Sadako’s crane part of WTC memorial

Today is 2010 September 11.
Nine years since the 2001 September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

Last year I wrote a post about Sadako Sasaki. She was a young girl in Hiroshima when America dropped the atomic bomb on that city in 1945 and she developed leukemia from the radiation and died at the age of twelve.

The story of the 千羽鶴 (“1000 origami cranes”) that she folded while in the hospital is well-known in Japan.
(Click here to read that post.)

Almost all of the origami cranes that Sadako Sasaki folded were cremated with her when she died, but her family kept a few of the cranes.

Sadako Sasaki’s surviving brother learned of a memorial in New York to the Japanese employees of Fuji Bank‘s New York branch in the World Trade Center who died in the 2001 September 11 attacks.
This memorial included thousands of origami paper cranes…and now one of those cranes is one of those folded by young Sadako Sasaki before she died in 1955.