Current status and issues in environmental policy regarding conservation and utilization of A-bombed trees in Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Japan is the only country that has been attacked by nuclear weapons, having been hit twice – at Hiroshima and Nagasaki – in the 1945 bombing during World War II. 75 years later, the two cities appear as successful as any city unaffected by bombing as reconstruction and developments have erased the scars left by these devastating events. The remaining human A-bomb survivors are ageing, and numbers decline year by year, leaving fewer living reminders of the misery of nuclear weapons. However, scattered throughout the two cities, stark living survivors of the two blasts rise, each marked by the bombs. The A-bombed trees, which represent a variety of species, provide a living reminder of the catastrophic events as their trunks lean towards Ground Zero. Professor Emeritus Masakazu Suzuki, from the Faculty of Art and Design at the University of Tsukuba, notes that while many visitors and denizens of the two cities go about their days unaware of the existence of these trees, there are 160 trees in Hiroshima and approximately 30 in Nagasaki within a three-kilometre radius of Ground Zero. Suzuki leads a team that seeks to inform the general public about the existence and key characteristics of these remarkable trees. His aim is to ensure the conservation of the trees as well as promoting them as a living national asset and reminder of the atrocities of nuclear weapons.