February 26, 2018 • 32 mins
At the end of World War II, the United States used atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A young girl named Sadako Sasaki eventually developed A-bomb disease as a result of her exposure, and the origami crane became a symbol of her story.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to step you missed in History class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I am Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. This
is our one thousand episode, kind of, it's really episode
(00:22):
nine ninety nine. Part two will be episode one thousand
and if your podcatcher numbers episodes and you're like, wait,
that is not right. I have more than a thousand
episodes already. There are some straight up reruns in the
archive that we didn't count because those are not new,
And we also didn't count Saturday classics since the whole
point of those is that they are not new they're
(00:43):
from the archive. But we did count updates that we
did consider to be new episodes back when we did
them back in the archive as well. So we had
a hard time trying to decide what's a cover for
our thousandth episode. We started out with things that happened
a thousand years ago or how up in the year
one thousand and nothing was really grabbing us. So back
(01:04):
at the start of February, we put the question out
to our listeners on social media. We got literally hundreds
of responses, maybe even a thousand total. Responses. There were
a lot um and a lot of them were just
someone said something one time, but a few things came
up over and over, and one of those repeat submissions
(01:26):
was the Japanese tradition of folding a thousand origami cranes,
or maybe the story of Sadako Sasaki, who died of
leukemia after the bombing of Hiroshima and her effort to
fold a thousand cranes became part of a grassroots peace
movement among Japanese children. Uh, and that was the one
we decided to do. From those repeat requests that we got,
(01:47):
this is ultimately a hopeful story because a thousandth episode
seems kind of like a little bit of a celebration
and it did not seem right to have a complete downer.
We did get some very very tragic requests that we
we thought seemed a little too heavy. Today's episode number, though,
(02:08):
does start off with some horrific wartime details and we're
going to be talking about a child with cancer. Um.
But episode one thousand is a is more optimistic in
its tone and just for the sake of clarity. Generally,
in Japanese names are typically presented with the family name
first and the given name second um. In English, they're
(02:30):
often presented the other way around. So in these episodes,
we've used that western order of given name first, primarily
because that's how they were presented in the Japanese resources
that I had that were either written in Japanese and
translated into English or written by Japanese people in English.
So although uh Satoko Sasaki story begins with the bombing
(02:52):
of Hiroshima, we really need to go back a little
bit farther than that to put that bombing in context,
and that's to the Second Sino Japanese War. This is
generally marked as stretching from nineteen thirty seven to nineteen
forty five, and then in its later years it became
the Pacific theater of World War Two. The Second Sino
Japanese War started after years of Japanese incursions into Chinese
(03:15):
territory and then into other parts of Southeast Asia. This
included the horrific Nanjing Massacre, in which Japanese troops killed
as many as three hundred thousand people, most of them civilians,
and raped or sexually assaulted tens of thousands of women.
Japan and Germany were allies, and after France fell to Germany.
In nineteen forty one, the Visi government agreed to allow
(03:38):
Japan to take control of the colonial territory of French
Indo China today that's Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. And in
response to the Japanese occupation of French Indo China and
in the hope of checking its advance into other parts
of Southeast Asia, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt froze all Japanese
assets that were held in the United States. Other name
(04:00):
sations followed suit, and the United States ordered an embargo
of steel and oil exports to Japan as well. These
were major sanctions, and the goal here was to pressure
Japan and to backing out of French end of China
and stopping its imperial expansion into other countries. Instead, it
really had the opposite effect. Japan continued its push, attempting
(04:21):
to reach territory that could supply it with these resources
and capital that it no longer had. These sanctions are
also cited as one of the factors that led Japan
to attack Pearl Harbor, Hawaii a little more than four
months later, on December seventh, ninety one. Fast forward to
nineteen forty five at the end of World War Two.
The Allies accepted Germany's unconditional surrender on May eighth of
(04:44):
that year, ending World War Two in Europe, but the
war with Japan continued. As we discussed in our episode
on the US as Indianapolis. By the summer of nineteen
forty five, most American troops believed they were preparing for
a full scale invasion of Japan at self. Meanwhile, Japan's
navy was nearly destroyed and the Allies had started fire
(05:06):
bombing major Japanese cities. It's estimated that more than three
hundred thousands of Japanese citizens were killed in fire bombing
attacks between January of nineteen forty four in August of
nineteen forty five. In Tokyo alone, more than a hundred
thousand people died in a fire bombing over March ninth
and tenth, nineteen forty five. In addition to the deaths,
(05:27):
these incendiary attacks were incredibly destructive. Japan had started to
westernize its architecture in the late nineteenth century, and at
the same time, a lot of Japanese buildings that were
still standing were historic wooden structures that were extremely flammable.
During all of this, ordinary Japanese citizens faced huge hardships,
(05:49):
including a critical food shortage that stemmed from disrupted supply chains,
crop failures, and destruction of its merchant marine fleet. In
the summer of nineteen forty five, much of the pop
elation on the Japanese home front was facing starvation. The
Japanese government had to continually work to convince its civilian
population that the war was still in the nation's best interests.
(06:11):
In spite of all of this, on July ten, days
after the first successful test of a nuclear bomb, the
United States issued the pot Stem Declaration, calling for Japan
to surrender unconditionally or faced quote prompt and utter destruction.
As we now know, this was a threat to use
nuclear weapons, which at the time we're still a military secret.
(06:34):
And there are two main trains of thought about this
point in the war. One is influenced by how dire
conditions were in Japan and how destructive the fire bombing
campaign had been and how Japan was increasingly out of options.
This train of thought is that Japan was headed towards surrender,
although not necessarily an unconditional one, and that conventional methods
(06:56):
could still bring the war to an end. The other
point of you was influenced by Western perceptions of Japanese
culture and the tactics that had been used by the
Japanese military during the war. For example, the Japanese military
included kama Kaze suicide bombers and an infantry that demonstrated
an almost fanatical fight to the death mentality. The list
(07:18):
of war crimes committed by Japan during World War Two
is long and horrifying, and this just did not seem
like a fighting force that would ever surrender, no matter
how certain defeats seemed to be so. Under this train
of thought, continuing the war, especially if it involved an
invasion of Japan itself, would cost far too many lives
(07:40):
on both sides, so the Allies needed to take decisive,
dramatic action to bring the war to a faster end,
ultimately preventing that loss of life. And it was the
latter point of view that led the United States to
drop an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima
on August six. Which point of view was correct and
(08:02):
whether the use of nuclear weapons was justified continues to
be the subject of debate. The whole subject is contentious
enough that in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
canceled an exhibition on the Enola Gay, which was the
plane that dropped the blomb on Hiroshima. This cancelation came
after five rounds of revisions between museum curators and veterans groups.
