High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes is a non-fiction children's book written by American author Eleanor Coerr and published in 1977. The story is of a girl, Sadako Sasaki, who lived in Hiroshima at the time of the atomic bombing. She developed leukemia from the radiation and spent her time in a nursing home folding paper cranes in hope of making a thousand, which supposedly would have allowed her to make one wish, which was to live. However, she only managed to fold 644 cranes before she became too weak to fold one more, and died shortly after. People made the rest after she died and made a statue for her. The book has been translated to many languages and published in many places, to be used for peace education programs in primary schools.