The Miracle Pine

photo by Yasu ( talk ) · CC BY-SA 3.0

photo by Morio · CC BY-SA 4.0

The only survivor of 70,000 pines, it died in 2012: today it has a steel core inside its trunk.

The Takata-Matsubara pine forest, planted 350 years ago as a windbreak, numbered about 70,000 trees: the tsunami of 11 March 2011 brought down all of them but one, a pine 173 years old and 27.5 metres tall. It survived for one more year and died in May 2012 from the salt water absorbed by its roots: it has been preserved by inserting a steel core into the original trunk, and it still stands on the same spot as a symbol of the reconstruction.

Monument in the Takata-Matsubara Memorial Park, in Rikuzentakata, on the site of the old coastal pine forest destroyed by the 2011 tsunami.

ℹ️ Freely accessible during park hours, open 24 hours; the paid facilities are closed outside the 9:00–17:00 or 18:00 window. The Tsunami Memorial Museum is in the same park, about 10 minutes' walk and more than 500 metres away.

🚉 Kiseki-no-Ippon-Matsu (Miracle Pine) · 15 min walk

Sources: city.rikuzentakata.iwate.jp · ja.wikipedia.org

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