(08:25):
The museum staff wanted to focus on the first use
of nuclear weapons in warfare as a global turning point,
one that connected to the nuclear arms race and the
Cold War, but veterans groups wanted to focus on sacrifice
and on the atrocities that had been committed by the
Japanese that led to the first use of the bomb.
The peoples of the two respective countries involved also do
(08:49):
not agree about whether the use of atomic weapons was justified.
According to a report by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center,
fifty of Americans believe the use of nuclear weapons was
justified and thirty four percent say it was not. Meanwhile,
in Japan, just fourteen percent say the use of nuclear
weapons was justified say it was not. Regardless of all
(09:14):
of that, Hiroshima specifically was chosen for maximum shock value.
It was a city of more than three thousand people,
but it hadn't yet been targeted or damaged by the
incendiary strikes that had stricken so many other major Japanese cities.
The surrounding terrain was also hilly, which scientists believe would
focus the blast and cause even more damage. In the end,
(09:37):
the bombing of Hiroshima destroyed about of the city and
killed at least eighty thousand people instantly, most of them civilians.
Tens of thousands more died in the aftermath from radiation
poisoning and radiation induced diseases. The United States had expected
that Japan would offer an immediate, unconditional surrender after the
(09:57):
atomic bombing of Hiroshima, that that surrender did not come,
and on August eight, the Soviet Union also declared war
on Japan. The Soviet Union deployed roughly a million troops
into Manchuria, which is now part of China, on the ninth,
and then also on the ninth, the United States dropped
a second atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki, instantly
(10:18):
killing at least forty thousand people. Estimates of the final
death tolls of the two atomic bombings are all over
the place, in part because the bodies of many of
the victims were destroyed along with the buildings that held
all the records of their existence, but the combined death
toll of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was at
least two hundred thousand people. Before this point, Japan had
(10:42):
only discussed conditional surrender options, like trying to include guarantees
that Japan wouldn't be subject to military occupation or that
the imperial family and especially the Emperor himself would be protected.
But on August tenth, Japan finally started moving toward an
unconditional surrender. It was formally announced on August fifteen, after
(11:02):
a failed military coup meant to stop it from happening.
Japan's formal surrender took place on September two. This ended
World War Two, and it also led to the end
of Japan's imperial occupation of multiple other areas, including Korea, Manchuria,
and French Indo China, And of course all of these
(11:22):
places have their own complex histories after this point. Just
over ten years later, Sadako Sasaki died of radiation induced
leukemia as a result of having been near the Hiroshima
bomb blast, and we're going to talk about her after
a quick sponsor break. Sadako Sasaki was born on January seventh.
(11:48):
Her mother, Fujiko, and her father, Shigeo, owned a barbershop.
She also had an older brother named Masahiro. They lived
in Hiroshima in a three story wooden mortar home one
point six kilometers from the hypo center of the atomic
bomb blast. Sadiko's father was drafted during the war, and
her mother kept the business going while he was away.
(12:10):
On the morning of August, Sadiko was two and her
brother was four. Fujiko Sasaki was at home with both
of them, along with one of their grandmothers when the
atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima at about eight sixteen AM.
It blew the roof off the Sasaki family home, and
most of their neighbors were killed. Fujiko Sasaki was not injured,
(12:34):
but Masahiro had a head injury, and the force of
the blast had thrown Sadiko from where she was sitting
into a box. For a moment, the family thought that
she had been lost. Her grandmother's arm was injured as well.
Fujiko bandaged everyone up, and as a fire spread throughout
their neighborhood took all of them towards the nearby river,
(12:54):
they were rescued by a neighbor who loaded about ten
people into his boat and took them to the middle
of the river, and they waited there until the flames subsided,
unaware that they were being exposed to massive amounts of radiation.
Their weight was horrifying. This boat wasn't big enough to
hold so many people, and so they were afraid that
it would sink or capsize. An oily black precipitation started
(13:17):
to fall, and this black rain was a mix of
radioactive fallout particles and particles from smoke that was blanketing
the remains of the burning city. They could also hear
people all along the banks of the river who were
unable to escape the fire, who either burned to death
or drowned trying to get far enough into the water.
After the flames subsided and they were able to get
(13:40):
back to shore, what they found was equally horrifying. In
addition to the destroyed buildings and the bodies of victims,
there were people who were still alive but suffering from
extreme radiation exposure. We're not going to get into the
details of what this was like because this information is
both widely available and widely known. Uh, but it was
(14:00):
truly truly gruesome. Twelve members of the Sasaki's extended family
were killed that day, including Satiko's grandmother, who had turned
back saying she needed to get something from the house
before they got to the river. Satiko surviving family left
Hiroshima for about two years after the bombing, and then
(14:20):
they returned to reopen their barbershop. They all recovered from
their injuries, and for years it seemed as though Satiko
had not been affected at all. Soon she had a
little sister, Mitsue and a little brother, a g They
and many of their neighbors did not talk about the bomb,
which when it did come up, they more often called
the pika or pika don, which meant the flash or
(14:44):
the flash and boom. Culturally, the nuclear attack was viewed
as embarrassing and shameful, especially because of the grizzly and
deadly nature of its effects on human health. Satiko grew
into a girl who was well liked at school. In
the sixth grade, there teachers to Yoshi Nomura began training
them in baton relay and other track and field events,
(15:06):
and Satako blossomed as an athlete. She wound up running
anchor leg on the relay team because she'd been so
close to the atomic blast. Every two years, Satako had
a checkup at the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission. This was
established by the United States government in ninety six to
study the ongoing health effects of the bomb. Some of
(15:26):
these effects were immediate or they started shortly after the attack.
This included keyloid scarring, cataracts, still births and miscarriages, and
high infant mortality among women who were pregnant when the
bomb struck, but other diseases, especially cancers, developed much later.
In general, Japanese people didn't trust the ABCC. They associated
(15:48):
it with the American military, and really its purpose was
to study the effects of the bomb, not to provide
medical treatment or care to the people who were so affected.
