In Japan, an organization is planning how to help ensure the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings are remembered for thousands of years, rather than hundreds.

Its plan revolves around the hibakujumoku or the A-bomb-surviving trees of Hiroshima.

With the 80th anniversary of the bombings having just concluded, it’s worth taking a moment to learn about the trees that survived one of our nation’s darkest decisions.

The giant fireball that proceeded the detonation of the atom bomb, if it can believed, couldn’t wipe out all the trees in the blast zone. This eucalyptus tree, for example, was only half a mile from the epicenter.

Called Green Legacy Hiroshima (GLH) and launched in 2011, the organization works to cultivate seeds of peace and hope from these woody survivors, and transport them around the world to be planted and raised in memorial peace gardens not unlike the World Peace Pagodas of the inspirational Buddhist leader Fuji Guruji.

When the roots of the idea that would become GLH were first planted, there were 170 hibakujumoku, but like the human A-bomb survivors, called hibakushi, time was beginning to reduce their number.

Some died of natural causes; others were cut down by accident. Organizers Nassrine Azimi and Tomoko Watanabe realized that they had to act faster than they had realized, and so sprouted GLH to try and protect the trees which at that point had no official protection whatsoever.

They were outside the bounds of the UNESCO World Heritage Site that encompasses the bombing site and other related memorial infrastructure, so any protection had to come through awareness raising.

They accomplished this in part by taking GLH global, and as of 2025, 41 countries around the world have received and planted seeds from the hibakujumoku, ensuring their legacy continues, even if they don’t.

GLH is a volunteer project supported by the UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) and out of respect for the fundraising efforts channeled by the stories and advocacy of the hibakushi, the project does not fundraise from the public.

PEACE FIRST:

Part of that awareness raising is the notion of a 1,000-year memorial project, to eclipse the small, year by year anniversaries of today.

“I’ve been taught Hiroshima peace education since I was a kid,” says the Hiroshima native, 27-year-old Mariko Kikuchi, an expert in UNITAR’s Division of Prosperity, “but didn’t know about the trees… It should be more publicized that they are survivors, too.”

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One of the flagship stories is from a tree closest to the epicenter of the blast: a weeping willow; eerily appropriate for the job. This tree’s trunk was splintered and turned to ash in the explosion, but by 1947, while Hiroshima mayor Shinzo Hamai was surveying the blast damage, he found the trunk had already sprouted again—a sign of hope as he took it.

Later that year, the first annual Hiroshima peace festival was held, and crowds of thousands gathered from around the world. Many of those old photographs feature stoic faces, and behind them in the background stand the hibakujumoku, damaged, but alive and slowly regrowing.

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