Hibakujumoku: the surviving trees
Hibakujumoku, also known as A-bombed trees, are the Japanese legacy of that tragic August 1945.
By mixing Hibaku, meaning bombed, and Jumoku, tree or forest, Japan wanted to give a name to those plants that, after being nearly wiped out by the devastation of the atomic bombs, found the space and energy to grow again. Where life struggled to restart, where death seemed to have control over space and time, the trees pulled on their roots, sprouting lushly again.
The surviving trees in Japan number about 170 and belong to 32 different species. Among those surveyed are a Gingko biloba, a Japanese black pine (Pinus thunbergii) and a muku (Aphananthe aspera), also encountered and mentioned by the Italian botanist Stefano Mancuso, in his book L’incredibile viaggio delle piante, of which he recounts and romanticizes, “normal trees on the surface, if it were not for the obvious feeling of respect and, I would say, affection they aroused in the people who were there to meet them.”
For the locals, in fact, it is a real encounter with these trees as a symbol of a past that brought a nation to the brink and all of humanity to a confrontation with its conscience.
According to studies conducted on the effects of those first two atomic bombs, the plants would have suffered only on the exposed portions and above the ground, while the underground portions and root systems would not have been directly affected because they were protected by the soil. What is surprising – and relevant to note – is that the power of the explosion in terms of heat released in the first three seconds of impact was estimated to be 40 times that of the Sun. In the areas contiguous to the epicenter the destruction was total, but already a few hundred meters away some trees survived, despite the damage sustained.
About 370 meters away from the epicenter was located the absolute closest surviving tree to the explosion: a weeping willow, and about 600 meters away a camphor tree, now, after nearly 80 years, still alive.
A-bombed tree: Camphor tree, 600 meters from the epicenter, Nagasaki. Credit: Katy McCormick, 2013.
Resiliere
La resilienza, qui intesa come capacità di rispondere plasticamente a eventi più o meno traumatici, è ciò che spinge gli organismi a raggiungere un nuovo equilibrio una volta superate delle complicazioni, siano esse incendi, sbalzi termici, o, come in questo caso, una bomba atomica.
Gli ecosistemi sono in costante adattamento a queste forme di disturbo, che possono essere in parte provocate da eventi naturali e in parte dalle attività antropogeniche. Gli organismi vegetali, in quanto sessili, hanno dovuto necessariamente sviluppare delle capacità di risposta drasticamente diverse rispetto agli organismi animali che, da un qualsiasi disturbo, possono prendere le distanze.
To resile
Resilience, understood here as the ability to respond plastically to more or less traumatic events, is what drives organisms to reach a new equilibrium once they have overcome complications, be they fires, temperature changes, or, as in this case, an atomic bomb.
Ecosystems are constantly adapting to these forms of disturbance, which can be partly caused by natural events and partly by anthropogenic activities. Plant organisms, as sessile, have necessarily had to develop drastically different response capabilities than animal organisms, which can distance themselves from any disturbance. The strength of plants also lies in their cellular composition: unlike animals, they are in fact endowed with meristematic tissues. Meristematic cells are characterized by an invaluable flexibility: becoming what the plant needs, when it needs it. The flexibility of meristems is essential during seed germination to differentiate what will be the aerial component and what will be the underground component, but it can also occur in the midst of cell life. The pliability of these tissues is of primary importance for plant development: they contribute to strenuous height growth in search of light, leaf turnover, while maintaining the capacity for differentiation. Also due to the ability of meristems to allow regrowth of damaged tissues, plants have developed and continue to develop amazing resilience mechanisms.
What do Hiroshima and the climate threat have in common?
In the aftermath of the atomic explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a perceptible and justified sense of vulnerability circulated among the surviving inhabitants. As Robert Jay Lifton reports in one of his best-known study-interviews, titled Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima, the fear that circulated most was related to vegetation and its return to normalcy. Would grass ever grow back? Would more flowers ever bloom? The feeling of desolation and abandonment charged the atmosphere with heavy frustrations and fears, probably due, in part or completely, to more or less delayed effects of radiation, justifies Lifton.
But with the passage of time, the plants began to sprout again, the grass to grow, the cherry trees to blossom. Even animals returned, after a slow recovery, to a place that seemed favorable and prolific to them.
According to some, the climate crisis is nothing more than an atomic bomb with protracted effects over a longer period of time.
The Hibakujumoku are living proof that although human beings have achieved the ability to become extinct with their own creations, mountains will persist in their majesty, rivers will continue to flow along valleys, and forests will continue to breathe in their patient growth.
Graduated in Environmental Sciences and student of Environmental Humanities at Ca’ Foscari. Passionate about the environment, innovation and communication.
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