For a out a decade, satikos checkups and blood work
at the abc C were all normal. In November of
nineteen fifty four, though she caught a cold and noticed
(16:09):
a swollen lymph node under her ear. She didn't have
a fever, so the family wasn't particularly worried, even though
survivors of the bomb dreaded the possibility of what was
known as a bomb disease, A bomb disease was a
catch all term for a variety of cancers and conditions
that were induced by radiation exposure during the bombings of
(16:29):
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. People who were close to the blasts
or who entered Hiroshima or Nagasaki soon enough afterwards to
be affected were called hibbaksha or bomb affected people. Most
of these were Japanese citizens, but there were also significant
numbers of Koreans who had been forcibly relocated to Japan,
essentially as slaves. Satiko continued to feel a little run
(16:53):
down over the New Year holiday and the swollen lymph
node got worse, so she went to the doctor who
initial we thought she had a virus, and when she
still didn't improve after treatment, her parents took her to
the ABCC, where she got extensive workups on January and
February six of nineteen fifty five. On February eighteen, her
(17:14):
parents got the call Sodoko had a bomb disease. Her
specific condition was leukemia, which is a cancer of the
parts of the body that make blood cells. Most types
of leukemia caused the body to make too many white
blood cells, which means the body produces fewer red blood
cells and platelets. Since the red blood cells carry oxygen
(17:34):
and platelets are involved in clotting, this imbalance and blood
cells causes a range of other progressive health problems. The
typical leukemia rate in Japan was two to three people
out of every one hundred thousand, but among Hiroshima survivors
it was closer to thirty out of one hundred thousand.
People who had entered Hiroshima in the days and weeks
(17:55):
after the bombing had doubled or tripled risk for leukemia
as well. After a they learned that she was ill,
Sadiko's mother wanted her to have a traditional kimono if
Sadiko had a bomb disease and was going to have
to be in the hospital. Fujiko wanted her to have
the experience of having a beautiful kimono first, so after
getting the call from the hospital, she and her husband
(18:17):
went to pick up Sadiko from school and I took
her to pick out fabric. She chose this cherry blossom
pattern for her kimono. They told her it was a
treat because she was going to need to be in
the hospital, but they didn't tell her that she had
a bomb disease or that it wasn't curable. Sadako's mother
and her aunts worked overnight to make this kimono so
that she could have it and wear it before she
(18:38):
was admitted. Sadiko entered the Red Cross Hospital in Hiroshima
on February that is, just two days after her family
was notified. On the way, she stopped at school to
say goodbye to her classmates. There were sixty one other
students in her class. Even though so many people had
been killed in the bombing, her school was still overcrowded
(18:59):
because of the turn of Japanese nationals from the Empire's
former territories after the war. Throughout the school year, her
teacher had been encouraging the class to develop a culture
of always looking after one another and taking those lessons
to heart. After Sadako left, her classmates organized themselves into
a rotation to visit her in the hospital in groups
(19:20):
of two or three. Today, leukemia is far more treatable
than it was in nineteen fifty five. The five year
survival rate for children with acute lympacitic leukemia today is
about and for children with acute mylogenus leukemia that's a
m L it's about sixty, but in ninetive there was
no treatment for the disease itself. The best the doctors
(19:43):
could do was to give Sadiko transfusions of healthy blood,
along with a drug called metatrek state, which lowered the
number of white blood cells but didn't do anything to
address the condition itself. This care was very expensive, and
there was no insurance or state supported medicine and no
central blood banking system. Families were responsible for finding blood
(20:05):
donors themselves, and if they couldn't, for buying blood from
the local blood bank, and after buying blood, they still
had to pay for the transfusion itself. Satiko Sasaki's family
put all of their money into her treatment, eventually even
selling their home and their business in Hiroshima and moving
into a barracks to try to save money. The Red
Cross hospital didn't have a separate pediatric word, so Satika's
(20:28):
fellow patients included children and adults, and she became really
beloved by both the staff and the other patients. She
was always really optimistic. She very rarely complained about the
pain that she was in or the other effects that
lukimia was having on her body. A string of one
thousand origami cranes was delivered to Sotiko in the hospital
(20:48):
in July of nine. We're going to talk more about
these cranes and exactly what they represented, after we first
have a sponsor break. The thousand origami cranes that Sadako
Sasaki received in the hospital connects several pieces of Japanese
(21:09):
history and culture together, so we're gonna walk through all
of them, starting with Oregony. Paper was first invented in
China in about the year one five. Buddhist monks introduced
it to Japan in the sixth century, and for centuries
paper was really expensive and quite difficult to obtain, so
it was mainly used for religious purposes. The Edo period
(21:31):
began in sixteen o three, and by then paper was
far less expensive and people were using it to make
all kinds of art. We talked about the art of
Japanese wood black printmaking and our past podcast on Katsushika Hokusai.
Printmaking allowed artist artists to mass produce and distribute paper
copies of their artwork, and there are prints from this
(21:52):
period in museums all over the world today. The first
concrete evidence of paper folding in Japan comes from the
Edo period as well. People were likely folding paper into
shapes before this, especially in ceremonial and religious uses. One
book written in seventeen sixty four documents ceremonial folds that
samurai used on wrapping paper, which changed depending on what
(22:16):
gifts were inside. The first written instructions for what we'd
probably recognize as origami today came with a Kisto Rito's
sin Bazuru Rikata or thousand Crane Folding, and this was
first published in sevente So orikata means folded shapes, and
(22:37):
for a while it was almost used interchangeably with origami,
which comes from ori meaning folding and kami meaning paper.
More written instructions followed this sevent publication. Although people today
describe origami as using one flat sheet of paper with
no cutting, these early Japanese instructions included various cuts and
(22:59):
different paper shapes. As a side note, you'll see a
lot of the same subjects in both woodblock prints and origami,
including lots of flowers, birds, and other animals, and there
are also lots of woodblock prints that depict origami models
and people folding oregamy paper folding was becoming common in
other parts of the world as well. Japan was not
(23:19):
the only place where people were folding paper. For some reason.
Friedrich Froebel, known as the father of kindergarten, saw the
use of folding as a teaching tool, particularly because of
all of its connections to geometry and math, and the
late eighteen hundreds, Frobel's origami like folds and patterns were
introduced into Japan and put to use in Japanese classrooms.
