After Okinawa
June 22, 1945. The Battle of Okinawa ended after eighty-two days. Over 12,000 Americans killed, 38,000 wounded. Japanese military deaths exceeded 77,000....
Sadako
Sadako Sasaki was two years old on August 6, 1945, living about a mile from the hypocenter. She survived the blast. Ten years later she developed leukemia. She folded paper cranes in her hospital bed — a thousand, she believed, and she would be healed. She died at twelve....
The room
Concrete walls, bad coffee, a long table, August 1945. A map of the Japanese home islands pinned to the wall. On one side: casualty projections for Operation Downfall — 250,000 to over a million Allied dead. Japanese casualties several times that....