Title
Death of Friend Sadako Sasaki due to Radiation-Effect Leukemia – Part II
Files
Loading...
Identifier
KomakiR_01_20181106_Clip03
Publication Date
11-6-2018
Publisher
The Making Cancer History® Voices Oral History Collection, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
City
Houston, Texas
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Transcript
R. Komaki, MD
And Sadako cried and cried every time she had to go there. They sent a jeep to pick those people up, and they had to go for annual checkup, so she always tried to hide when they came. Yeah.
T.A. Rosolowski, PhD
Were there any punishments for people who tried to avoid going?
R. Komaki, MD
No.
T.A. Rosolowski, PhD
Yeah, okay, I’m just curious about that.
R. Komaki, MD
No, no, there was no such thing, but she had to go. I think she avoided that at the beginning, but when she became ill, she was found to be anemic. They had to get her bone marrow examination and she was found to have acute myelogenous leukemia and she was admitted to the Red Cross Hospital, because ABCC, they did not have long-term bed situation. She didn’t speak any English and she was nine years old. No, she was ten when she was found to have leukemia, and she was admitted to Red Cross Hospital and she lived only one year.
T.A. Rosolowski, PhD
Wow. She was in the hospital the whole time?
R. Komaki, MD
Well, she was on and off . She had to get steroids, and she became really moon-faced from the side effects of the steroid, but whenever she was in remission she was discharged and she spent some time, especially like at festival season or New Year’s Day, she was with family, she was discharged.
T.A. Rosolowski, PhD
So you got a chance to see her?
R. Komaki, MD
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
T.A. Rosolowski, PhD
You visited her in the hospital?
R. Komaki, MD
[Yes,] we visited when she was in the hospital, a couple times. Around that time when she was in the [Red Cross] hospital, she was folding origami birds. You know, if she could have made one thousand origami birds, she could recover from her illness. That’s what the Japanese say. So every time she took medication, the medication was inside of the wax paper, and square. After she took medication, she folded an origami bird. I think she made only like 440, and they’re still in the museum at Peace Park.
T.A. Rosolowski, PhD
She became very famous because of that.
R. Komaki, MD
Right.
Recommended Citation
Komaki, Ritsuko MD and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Death of Friend Sadako Sasaki due to Radiation-Effect Leukemia – Part II" (2018). Race, Gender, & Work @ The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center: Triumphs of Houston’s Leading Hospital. 37.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_racegenderwork/37