(23:42):
So eventually Japanese origami was being used as an education
tool outside of Japan, and these German folds are being
used in Japan. They all wound up influencing each other.
For centuries, almost all origami followed the same traditional shapes
and steps that have been documented in the eighteenth and
nineteen centuries. Akira Yoshizawa is credited with expanding the form
(24:04):
in the twentieth century, creating the symbols, arrows, and diagrams
that are still used today, along with developing new folds
and techniques. His work sparked a resurgence in oregonmy all
over the world starting in the nineteen fifties. Today, in
addition to the frogs cranes, boxes, and other traditional models.
Artists use oregomy to make all kinds of work all
(24:27):
along the spectrum from realistic to abstract. To move on
to cranes and Japanese culture, cranes, particularly red crowned cranes,
are significant. They're symbolic of happiness and long life, and
according to legend, they live for a thousand years. Turtles
are revered as well, and there's actually a saying that
the crane lives for a thousand years while the turtle
(24:48):
lives for ten thousand years. The number one thousand itself
is considered to be auspicious, so this is like layers
of good fortune and positive things. A string of one
thousand Origami cranes or send bazuru is said to bring
luck or to grant a wish, so strings of one
thousand cranes have been traditional gifts to honor things like
(25:11):
weddings and births. The string of a thousand cranes that
Sadako Sasaki received in the hospital had been made by
a high school class that was folding chains of paper
cranes to give to patients with a bomb disease. This
part was not shared with Sadako since her family and
her doctors were still trying to protect her from the
knowledge that she was dying. By this point, Sotiko had
(25:34):
made friends with Kayo Okura, a fourteen year old with tuberculosis.
The two of them started folding cranes together to pass
the time, working with very small pieces of paper because
it was easier to manage those smaller sizes while they
were confined to bed. They used whatever paper they could
find from wrappers from other patients gifts to discarded note paper.
(25:55):
One day, as they were folding cranes, Stiko and Kayo
talked about kind of a variant about on that legend
that we talked about before, which is that if you
folded a thousand cranes you would get well. So Sadeko
decided she was going to fold a thousand cranes and
the hope that it would make her better. Some of
the fictional depictions of Satiko Sasaki's life say that she
(26:15):
died before finishing her thousand cranes, but according to the
people who knew her, she finished her first thousand and
moved on to a second set before she died. By
the end, she was working with tiny, tiny pieces of
paper that required a toothpick to help fold. Unfolding cranes
was not the only way she was spending her time.
Over the summer of nine, Sadeka wrote formal cards to
(26:38):
everybody that had been in her sixth grade class. The
class had formed a unity club at the end of
the year. Because they were moving on to junior high school,
they wouldn't necessarily be in the same class or even
at the same school anymore, so the unity club kept
visiting her after the school year was over. By August,
about the time she finished her first thousand crane, Sadeko's
(27:01):
condition was seriously declining, and that same month Kaio's tuberculosis
treatment was complete and she was released from the hospital.
Kyo promised to visit, but did not make it back
to the hospital before Steko died. Sadako Sasaki died on
October at the age of twelve. After her death, an
autopsy revealed that she had thyroid cancer as well as leukemia,
(27:25):
and later on doctors would establish a link between a
bon exposure and thyroid cancer as well. It was also
after her death that doctors discovered that Sodoko had been
looking up her own blood test results at the nurses
station and keeping track of them for months on a
scrap of paper hidden in her bed. So even though
no one had told her what she had, it became
(27:45):
clear that she had known for a really long time
that she was dying, and to spare them from the pain,
she hadn't let anyone else know that she knew. Sadeko's
classmates started to hear that she had died at school,
and this's mostly spread from student to student in the
hall since a lot of households in Hiroshima didn't have
their own phone. It was then reported in the newspaper
(28:06):
as well. A lot of her classmates went to the
temple where her body was placed, and then they attended
her funeral, and then at the funeral, satikos family gave
the classmates who were there some of the cranes that
she had folded. After Sadiko's death, she and her cranes
inspired a movement for peace, and we're going to talk
about that, but that's going to happen in our next episode.
(28:26):
Do you have a listener mail sort of? Uh? I
have a thing I wanted to generally address from a
previous episode that we have done, which is our two
parter on the Wilmington's que We've gotten a number of
very angry letters about something that we said at the
end of that episode. Uh. A lot of those angry
(28:48):
letters are from people who told us they're not going
to listen to the show anymore, so they're not going
to hear this explanation. The thing that people are really
I mean, there are several things that people are angry about,
but one of the things we've heard about over and
over is that we talked about a North Carolina voter
ID law that had been struck down by a panel
of the Fourth U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals who
(29:10):
described it. They described this voter ID law as made
to target African Americans with surgical precision. And we've just
had a whole lot of people who have written to
us and been like, but you have to have an
I D to cash a check, why don't you have
to have an I D to vote? And I wanted
to clarify that was not the point. What this particular
(29:31):
voter I D law did was that lawmakers gathered lots
of information about how people were exercising their right to
vote in North Carolina. So when we're people voting, were
they going to early voting, were they using absentee ballots?
What kinds of I D where they're using when they
exercise their right to vote, And they specifically asked for
that information to be broken down by race. And then
(29:54):
when they wrote that new voter ID law, they got
rid of the forms of I D and the early
voting methods and lots of other tools for exercising your
right to vote that were disproportionately used by black residents
of North Carolina. So we had a whole lot of
people that were so angry saying, it's not racist to
ask somebody for I D. That's not really what was
(30:16):
happening here. They specifically were no longer allowing the forms
of I D that that black people were using more
often than white people, and that is like a textbook
definition of racism. So the idea that this voter I
D law was racist was not something that we made
up out of thin air, and it was not something
(30:37):
that we just sort of threw out there willing. Really,
it was extensively documented in the court the court documents,
the sorts of questions that had been asked in the
framing of this law, and the very clear patterns in
what which pieces of I D were allowed, which voting
schedules stayed in place. That kinds of things. So, uh,
(31:01):
if any of the folks who were still really angry
are still listening to the show, that's where that came from.
For the folks who maybe didn't send us angry letters.
