The Eucalyptus of Hiroshima Castle

An Australian tree survived the bomb in the grounds of a Japanese castle. The eucalyptus in the ninomaru at Hiroshima Castle stood 740 metres from the hypocentre and is registered as N07a7-01, never moved. Everything around it went. Hiroshima Castle had stood since the 1590s and was one of the few original keeps left in Japan; it came down in the blast and what stands there now was rebuilt in concrete in 1958. The castle grounds were not a park in 1945. They held the headquarters of the Second General Army, which is part of why the city was a target, and the ninomaru where this tree grows was inside a working military compound. Beside it on the same register entry is a giant pussy willow at the same distance. How a eucalyptus came to be planted here is not recorded on the city's list, though the species was widely brought into Japan from the late nineteenth century for its speed. It has a habit that suits this ground: eucalypts carry dormant buds under the bark along the whole trunk, which is exactly the equipment a tree needs to come back after fire.