Bombed by atomic bomb and still alive

Moses Weisberg was walking his bicycle through the National Arboretum in Northeast Washington when he stopped at a mushroom-shaped tree. The first thing he noticed was the thickness of the trunk, estimated at almost a foot and a half in diameter. And then there was the abundance of spindly leaves, a healthy head of hair for a botanical relic 390 years old.

But it was only when he learned the full history of the tree, a Japanese white pine donated in 1976, that he was truly stunned. The tree, a part of the Arboretum's National Bonsai and Penjing Museum, has not only navigated the perils of age to become the collection's oldest; it survived the blast of an atomic bomb, Little Boy, dropped over Hiroshima, Japan, during World War II.

"For one, it's amazing 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."

The bonsai tree's history is being honoured this week, as Thursday marks the 70th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. But visitors can see the tree as part of the museum's permanent collection throughout the year.

The tree, donated by a bonsai master named Masaru Yamaki, was part of a 53-specimen gift to the United States for its 1976 bicentennial. Little was known about the tree until March 8, 2001, when — with no advance notice — two brothers visiting from Japan showed up at the museum to check on their grandfather's tree.

"I find it amazing that Masaru Yamaki could give a priceless bonsai basically to his enemy and not say a word about it," said Felix Laughlin, president of the nonprofit National Bonsai Foundation. "I get emotional just talking about it."