But we're kind of wondering, huh, I wonder what was
up with that law because the stuff you missed in
history class hosts don't usually use words lightly. Now, you know,
(31:23):
if you would like to write to us about this
or any other podcast, we are at history podcasts at
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(31:44):
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(32:05):
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Welcome to step you missed in History class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I am Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. This
is our one thousand episode, kind of, it's really episode
(00:22):
nine ninety nine. Part two will be episode one thousand
and if your podcatcher numbers episodes and you're like, wait,
that is not right. I have more than a thousand
episodes already. There are some straight up reruns in the
archive that we didn't count because those are not new,
And we also didn't count Saturday classics since the whole
point of those is that they are not new they're
(00:43):
from the archive. But we did count updates that we
did consider to be new episodes back when we did
them back in the archive as well. So we had
a hard time trying to decide what's a cover for
our thousandth episode. We started out with things that happened
a thousand years ago or how up in the year
one thousand and nothing was really grabbing us. So back
(01:04):
at the start of February, we put the question out
to our listeners on social media. We got literally hundreds
of responses, maybe even a thousand total. Responses. There were
a lot um and a lot of them were just
someone said something one time, but a few things came
up over and over, and one of those repeat submissions
(01:26):
was the Japanese tradition of folding a thousand origami cranes,
or maybe the story of Sadako Sasaki, who died of
leukemia after the bombing of Hiroshima and her effort to
fold a thousand cranes became part of a grassroots peace
movement among Japanese children. Uh, and that was the one
we decided to do. From those repeat requests that we got,
(01:47):
this is ultimately a hopeful story because a thousandth episode
seems kind of like a little bit of a celebration
and it did not seem right to have a complete downer.
We did get some very very tragic requests that we
we thought seemed a little too heavy. Today's episode number, though,
(02:08):
does start off with some horrific wartime details and we're
going to be talking about a child with cancer. Um.
But episode one thousand is a is more optimistic in
its tone and just for the sake of clarity. Generally,
in Japanese names are typically presented with the family name
first and the given name second um. In English, they're
(02:30):
often presented the other way around. So in these episodes,
we've used that western order of given name first, primarily
because that's how they were presented in the Japanese resources
that I had that were either written in Japanese and
translated into English or written by Japanese people in English.
So although uh Satoko Sasaki story begins with the bombing
(02:52):
of Hiroshima, we really need to go back a little
bit farther than that to put that bombing in context,
and that's to the Second Sino Japanese War. This is
generally marked as stretching from nineteen thirty seven to nineteen
forty five, and then in its later years it became
the Pacific theater of World War Two. The Second Sino
Japanese War started after years of Japanese incursions into Chinese
(03:15):
territory and then into other parts of Southeast Asia. This
included the horrific Nanjing Massacre, in which Japanese troops killed
as many as three hundred thousand people, most of them civilians,
and raped or sexually assaulted tens of thousands of women.
Japan and Germany were allies, and after France fell to Germany.
In nineteen forty one, the Visi government agreed to allow
(03:38):
Japan to take control of the colonial territory of French
Indo China today that's Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. And in
response to the Japanese occupation of French Indo China and
in the hope of checking its advance into other parts
of Southeast Asia, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt froze all Japanese
assets that were held in the United States. Other name
(04:00):
sations followed suit, and the United States ordered an embargo
of steel and oil exports to Japan as well. These
were major sanctions, and the goal here was to pressure
Japan and to backing out of French end of China
and stopping its imperial expansion into other countries. Instead, it
really had the opposite effect. Japan continued its push, attempting
(04:21):
to reach territory that could supply it with these resources
and capital that it no longer had. These sanctions are
also cited as one of the factors that led Japan
to attack Pearl Harbor, Hawaii a little more than four
months later, on December seventh, ninety one. Fast forward to
nineteen forty five at the end of World War Two.
The Allies accepted Germany's unconditional surrender on May eighth of
(04:44):
that year, ending World War Two in Europe, but the
war with Japan continued. As we discussed in our episode
on the US as Indianapolis. By the summer of nineteen
forty five, most American troops believed they were preparing for
a full scale invasion of Japan at self. Meanwhile, Japan's
navy was nearly destroyed and the Allies had started fire
(05:06):
bombing major Japanese cities. It's estimated that more than three
hundred thousands of Japanese citizens were killed in fire bombing
attacks between January of nineteen forty four in August of
nineteen forty five. In Tokyo alone, more than a hundred
thousand people died in a fire bombing over March ninth
and tenth, nineteen forty five. In addition to the deaths,
(05:27):
these incendiary attacks were incredibly destructive. Japan had started to
westernize its architecture in the late nineteenth century, and at
the same time, a lot of Japanese buildings that were
still standing were historic wooden structures that were extremely flammable.
During all of this, ordinary Japanese citizens faced huge hardships,
(05:49):
including a critical food shortage that stemmed from disrupted supply chains,
crop failures, and destruction of its merchant marine fleet. In
the summer of nineteen forty five, much of the pop
elation on the Japanese home front was facing starvation. The
Japanese government had to continually work to convince its civilian
population that the war was still in the nation's best interests.
(06:11):
In spite of all of this, on July ten, days
after the first successful test of a nuclear bomb, the
United States issued the pot Stem Declaration, calling for Japan
to surrender unconditionally or faced quote prompt and utter destruction.
As we now know, this was a threat to use
nuclear weapons, which at the time we're still a military secret.
(06:34):
And there are two main trains of thought about this
point in the war. One is influenced by how dire
conditions were in Japan and how destructive the fire bombing
campaign had been and how Japan was increasingly out of options.
This train of thought is that Japan was headed towards surrender,
although not necessarily an unconditional one, and that conventional methods
(06:56):
could still bring the war to an end. The other
point of you was influenced by Western perceptions of Japanese
culture and the tactics that had been used by the
Japanese military during the war. For example, the Japanese military
included kama Kaze suicide bombers and an infantry that demonstrated
an almost fanatical fight to the death mentality. The list
(07:18):
of war crimes committed by Japan during World War Two
is long and horrifying, and this just did not seem
like a fighting force that would ever surrender, no matter
how certain defeats seemed to be so. Under this train
of thought, continuing the war, especially if it involved an
invasion of Japan itself, would cost far too many lives
(07:40):
on both sides, so the Allies needed to take decisive,
dramatic action to bring the war to a faster end,
ultimately preventing that loss of life. And it was the
latter point of view that led the United States to
drop an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima
on August six. Which point of view was correct and
(08:02):
whether the use of nuclear weapons was justified continues to
be the subject of debate. The whole subject is contentious
enough that in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
canceled an exhibition on the Enola Gay, which was the
plane that dropped the blomb on Hiroshima. This cancelation came
after five rounds of revisions between museum curators and veterans groups.
