In 2013, an important year for peace and justice history, Dr. Hope Elizabeth May, a professor in the Department of Philosophy, Religion and Anthropology at Central Michigan University, traveled to Hiroshima, Japan, and began learning about its peace culture, thanks to former Hiroshima Mayor Akiba Tadatoshi and Steve Leeper. Dr. May wrote a short post on Hiroshima's peace culture for the Peace Palace Library in December 2013 which can be read here.

Dr. May's encounter with the aforementioned ambassadors of Hiroshima's Peace Culture inspired her to organize the Hiroshima-Nagasaki poster exhibition and accompanying testimony of Hibakusha (A-Bomb survivors) first in 2014, and then in 2020-2021, when she directed the Center for International Ethics (CIE) at Central Michigan Univeristy. Dr. May's work in the space of "Hiroshima Peace Culture" caused her to learn about Green Legacy Hiroshima (GLH), a beautiful initiative spearheaded by the creative and nurturing soul of Dr. Nassrine Azimi and her international team. GLH works with international partners by sending them seeds from trees that survived the bombing of Hiroshima. The international partners then nurture and grow these seeds. This living project is a moving and powerful way of educating people about the peace culture of Hiroshima.

Dr. May began the process of acquiring the seeds from GLH in 2020. Sadly, the CIE was unexpectedly eliminated in 2021. In the midst of several growing projects, including the one with GLH, Dr. May created the Cora di Brazzà Foundation as a vehicle to continue these projects. As we know, Covid hit in March 2020, and this halted the seed dispatches of GLH.

Finally, with the lifting of Covid-era restrictions, GLH sent its first batch of Ginkgo seeds to Dr. May at the very end of 2022, just as a Michigan winter was upon us. Dr. May reached out to Central Michigan University student Eric Urbaniak of Central Michigan University's Central Sustainability to partner with the Cora di Brazzà Foundation in the GLH project. Eric worked with the City of Mt. Pleasant who agreed to plant the seeds at Nelson Park in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. The original plan was for planting to occur on Earth Day in 2024. However, the seeds sent in 2022 failed to germinate. Determined, Dr. May acquired a second batch of seeds from GLH in late November 2023. This second batch of Ginkgo seeds was planted in December 2023 and, thanks to the care provided by Karin Johnson at the Central Michigan University Greenhouse, these seeds have germinated. A small team (Dr. Hope Elizabeth May, Karin Johnson, Ava Brewer, Claire DeBlanc) aimed to plant the seeds on/near Earth Day (April 22) in 2025.

In late June 2024, the second batch of Gingko seeds were removed from the CMU Greenhouse in order to develop heartiness needed for the Michigan climate. With the 2023/2024 Central Sustainability Team now graduates, the saplings were under the care of the Cora di Brazzà Foundation and CMU Sustainability steward Tiffany Jurge. The saplings were not large enough to plant in 2025. Click here for reporting from 2025 about the project.

The extreme cold temperatures have posed a challenge to this second batch of seeds. The Spring of 2026 will determine whether the saplings have survived two brutal Michigan winters. If they have survived, they will likely not be able to be planted until the Spring of 2027. CMU Central Sustainability students Zoey Archbold and Jessica Reinhart will help steward the seeds and the project until this time.

This project teaches many lessons including one about time, care, nurture, and value. One lesson learned is that it takes a long time and persistent care from a network of committed people to grow value in the world. Another lesson is that economic value is not the
only value, nor is it the most important. While crucial, we should remember that economic value should serve the higher values, moral, aesthetic, and intellectual, as stated by industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) in 1907.

Click here to read and listen to reporting from 2023-2025 about the seeds. Video is also available here as well.