A 400-year-old white pine bonsai tree survived the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

Narration by Peter Coyote leads us through an imagining of its origins as a seed from a pine cone in lush forests, through generations of tending by the Yamaki family and it’s protection from the blast by a sheltering wall.

It is a meditation on the memories held by trees, and the connectedness of all things through the very atoms that caused such destruction. The US narration matches the tree’s current home in Washington, a gift to the US from the Yamaki family in 1976, and speaks of it as a symbol of reconciliation.

VR allows us to be immersed in the rings of the tree and see abstract representation of atoms in an otherwise a linear treatment of a simple story.

If you’d like to watch this short film, go to the Global Oneness Project.