(08:25):
The museum staff wanted to focus on the first use
of nuclear weapons in warfare as a global turning point,
one that connected to the nuclear arms race and the
Cold War, but veterans groups wanted to focus on sacrifice
and on the atrocities that had been committed by the
Japanese that led to the first use of the bomb.
The peoples of the two respective countries involved also do
(08:49):
not agree about whether the use of atomic weapons was justified.
According to a report by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center,
fifty of Americans believe the use of nuclear weapons was
justified and thirty four percent say it was not. Meanwhile,
in Japan, just fourteen percent say the use of nuclear
weapons was justified say it was not. Regardless of all
(09:14):
of that, Hiroshima specifically was chosen for maximum shock value.
It was a city of more than three thousand people,
but it hadn't yet been targeted or damaged by the
incendiary strikes that had stricken so many other major Japanese cities.
The surrounding terrain was also hilly, which scientists believe would
focus the blast and cause even more damage. In the end,
(09:37):
the bombing of Hiroshima destroyed about of the city and
killed at least eighty thousand people instantly, most of them civilians.
Tens of thousands more died in the aftermath from radiation
poisoning and radiation induced diseases. The United States had expected
that Japan would offer an immediate, unconditional surrender after the
(09:57):
atomic bombing of Hiroshima, that that surrender did not come,
and on August eight, the Soviet Union also declared war
on Japan. The Soviet Union deployed roughly a million troops
into Manchuria, which is now part of China, on the ninth,
and then also on the ninth, the United States dropped
a second atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki, instantly
(10:18):
killing at least forty thousand people. Estimates of the final
death tolls of the two atomic bombings are all over
the place, in part because the bodies of many of
the victims were destroyed along with the buildings that held
all the records of their existence, but the combined death
toll of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was at
least two hundred thousand people. Before this point, Japan had
(10:42):
only discussed conditional surrender options, like trying to include guarantees
that Japan wouldn't be subject to military occupation or that
the imperial family and especially the Emperor himself would be protected.
But on August tenth, Japan finally started moving toward an
unconditional surrender. It was formally announced on August fifteen, after
(11:02):
a failed military coup meant to stop it from happening.
Japan's formal surrender took place on September two. This ended
World War Two, and it also led to the end
of Japan's imperial occupation of multiple other areas, including Korea, Manchuria,
and French Indo China, And of course all of these
(11:22):
places have their own complex histories after this point. Just
over ten years later, Sadako Sasaki died of radiation induced
leukemia as a result of having been near the Hiroshima
bomb blast, and we're going to talk about her after
a quick sponsor break. Sadako Sasaki was born on January seventh.
(11:48):
Her mother, Fujiko, and her father, Shigeo, owned a barbershop.
She also had an older brother named Masahiro. They lived
in Hiroshima in a three story wooden mortar home one
point six kilometers from the hypo center of the atomic
bomb blast. Sadiko's father was drafted during the war, and
her mother kept the business going while he was away.
(12:10):
On the morning of August, Sadiko was two and her
brother was four. Fujiko Sasaki was at home with both
of them, along with one of their grandmothers when the
atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima at about eight sixteen AM.
It blew the roof off the Sasaki family home, and
most of their neighbors were killed. Fujiko Sasaki was not injured,
(12:34):
but Masahiro had a head injury, and the force of
the blast had thrown Sadiko from where she was sitting
into a box. For a moment, the family thought that
she had been lost. Her grandmother's arm was injured as well.
Fujiko bandaged everyone up, and as a fire spread throughout
their neighborhood took all of them towards the nearby river,
(12:54):
they were rescued by a neighbor who loaded about ten
people into his boat and took them to the middle
of the river, and they waited there until the flames subsided,
unaware that they were being exposed to massive amounts of radiation.
Their weight was horrifying. This boat wasn't big enough to
hold so many people, and so they were afraid that
it would sink or capsize. An oily black precipitation started
(13:17):
to fall, and this black rain was a mix of
radioactive fallout particles and particles from smoke that was blanketing
the remains of the burning city. They could also hear
people all along the banks of the river who were
unable to escape the fire, who either burned to death
or drowned trying to get far enough into the water.
After the flames subsided and they were able to get
(13:40):
back to shore, what they found was equally horrifying. In
addition to the destroyed buildings and the bodies of victims,
there were people who were still alive but suffering from
extreme radiation exposure. We're not going to get into the
details of what this was like because this information is
both widely available and widely known. Uh, but it was
(14:00):
truly truly gruesome. Twelve members of the Sasaki's extended family
were killed that day, including Satiko's grandmother, who had turned
back saying she needed to get something from the house
before they got to the river. Satiko surviving family left
Hiroshima for about two years after the bombing, and then
(14:20):
they returned to reopen their barbershop. They all recovered from
their injuries, and for years it seemed as though Satiko
had not been affected at all. Soon she had a
little sister, Mitsue and a little brother, a g They
and many of their neighbors did not talk about the bomb,
which when it did come up, they more often called
the pika or pika don, which meant the flash or
(14:44):
the flash and boom. Culturally, the nuclear attack was viewed
as embarrassing and shameful, especially because of the grizzly and
deadly nature of its effects on human health. Satiko grew
into a girl who was well liked at school. In
the sixth grade, there teachers to Yoshi Nomura began training
them in baton relay and other track and field events,
(15:06):
and Satako blossomed as an athlete. She wound up running
anchor leg on the relay team because she'd been so
close to the atomic blast. Every two years, Satako had
a checkup at the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission. This was
established by the United States government in ninety six to
study the ongoing health effects of the bomb. Some of
(15:26):
these effects were immediate or they started shortly after the attack.
This included keyloid scarring, cataracts, still births and miscarriages, and
high infant mortality among women who were pregnant when the
bomb struck, but other diseases, especially cancers, developed much later.
In general, Japanese people didn't trust the ABCC. They associated
(15:48):
it with the American military, and really its purpose was
to study the effects of the bomb, not to provide
medical treatment or care to the people who were so affected.
