Sadako Sasaki and The Thousand Paper Cranes

An ancient Japanese legend promises that anyone who manages to fold a thousand origami cranes will be granted a wish by the crane. The wish may be a long life or recovery from an illness or injury, the crane in Japan is considered to be one of the holiest creatures (other than the dragon and the tortoise), and is said to live for a 1000 years.

Sadako Sasaki was a 12 year old Japanese girl who died from radiation sickness, an after effect of the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At the time of the explosion in 1945, Sadako was 2 years old, and living about a mile from ground zero. By November 1954, chicken pox had been spotted on her neck and behind her ears, then on January 1955, purple spots had began to form on her legs. Soon enough, she was diagnosed with leukemia, something her mother called an atom bomb disease. In the year 1955 she was hospitalized, but her chance of recovery was almost zero, in fact, she was given at the most, a year to live. On August 3, 1955, Sadako's best friend, Chizuko Hamamoto came to visit and folded a gold piece of paper into crane. At first Sadako didn't understand why Chizuko was folding a crane, but then Chizuko told her the story about the paper cranes. Wanting to quickly recover, Sadako decided to continue folding cranes, though lacking paper, she would instead use medicine wrappings and anything else she could find that could be used as a substitute for paper. But, she never got better. With her family around her, Sadako died on the morning of October 25, 1955.

After her death, Sadako's friends and schoolmates published a set of letters in order to raise funds to help build a memorial to her and all of the children who had died from the after effects of the atomic bomb. In 1958, a statue of Sadako holding a golden crane was built in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. At the foot of the statue is a plaque that reads:

"This is our cry. This is our prayer. Peace in the world."

Hopefully, the story will help remind our generation and future generations the horrors of the atomic bomb, and how it killed innocent children and people. The atomic bomb is another destructive weapon that shouldn’t ever be used or produced again.

Konrad Zuse – Computer Inventor during WWII

Konrad Zuse (1910-1995) was a construction engineer for the Henschel Aircraft Company in Berlin at the beginning of World War II. He had the title of “inventor of the modern computer” because he invented automatic calculators to help him with his calculations. There were some difficulties with doing large calculations which is keeping track of results to use it in the later steps of the calculation, so Zuse wanted to make something that would help him overcome the difficulty. He thought of an automatic calculator device that has a control, a memory and a calculator for the arithmetic would solve his problem.

In 1936, Zuse invented Z1, the first binary computer. It was like a testing to see how well this thing works. This was based on the yes/no principal. However, in 1939, Zuse made the Z2, the first fully functioning computer. Then in 1941, he completed Z3 which is made by recycled materials donated by his university staff and students. Z3 is the world’s first electronic, digital computer. To store his programs and data for Z3, he had to use old movie films instead of paper or punched cards because paper was hard to find in Germany during the war.

Even though Zuse made the first world’s computer, he was unable to convince the Nazi government to support his computer work because the Germans thought they were winning the war already and they needed no further research anymore.

http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa050298.htm