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Japan Times
4 days ago
- General
- Japan Times
A campaign to preserve Hiroshima's historic trees for another 1,000 years
One of humanity's darkest days has yielded seeds of hope. Since 2011, Green Legacy Hiroshima (GLH) has been on a mission 'to safeguard and spread the seeds and saplings of Hiroshima's A-bomb survivor trees worldwide.' The nonprofit currently partners with over 150 organizations around the world to propagate these trees of historical significance. The initiative was dreamt up by two good friends committed to preserving nature and memorializing the past. In February 2011, Nassrine Azimi invited Tomoko Watanabe for a 'brainstorming pasta dinner.' Hailing from Ahvaz, Iran, Azimi had been living in Hiroshima since 2003 and heard lots of stories about the 170 trees that had survived the nuclear blast on August 6, 1945. It was miraculous, Azimi says, 'that the greenery came back (in) this dark, sinister landscape.' While these trees (known as hibakujumoku in Japanese) were documented in the 2008 book 'Survivors: The A-Bombed Trees of Hiroshima' by Mandy Conti and David Petersen, they were not under any governmental or institutional protection. Azimi, now 66, believed she could arrange for their preservation through her work as an advisor for the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), but lacked a network of Hiroshima-based contacts to sustain the project. Enter Watanabe. Azimi was aware that her friend was 'well-known in Hiroshima for her strong grassroots work' in international cooperation and peace education. A native of Hiroshima, Watanabe had childhood memories of walking in the forests 'with my grandmother ... enjoying the smell, the silence, the special atmosphere.' She had kept this connection with nature throughout her life. So when Azimi brought up the hibakujumoku over dinner, a concept began to take shape quite naturally between the two women. As Watanabe puts it, 'Nassrine is like the tree above ground, and I am the roots.' During that life-shaping dinner, the seeds for Green Legacy Hiroshima were sown. GLH would strive to, in Azimi's words, 'protect the trees not individually, but as a coherent whole, like an orchestra.' The organization would use Watanabe's local contacts and Azimi's international connections to grow a global platform for arboreal conservation. The devastating Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 only escalated Azimi and Watanabe's desire to create an organization to protect these trees and preserve a physical legacy that could long outlive any human. On July 1, 2011, Green Legacy Hiroshima was officially launched. In the last 14 years, GLH, Azimi explains, 'has grown both far more than we imagined, and much less than is necessary.' As of 2025, 41 countries across six continents — from Chile to Norway — have received and planted seeds from the hibakujumoku. GLH remains a volunteer initiative supported in part by UNITAR. Out of respect for the hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors), the organization does not seek to raise funds from the public. Azimi and Watanabe, now 71, work alongside well-known arborist Chikara Horiguchi, whom Azimi calls their 'tree whisperer.' Others currently in GLH's secretariat include Hiroshima-raised Mariko Kikuchi, an expert in UNITAR's Division of Prosperity, and Sophie Qano, a Shansi Fellow from Oberlin College in Ohio. Kikuchi and Qano often refer to the trees as 'survivors' in their own way. 'I've been taught Hiroshima peace education since I was a kid,' says the 27-year-old Kikuchi, 'but didn't know about the trees. ... It should be more publicized that they are survivors, too.' Qano, 24, agrees. 'The trees are so very special because they show this aspect of resilience and peace. ... The hibakusha won't be here forever. The trees are ancient and they have been here for many courses of destruction and conflict.' Unfortunately, the trees are still not protected under the current UNESCO agreement with the Genbaku Dome Heritage site. The clock is already ticking. When Azimi started with GLH, there were 170 trees, but 11 have already died since then. One of them, Watanabe recalls, was a tragic case of miscommunication between the city and prefectural governments. During the G7 Summit in Hiroshima in 2023, prefectural workers were told to cut down certain trees in the vicinity of the summit to prevent snipers. Signs were affixed on each hibakujumoku, indicating that they should be treated as an exception, but the workers were not informed in advance and one of them was still cut down. Watanabe was upset by the incident. 'This is just one example why we need more people to know about the trees,' she says. Azimi hopes UNESCO might decide to extend its protection to the 159 remaining trees by invoking a technical clause. Doing this would help raise the hibakujumoku's international profile and provide national funding, giving GLH a better chance to preserve these trees for centuries to come — maybe even until the year 3025. That's why Azimi refers to GLH as 'the 1,000-year project,' in contrast to the momentary spotlight of anniversaries that people tend to get caught up in. What happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki must be kept in humanity's memory in perpetuity — this is the guiding principle of GLH and its volunteers. Trees, like us, are mortal. The closest tree to the epicenter of the bombing (370 meters away) is a Salix babylonica, or weeping willow. Given optimal care, this tree can live up to 100 years; its shoots may pass on its legacy across millennia. When the first atomic bomb detonated close to the nearby Aioi Bridge, the force of the blast broke apart the tree's trunk. In 1947, while surveying the apocalyptic scene of scorched rubble, Hiroshima mayor Shinzo Hamai found hope in how, despite such thorough devastation, nature still found a way to push through the dark shadows of war, the tree's trunk having already sprouted. In the late spring of 1947, Hamai listened to the demands of Hiroshima residents who'd 'finally started to wake up from their state of collapse.' They told Hamai that they wanted a peace festival so that they could 'tell their experience to the whole world.' Hamai urged caution, fearful that Hiroshima would become a 'laughingstock' or a city unreasonably focused on an impossible ideal. But, as Hamai put it in a recording discovered in 2019 by his family, 'The citizens weren't satisfied (with my call for caution). They said, 'Do it anyways, and fix things along the way.'' Hamai was impressed with their resolve. 'They believed it was their mission to hold this peace ceremony.' On August 6, 1947, the first peace ceremony in Hiroshima was held. Crowds of thousands can be seen in the historical photographs. Nearby stand the hibakujumoku. Damaged, but alive. They, like the people around them, had survived.
