@ 66 days until Hiroshima Summit: A-bombed trees
Mar. 14, 2023
by Taiki Yomura, Staff Writer
A-bombed trees are “silent witnesses” that communicate the horrors of the atomic bombing. The Hiroshima City government has registered 160 trees of 31 kinds located within about two kilometers from the hypocenter as A-bombed trees, including ginkgoes and camphor trees. The number of A-bombed trees has decreased from 171 since fiscal 1996, when the city government began to register A-bombed trees. But there is also a case in which an A-bombed tree was newly registered after the area around it was developed as a facility for special events and that drew attention to the area.
A study indicates that about 80 percent of A-bombed trees that meet some conditions, such as having only one trunk and having not been transplanted, lean in the direction of the hypocenter. The phenomenon is believed to have occurred because the cells of the side of these A-bombed trees facing the direction of the hypocenter were damaged, resulting in retarding these cells’ growth.
The vital energy of A-bombed trees encouraged people, and the late Keiji Nakazawa created a manga featuring a eucalyptus tree standing at the former site of the secondary enclosure of Hiroshima Castle. The Mayors for Peace sends seeds and seedlings of second-generation A-bombed trees throughout Japan and around the world.
(Originally published on March 14, 2023)
A-bombed trees are “silent witnesses” that communicate the horrors of the atomic bombing. The Hiroshima City government has registered 160 trees of 31 kinds located within about two kilometers from the hypocenter as A-bombed trees, including ginkgoes and camphor trees. The number of A-bombed trees has decreased from 171 since fiscal 1996, when the city government began to register A-bombed trees. But there is also a case in which an A-bombed tree was newly registered after the area around it was developed as a facility for special events and that drew attention to the area.
A study indicates that about 80 percent of A-bombed trees that meet some conditions, such as having only one trunk and having not been transplanted, lean in the direction of the hypocenter. The phenomenon is believed to have occurred because the cells of the side of these A-bombed trees facing the direction of the hypocenter were damaged, resulting in retarding these cells’ growth.
The vital energy of A-bombed trees encouraged people, and the late Keiji Nakazawa created a manga featuring a eucalyptus tree standing at the former site of the secondary enclosure of Hiroshima Castle. The Mayors for Peace sends seeds and seedlings of second-generation A-bombed trees throughout Japan and around the world.
(Originally published on March 14, 2023)