For a out a decade, satikos checkups and blood work
at the abc C were all normal. In November of
nineteen fifty four, though she caught a cold and noticed
(16:09):
a swollen lymph node under her ear. She didn't have
a fever, so the family wasn't particularly worried, even though
survivors of the bomb dreaded the possibility of what was
known as a bomb disease, A bomb disease was a
catch all term for a variety of cancers and conditions
that were induced by radiation exposure during the bombings of
(16:29):
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. People who were close to the blasts
or who entered Hiroshima or Nagasaki soon enough afterwards to
be affected were called hibbaksha or bomb affected people. Most
of these were Japanese citizens, but there were also significant
numbers of Koreans who had been forcibly relocated to Japan,
essentially as slaves. Satiko continued to feel a little run
(16:53):
down over the New Year holiday and the swollen lymph
node got worse, so she went to the doctor who
initial we thought she had a virus, and when she
still didn't improve after treatment, her parents took her to
the ABCC, where she got extensive workups on January and
February six of nineteen fifty five. On February eighteen, her
(17:14):
parents got the call Sodoko had a bomb disease. Her
specific condition was leukemia, which is a cancer of the
parts of the body that make blood cells. Most types
of leukemia caused the body to make too many white
blood cells, which means the body produces fewer red blood
cells and platelets. Since the red blood cells carry oxygen
(17:34):
and platelets are involved in clotting, this imbalance and blood
cells causes a range of other progressive health problems. The
typical leukemia rate in Japan was two to three people
out of every one hundred thousand, but among Hiroshima survivors
it was closer to thirty out of one hundred thousand.
People who had entered Hiroshima in the days and weeks
(17:55):
after the bombing had doubled or tripled risk for leukemia
as well. After a they learned that she was ill,
Sadiko's mother wanted her to have a traditional kimono if
Sadiko had a bomb disease and was going to have
to be in the hospital. Fujiko wanted her to have
the experience of having a beautiful kimono first, so after
getting the call from the hospital, she and her husband
(18:17):
went to pick up Sadiko from school and I took
her to pick out fabric. She chose this cherry blossom
pattern for her kimono. They told her it was a
treat because she was going to need to be in
the hospital, but they didn't tell her that she had
a bomb disease or that it wasn't curable. Sadako's mother
and her aunts worked overnight to make this kimono so
that she could have it and wear it before she
(18:38):
was admitted. Sadiko entered the Red Cross Hospital in Hiroshima
on February that is, just two days after her family
was notified. On the way, she stopped at school to
say goodbye to her classmates. There were sixty one other
students in her class. Even though so many people had
been killed in the bombing, her school was still overcrowded
(18:59):
because of the turn of Japanese nationals from the Empire's
former territories after the war. Throughout the school year, her
teacher had been encouraging the class to develop a culture
of always looking after one another and taking those lessons
to heart. After Sadako left, her classmates organized themselves into
a rotation to visit her in the hospital in groups
(19:20):
of two or three. Today, leukemia is far more treatable
than it was in nineteen fifty five. The five year
survival rate for children with acute lympacitic leukemia today is
about and for children with acute mylogenus leukemia that's a
m L it's about sixty, but in ninetive there was
no treatment for the disease itself. The best the doctors
(19:43):
could do was to give Sadiko transfusions of healthy blood,
along with a drug called metatrek state, which lowered the
number of white blood cells but didn't do anything to
address the condition itself. This care was very expensive, and
there was no insurance or state supported medicine and no
central blood banking system. Families were responsible for finding blood
(20:05):
donors themselves, and if they couldn't, for buying blood from
the local blood bank, and after buying blood, they still
had to pay for the transfusion itself. Satiko Sasaki's family
put all of their money into her treatment, eventually even
selling their home and their business in Hiroshima and moving
into a barracks to try to save money. The Red
Cross hospital didn't have a separate pediatric word, so Satika's
(20:28):
fellow patients included children and adults, and she became really
beloved by both the staff and the other patients. She
was always really optimistic. She very rarely complained about the
pain that she was in or the other effects that
lukimia was having on her body. A string of one
thousand origami cranes was delivered to Sotiko in the hospital
(20:48):
in July of nine. We're going to talk more about
these cranes and exactly what they represented, after we first
have a sponsor break. The thousand origami cranes that Sadako
Sasaki received in the hospital connects several pieces of Japanese
(21:09):
history and culture together, so we're gonna walk through all
of them, starting with Oregony. Paper was first invented in
China in about the year one five. Buddhist monks introduced
it to Japan in the sixth century, and for centuries
paper was really expensive and quite difficult to obtain, so
it was mainly used for religious purposes. The Edo period
(21:31):
began in sixteen o three, and by then paper was
far less expensive and people were using it to make
all kinds of art. We talked about the art of
Japanese wood black printmaking and our past podcast on Katsushika Hokusai.
Printmaking allowed artist artists to mass produce and distribute paper
copies of their artwork, and there are prints from this
(21:52):
period in museums all over the world today. The first
concrete evidence of paper folding in Japan comes from the
Edo period as well. People were likely folding paper into
shapes before this, especially in ceremonial and religious uses. One
book written in seventeen sixty four documents ceremonial folds that
samurai used on wrapping paper, which changed depending on what
(22:16):
gifts were inside. The first written instructions for what we'd
probably recognize as origami today came with a Kisto Rito's
sin Bazuru Rikata or thousand Crane Folding, and this was
first published in sevente So orikata means folded shapes, and
(22:37):
for a while it was almost used interchangeably with origami,
which comes from ori meaning folding and kami meaning paper.
More written instructions followed this sevent publication. Although people today
describe origami as using one flat sheet of paper with
no cutting, these early Japanese instructions included various cuts and
(22:59):
different paper shapes. As a side note, you'll see a
lot of the same subjects in both woodblock prints and origami,
including lots of flowers, birds, and other animals, and there
are also lots of woodblock prints that depict origami models
and people folding oregamy paper folding was becoming common in
other parts of the world as well. Japan was not
(23:19):
the only place where people were folding paper. For some reason.
Friedrich Froebel, known as the father of kindergarten, saw the
use of folding as a teaching tool, particularly because of
all of its connections to geometry and math, and the
late eighteen hundreds, Frobel's origami like folds and patterns were
introduced into Japan and put to use in Japanese classrooms.
(23:42):
So eventually Japanese origami was being used as an education
tool outside of Japan, and these German folds are being
used in Japan. They all wound up influencing each other.
