The astonishing 390-year old bonsai tree that survived the Hiroshima atomic blast

Today, the white pine stands only a few feet tall, with a thick trunk and stubby green and yellowed needles.

“For one, it’s incredible to think that something could have survived an atomic blast”, said Weisberg, a 26-year-old student at the Georgetown University Law Center.

‘And then that by some happenstance a Japanese tree from the 1600s ended up here.’.

Nearly 70 years ago, on 6 August 1945, the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb “Little Boy” over Hiroshima. The tree was donated in 1976 by bonsai master Masaru Yamaki as part of Japan’s Bicentennial gift to the American people. “I get emotional just talking about it”.

Ensuring the continued survival of such an important piece of the collection is no easy task. The bonsai was donated without explanation to the National Arboretum in Washington, DC in 1976, only for its story-and astonishing age-to be revealed in 2001. Jack Sustic, curator of the Bonsai and Penjing Museum, told the Post that the tree must have been against a wall where it was shielded from the blast. It is the blending of nature and art, he said.

The 390-year-old Japanese white pine bonsai now sits in the museum courtyard for passersby to admire and behold.

It will be just one more small change for a tree that has been around since 1625.

“I usually prefer to state bonsai is much like a verb. It’s not a noun, it’s doing”.

Mr Sustic is charged with turning and watering the place, in addition to checking it for bugs on the daily schedule – and unlike every other memorial display, there’s no option the pine is overlooked and dies when.

He said he keeps a packed suitcase at home in case he must dash to the museum out of hours and provide the trees with emergency care. This distance, however, was just far enough away to shield it from the blast.

But strangely the members of the family – who might also runaway intact as they stayed a great many far – later realized that the tree had runaway significant amounts of the extinction from the blast. It blew out all the windows, leaving everyone inside cut from flying glass, but no one suffered permanent injury, according to the museum.

The tree has already long outlived its life expectancy and will be housed in the Arboretum’s refurbished Japanese Pavilion with the placard reading: “In training since 1625”.

This year the tree will move to the Japanese Pavilion, which is being renovated in honor of the Arboretum’s upcoming 40th anniversary.