In One Ear: Peace trees

Published 12:15 am Thursday, August 6, 2020

Today is the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, which was pivotal in ending World War II.

Hiroshima resident Hideko Tamura Snider was 10 years old when the atomic bomb was dropped. Her family suffered losses, and she was badly injured. She is pictured in a photo from her Facebook page.

Snider now lives in Medford, and is the co-founder of One Sunny Day Initiatives (osdinitiatives.com), an organization dedicated to peace and a nuclear-free future. One of their efforts is bringing seeds from Hiroshima trees that survived the 1945 bombing to be germinated and planted as “peace trees” in Oregon.

There are now 45 such trees in Oregon, one of which, a ginkgo, will be planted in Cartwright Park in Seaside . The Oregon Department of Forestry, to commemorate the 75th anniversary, released an online map showing the locations of the peace trees at bit.ly/PeaceTrees

When told about how many communities had planted the seedlings, Snider wrote that it “filled me with joy, remembering the long journey for both the tree(s) and myself. Thank you, people of Oregon, for your enduring faith in the future, in the resilience of life.”