For centuries, almost all origami followed the same traditional shapes
and steps that have been documented in the eighteenth and
nineteen centuries. Akira Yoshizawa is credited with expanding the form
(24:04):
in the twentieth century, creating the symbols, arrows, and diagrams
that are still used today, along with developing new folds
and techniques. His work sparked a resurgence in oregonmy all
over the world starting in the nineteen fifties. Today, in
addition to the frogs cranes, boxes, and other traditional models.
Artists use oregomy to make all kinds of work all
(24:27):
along the spectrum from realistic to abstract. To move on
to cranes and Japanese culture, cranes, particularly red crowned cranes,
are significant. They're symbolic of happiness and long life, and
according to legend, they live for a thousand years. Turtles
are revered as well, and there's actually a saying that
the crane lives for a thousand years while the turtle
(24:48):
lives for ten thousand years. The number one thousand itself
is considered to be auspicious, so this is like layers
of good fortune and positive things. A string of one
thousand Origami cranes or send bazuru is said to bring
luck or to grant a wish, so strings of one
thousand cranes have been traditional gifts to honor things like
(25:11):
weddings and births. The string of a thousand cranes that
Sadako Sasaki received in the hospital had been made by
a high school class that was folding chains of paper
cranes to give to patients with a bomb disease. This
part was not shared with Sadako since her family and
her doctors were still trying to protect her from the
knowledge that she was dying. By this point, Sotiko had
(25:34):
made friends with Kayo Okura, a fourteen year old with tuberculosis.
The two of them started folding cranes together to pass
the time, working with very small pieces of paper because
it was easier to manage those smaller sizes while they
were confined to bed. They used whatever paper they could
find from wrappers from other patients gifts to discarded note paper.
(25:55):
One day, as they were folding cranes, Stiko and Kayo
talked about kind of a variant about on that legend
that we talked about before, which is that if you
folded a thousand cranes you would get well. So Sadeko
decided she was going to fold a thousand cranes and
the hope that it would make her better. Some of
the fictional depictions of Satiko Sasaki's life say that she
(26:15):
died before finishing her thousand cranes, but according to the
people who knew her, she finished her first thousand and
moved on to a second set before she died. By
the end, she was working with tiny, tiny pieces of
paper that required a toothpick to help fold. Unfolding cranes
was not the only way she was spending her time.
Over the summer of nine, Sadeka wrote formal cards to
(26:38):
everybody that had been in her sixth grade class. The
class had formed a unity club at the end of
the year. Because they were moving on to junior high school,
they wouldn't necessarily be in the same class or even
at the same school anymore, so the unity club kept
visiting her after the school year was over. By August,
about the time she finished her first thousand crane, Sadeko's
(27:01):
condition was seriously declining, and that same month Kaio's tuberculosis
treatment was complete and she was released from the hospital.
Kyo promised to visit, but did not make it back
to the hospital before Steko died. Sadako Sasaki died on
October at the age of twelve. After her death, an
autopsy revealed that she had thyroid cancer as well as leukemia,
(27:25):
and later on doctors would establish a link between a
bon exposure and thyroid cancer as well. It was also
after her death that doctors discovered that Sodoko had been
looking up her own blood test results at the nurses
station and keeping track of them for months on a
scrap of paper hidden in her bed. So even though
no one had told her what she had, it became
(27:45):
clear that she had known for a really long time
that she was dying, and to spare them from the pain,
she hadn't let anyone else know that she knew. Sadeko's
classmates started to hear that she had died at school,
and this's mostly spread from student to student in the
hall since a lot of households in Hiroshima didn't have
their own phone. It was then reported in the newspaper
(28:06):
as well. A lot of her classmates went to the
temple where her body was placed, and then they attended
her funeral, and then at the funeral, satikos family gave
the classmates who were there some of the cranes that
she had folded. After Sadiko's death, she and her cranes
inspired a movement for peace, and we're going to talk
about that, but that's going to happen in our next episode.
(28:26):
Do you have a listener mail sort of? Uh? I
have a thing I wanted to generally address from a
previous episode that we have done, which is our two
parter on the Wilmington's que We've gotten a number of
very angry letters about something that we said at the
end of that episode. Uh. A lot of those angry
(28:48):
letters are from people who told us they're not going
to listen to the show anymore, so they're not going
to hear this explanation. The thing that people are really
I mean, there are several things that people are angry about,
but one of the things we've heard about over and
over is that we talked about a North Carolina voter
ID law that had been struck down by a panel
of the Fourth U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals who
(29:10):
described it. They described this voter ID law as made
to target African Americans with surgical precision. And we've just
had a whole lot of people who have written to
us and been like, but you have to have an
I D to cash a check, why don't you have
to have an I D to vote? And I wanted
to clarify that was not the point. What this particular
(29:31):
voter I D law did was that lawmakers gathered lots
of information about how people were exercising their right to
vote in North Carolina. So when we're people voting, were
they going to early voting, were they using absentee ballots?
What kinds of I D where they're using when they
exercise their right to vote, And they specifically asked for
that information to be broken down by race. And then
(29:54):
when they wrote that new voter ID law, they got
rid of the forms of I D and the early
voting methods and lots of other tools for exercising your
right to vote that were disproportionately used by black residents
of North Carolina. So we had a whole lot of
people that were so angry saying, it's not racist to
ask somebody for I D. That's not really what was
(30:16):
happening here. They specifically were no longer allowing the forms
of I D that that black people were using more
often than white people, and that is like a textbook
definition of racism. So the idea that this voter I
D law was racist was not something that we made
up out of thin air, and it was not something
(30:37):
that we just sort of threw out there willing. Really,
it was extensively documented in the court the court documents,
the sorts of questions that had been asked in the
framing of this law, and the very clear patterns in
what which pieces of I D were allowed, which voting
schedules stayed in place. That kinds of things. So, uh,
(31:01):
if any of the folks who were still really angry
are still listening to the show, that's where that came from.
For the folks who maybe didn't send us angry letters.
But we're kind of wondering, huh, I wonder what was
up with that law because the stuff you missed in
history class hosts don't usually use words lightly. Now, you know,
(31:23):
if you would like to write to us about this
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(31:44):
episodes that we have ever done. You'll find show notes
for all the episodes that Holly and I have done together. Uh.
It has the uh, the total list of sources for
everything that we have talked about today. So you can
do all that and a whole lot more at miss
than his or dot com, and you can send You
can subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, Google Play,
(32:05):
and wherever else you get podcasts. For more on this
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Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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