KEVIN McCORRY, HOST: I’m Kevin McCorry and this is ‘Jukebox Journey.’
[MUSIC MONTAGE: “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb” by Spoon, “Cherry Bomb” by The Runaways, “Cherry Bomb” by John Cougar Mellencamp]
KM: We’re unstuck in time, jumping through decades and genres, meditating on a theme. This week: The bloom of the cherry trees.
[MUSIC: “I Wish My Love Was A Cherry” by Lisa Knapp]
KM: From 2010, Lisa Knapp.
Around this time every year in Philadelphia, the cherry tree buds explode in a dazzling display of whites and pinks.
It’s a beauty that so perfectly captures the turn of spring: pom-poms of nature cheering the change and offering a storybook backdrop for picnics and promenades.
[MUSIC: “He Needs Me” by Shelley Duval]
KM: Shelley Duval, singing in 1980.
[MUSIC SWELL]
KM: But in a blink, the blooms peak and the delicate leaves of the cherry trees shimmer to the ground. Suddenly, the branches that remain feel naked and muted. A reminder that, even amid the glow-up of spring, nothing gold can stay.
[MUSIC: “Cherry Blossom (Sakura Sakura)” by Yonekawa Toshiko & Megumi Yonekawa]
It’s tempting then to think of the cherry tree as a sign of the ephemeral, fleeting nature of life. A reminder to stop and recognize the glory around us before it passes.
Maybe true, but that misses the larger story. One that, in America, starts in the late 1800s with one persistent woman chasing a dream.
[MUSIC SWELL]
KM: Eliza Scidmore was a writer and photographer from DC whose travels to Japan inspired a decades-long advocacy campaign to bring sakura cherry trees to the banks of the Potomac.
After years of ‘nos’ and ‘we can’ts’ and ‘it’s not practicals’ her big break came when she got the ear of then-First Lady Helen Taft. That led to Japanese officials getting on board and gifting America thousands of cherry trees that were planted in DC starting in the spring of 1912.
[MUSIC: “Garden Song” by David Mallett]
KM: From 1975, David Mallett.
So how does Philadelphia come into play? After the DC success, by 1926 the country was set to mark a major milestone: the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
And upon that occasion, Japan sent the city 1,600 cherry trees — planted in batches along what was then known as East and West River Drive and, below Belmont Plateau, the stunning hallway of blooms that have become a modern Instagrammer’s delight.
[MUSIC: “Another Sunny Day” by Belle and Sebastian]
KM: Belle and Sebastian from 2006.
Over the years the trees have endured as a symbol of resilience, one that was tested to its limits in the 1940s as the U.S. and Japan wrought destruction on each other during World War II.
[MUSIC: “The Best Goddamn Band in Wyoming” by No-No Boy]
KM: The folk artist No-No Boy from 2021, in a song about a band that formed inside a Japanese internment camp in the U.S. in the 1940s.
But after the war, as Japan worked to rebuild, cherry trees again played a role. With many of Japan’s most prized gardens destroyed, the U.S. sent buds from the original trees it was gifted back to Tokyo. It’s a giving cycle that helped restore relations in an alliance that has since become one of America’s strongest.
[MUSIC: “A Spoonful Weighs a Ton” by The Flaming Lips]
KM: Through the generations, the two countries have continued to gift each other trees. We send them dogwoods. They send us cherrys. And the blooms that come and go each year aren’t mere fleeting beauty, but a century long testament to overcoming adversity and finding peace.
[MUSIC SWELL]
KM: The Flaming Lips from 1999.
I’m Kevin McCorry and this has been a Jukebox Journey on WHYY.
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