Hayashi Tsue, the mother of a girl who died at Shiroyama Elementary School on the day of the bombing, planted young cherry trees in the playground of the school in memory of her daughter and all the victims she had seen during her harrowing search for her child in the days after the attack. No saplings were available anywhere in the city, so a gardener transported them from another prefecture northeast of the city. As the trees grew, every spring Hayashi quietly observed the beauty of the trees, consoling herself by imagining that her daughter’s soul had transformed into their blossoms.
