Around Hiroshima grow trees that survived the atomic bombing of 6 August 1945 — in Japanese, hibakujumoku, the survivor trees. Everything above ground was destroyed, yet within a year or a few years they grew back, and they carry the marks of it still: some lean so far that they need supports to stand, others bear hollows in their trunks. They are living witnesses — deformed, patient, and stubbornly green.

The Annual Ritual

Each summer, I send postcards picturing these trees to Japan, franked with stamps of matching theme, so that they can be cancelled in Hiroshima on the anniversary of the bombing. Image, stamp, date and place all speak of the same thing — survival — which makes each card a maximum card in the fullest sense: a small annual act of remembrance that travels through the ordinary mail.

This project is a quiet companion to my World Peace Day maxicards: the Peace Bell that appears in that project was itself a gift from Hiroshima to its twin city, Montréal — its inscription reads ‘future of hope’ (希望の未来).

The Cards

The postcards come from the series Green Greetings from 160 A-Bombed Trees in Hiroshima, which pictures the surviving camphor trees as symbols of hope. Each card is cancelled with the pictorial postmark of the Hiroshima Ōmiya post office, whose design itself shows a survivor tree.

2023 — cancelled on World Peace Day

The first cards were cancelled on 21 September 2023, doubling as the Japanese variety of the World Peace Day maxicards.

2024 — cancelled on the anniversary of the bombing

The 2024 cards were cancelled on 6 August — seventy-nine years, to the day, after the bomb.