversary of the U.S. attack.
"By having them registered as a Memory of the World, I hope Sadako's story will reach a bigger audience and serve as an opportunity to bring the world together for peace," he said.
Sadako Sasaki was exposed to radiation on Aug. 6, 1945, at the age of 2. She developed leukemia 10 years later and died at age 12 after spending eight months in the hospital.
While in the hospital, she folded hundreds of paper cranes after learning the folklore of making 1,000 paper cranes to make a wish come true. The bundled cranes are called sembazuru in Japanese, or literally 1,000 cranes.
After her death, her classmates came up with the idea of building a monument for Sasaki and all the other children who died due to the bombing.
In 1958, the Children's Peace Monument, featuring a statue of a girl modeled after Sasaki, was erected in the western city's Peace Memorial Park.
Every year, many children, typically on school excursions, visit the site with the paper cranes they folded. Meanwhile, Sasaki's paper cranes have been donated to 19 sites, including in the United States and Ukraine, according to Yuji Sasaki.
Sasaki said the idea of listing his aunt's paper cranes on the Memory of the World Register came after learning some years ago that the diaries of Anne Frank, a Jewish girl who chronicled her life in hiding from the Nazis in the 1940s, were registered into the heritage program.
Sasaki also wants to see other items registered, including a note his aunt kept about her blood test results.
He may seek cooperation from the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum in the United States, which stores records about the former president who ordered the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, for possibly joining hands in seeking heritage registration.
The Memory of the World Register had a total of 429 inscriptions as of December 2022, including seven from Japan. Among the Japanese items are diplomatic records of Korean envoys sent to Japan, mainly between the 17th and 19th centuries.