Japan Today
24-07-2025
- Politics
- Japan Today
Japan needs true vision of peace toward next 80 years
opinion By Nassrine Azimi In 1979, a Harvard University Professor and American sociologist, the late Ezra Vogel, published a book that became a runaway bestseller in both Japan and the United States. While most commentators at the time focused on its eye-catching main title, "Japan as Number One," the subtitle was equally compelling: Lessons for America. Vogel at times joked that his book had sold for the wrong reasons. He had tried to understand and explain the societal forces behind Japan's economic miracle, but an even stronger motivation had been his alarm at America's decline. He thought it was Japanese society as a whole that carried lessons for America. Living in Japan, I find myself periodically revisiting Vogel's book, reflecting on its ongoing relevance for our times. As America moves in directions unknown to its allies, enemies and maybe even to itself, what lessons might he have drawn for Japan today? He would start with a reality check of Japan's deep-rooted challenges: a region fraught with geopolitical tensions, the constant risk of large-scale natural disasters, an aging and declining population and other woes. Yet he would also be the first to remind of Japan's strengths, such as its peace credentials, its resilient democracy and rule of law, its educated population, its safety, world-class cultural traditions and public institutions. In light of the political and societal changes unfolding in the United States, however, I believe there are at least three immediate areas where Japan needs to significantly speed up its transformation. These are in peace diplomacy, higher education, and environmental sustainability. How can Japan maintain its peace credentials in a period of increasing security threats and military buildup in the region? How can it ensure its own protection and safeguard alliances, while at the same time preserving the Peace Constitution's legacy? How can it control a rising military budget without damaging the country's social fabric at a time of competing national expenditures? My peace activist friends in Hiroshima often criticize their government for not providing meaningful leadership in nuclear disarmament negotiations. On the other hand, considering Japan is under the nuclear umbrella of the United States, the government's stance is bound to be, at best, a difficult balancing act. Despite such constraints, Japan can do more to articulate its own unique and genuine vision of peace. Tokyo remains far too deferential to Washington. As times change, the world needs a more independent expression of what Japan means when it says peace. As to higher education, Japanese universities lag significantly in global rankings, with its best performer, the University of Tokyo, currently at around 28th. Despite decades of policies to consolidate and internationalize, the sector struggles to attract foreign talent. Japan's affordable higher education and attractive culture and society could be strong draws for international students, particularly at a time when many worry about the U.S. administration's policies on student visas and unsettling moves to muzzle academic freedoms. Yet language barriers and a lack of professional opportunities for foreign graduates remain daunting. I have worked with many bright students in Japan who ultimately, and reluctantly, left the country after graduation to settle elsewhere. This is a great loss. Japan needs to attract and keep foreign graduates and young professionals, helping them integrate much more easily. Language acquisition is key. Finally, it is clear that the current U.S. administration has decided to abdicate its environmental leadership role. Japan can step in to fill the gap but currently punches far below its weight: in a 2024 OECD survey of 30 countries, Japan ranked 23rd in sustainability. Despite technological prowess and a vast potential for renewable energy from geothermal, solar, and tidal sources, it is still highly dependent on fossil fuels for its energy needs. While ordinary citizens diligently sort out the mountains of plastic waste the country produces, groundbreaking innovation in waste management or the circular economy still seem in the distant future. Efforts to decarbonize infrastructure and promote green architecture lag, and the promised green revolution advances more at a crawl. For a country that seamlessly marries high-end technology with mottainai and wabi-sabi traditions, Japan is a natural source of leadership in addressing environmental threats. It should seize the chance. Eighty years after the war Japan has overcome many challenges, but it cannot remain as it is. To paraphrase the main character in "The Leopard" by author Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, "For things to remain the same, everything must change." Nassrine Azimi, a co-founder of a global initiative called Green Legacy Hiroshima which promotes peace through atomic-bombed trees, was an original member of the U.N. Institute for Training and Research and served as the first director of its Hiroshima Office. © KYODO
