MEDFORD, Ore.– Special trees for a special purpose. That’s the idea behind a Medford woman’s initiative to plant special kinds of seeds across Oregon. What makes these seeds so special is the fact they come from trees that survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan during World War II.
Initially, Hideko Tamura Snider, 85, was focused on spreading peace through her nonprofit One Sunny Day Initiative – a project promoting nuclear non-proliferation, peace and reconciliation.
Since 2003 when she moved to Medford, Snider started developing the idea to send seeds of trees that survived the atomic bomb to cities across the United States. She partnered with Green Legacy Hiroshima to assist in its mission to spread peace trees throughout the world.
In 2017, the idea came to fruition with the first packet of seeds and help from Michael Oxendine, a professor from Southern Oregon University. The sapling began to grow marking a symbol of peace and a show of resiliency of life that reminded Snider of herself and her survival after the bombing of Hiroshima.
While she was only 10 at the time, merely a sixth-grader, Snider remembers clearly what happened.
“Just etched in my memory. I couldn’t erase it,” she said. “Inside the mushroom cloud, I think it lasted 10 or 15 minutes, shaking and the sound so terrifying.”
Roughly 80,000 people including her mother, her uncle and her close cousin Hideyuki died in the initial blast. Snider says she remembers crawling out from the rubble and into the streets where people laid on the ground, begging for help.
“I was just a child you know, I didn’t know what to do,” she said.
Her cousin Hideyuki, who was a grade above her, was near ground zero. She said he always had a fascination for planes and during the bombings would peer out to watch as they flew over the city. His infatuation with what ultimately killed him makes his loss so difficult to Snider.
“It tears my heart even today thinking about how he must have looked up and said ‘Oh B-29’ and his face and everything must have been scorched immediately,” she said.
74 years later, those memories haven’t died. Neither have the trees which Snider said over 100 or so survived the blast and continue to grow in Hiroshima.
“They’re saying look, look, life is wonderful,” said Snider.
With those stories still vivid, Snider hopes these trees will be a reminder to people of the horrors of war but also there can be life and hope after destruction.
“I can’t grow my mother. I can’t grow my cousin,” she said. “But the tree, I could.”
Oregon Department of Forestry is now growing most of the saplings. Several of the trees available are gingkos, persimmon, and camphors. However, Snider says they’re needing to find a place in California for the camphor seeds since they don’t thrive as well in the Pacific Northwest.
According to Jim Gersbach, a spokesperson from ODF for the project, there has been a show of interest from several cities including Salem, Beaverton, and Corvallis. Several public gardens, schools, and cemeteries are also applying for a tree.
ODF is only taking applications from public entities to provide everyone with an opportunity to see the trees as they grow. The applications are open through October 4th. To get one for your public space you can send an inquiry to [email protected] and they will send an application thereafter.
The agency says it plans to have plantings occur in the spring of 2020 and in line with the 75th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. While the time is earlier than the actual anniversary, ODF says spring season is the peak time in Oregon to get the saplings into the ground.
© 2024 KOBI-TV NBC5. All rights reserved unless otherwise stated.