A Japanese Bonsai Gift To Americans

A very special bonsai was more than three hundred years old when Masaru Yamaki presented it to the American people as part of a bi-centennial gift from Japan. The White Pine had survived many wars since taken from the wild on Shrine Island (Miyajima), a small island a short distance across Hiroshima Bay. White Pines from this island are rare and very valuable.

The art and science of bonsai training has been part of Japanese culture for centuries. A bonsai will outlive many people, and it must be passed on to the next generation to preserve its life in a small tray. Masaru Yamaki learned the art of bonsai from his father, and then passed the tradition down to his own son. Only people who are trained in the bonsai tradition can really know when the tree is asking for water or fertilizer; they bond with the tree and have an understanding. A person caring for a bonsai not only answers its need for water and fertilizer, but also develops the shape and size of the tree with patient trimming and shaping of branches, roots and trunk.

Yamaki-san was born into a family of nurserymen who had raised prize bonsai for generations. His commercial nursery was located at his home in Hiroshima, Japan, and was surrounded by a tall wall.

At 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, a terrific explosion occurred in Hiroshima as the first atomic bomb exploded over the city. Every building within a three to four mile radius was flattened, and nearly everything beyond that point burned from a terrific firestorm. The city was hidden beneath a hideous mushroom cloud that boiled up, spreading radiation. Not only did thousands of people die that day, many thousands would die later from radiation burns or sickness.

On that morning, Yamaki-san was indoors with his family when suddenly the windows of the house shattered, cutting everyone with flying glass. Amazingly, no one was killed, while just as miraculously in the bonsai garden all the small trees sitting on benches against the surrounding wall also survived the blast.

After WWII Masaru Yamaki worked to bring the commercial growing of these small trees to Japan. He became prominent among bonsai gardeners and had a desire to make bonsai culture known throughout the world. He wanted Japanese bonsai held in high respect and demand.

His nursery became a school to teach young people the art and science he valued, and many of his students became influential in the bonsai community. Strange as it may seem, and in spite of the devastation of Hiroshima from the atomic bomb, in 1976 Yamaki-san presented the American people a bicentennial gift containing one of his most prized bonsai. This tree was happily accepted by the National Bonsai and Penjing Museum in Washington DC.

The museum curators knew nothing of the bonsai’s past. They had no idea that it had been collected as a small tree over three hundred years earlier and kept in the Yamaki family for five generations, nor that it resided in Hiroshima the day of the atomic bombing. The curators had no idea that this tree was a survivor of one of the most deadly wars in history.

One day two brothers, grandsons of Yamaki-san, wanted to see their grandfather’s gift. Their grandfather had died before they were born, so they never knew him, but they had heard of his gift to America. The brothers had never seen the tree, although they had seen pictures and heard family stories. They flew from Japan to America to view this ancient tree that was now approximately 375 years old. The museum curators were so delighted to hear of the tree’s history that they invited the brothers to return to the museum in America again. This time the brothers brought with them documents containing the missing information about the tree and their grandfather. The information about the Miyajima White Pine was added to the museum archives.