Peace Memorial Park - Hiroshima

This guide to Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima follows Sadako Sasaki, an eleven-year-old runner whose legs gave out on a school track in the autumn of 1954, nine years after she slept through the atomic bombing barely a mile from the blast. You'll hear how her diagnosis at the Red Cross Hospital led her to an old promise about folding paper cranes, sometimes from medicine wrappers when paper ran short. From her story the guide widens out to the vanished Nakajima neighborhood beneath the park and to architect Kenzo Tange's decision to align its monuments in a single line toward the ruined dome. Listen for how her classmates carried the story forward after she was gone.