Children's Peace Monument

photo by Sarah Stierch · CC BY 4.0

photo by Maarten Heerlien from Voorschoten, The Netherlands · CC BY 2.0

174 metres from the Genbaku Dome, the monument commemorates Sasaki Sadako, who was 2 at the time of the bomb and died at 12, folding cranes.

The statue, 9 metres tall and the work of the sculptor Kikuchi Kazuo, is topped by a bronze girl holding up a golden crane.

A monument in the Peace Memorial Park, dedicated to the children who were victims of the atomic bomb. Sasaki Sadako was two years old when the bomb exploded about 1.6 km from her home, in the Kusunoki-chō neighbourhood; she died of leukaemia in October 1955, at twelve, after folding hundreds of origami paper cranes in the hope of getting well. The exact count remains uncertain, between the 644 counted by her mother and the more than 1,300 kept by the peace museum. When news of her death came, a schoolmate proposed to other children his age that they raise funds for a monument to the children killed by the bomb: the statue was unveiled on 5 May 1958.

ℹ️ Always visible and accessible, with no admission and no ticket, like the rest of the park.

🚉 Hondōri · 7 min walk

Sources: ja.wikipedia.org · ja.wikipedia.org · pref.hiroshima.lg.jp

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