The large camphor trees at Sanno Shinto Shrine are located within the shrine precincts in Sakamoto 2- chome, Nagasaki City. Before the precincts of the Sanno Shinto Shrines a road called the Urakami Highway once ran in the Edo era. In those days perhaps these large camphor trees provided shade to those passing along the road and a spot for weary travelers to take a rest.

After the Meiji era the shrine became the village shrine of Urakami Yamazato Village was subsequently given the shakaku* ranking of Nagasaki prefectural shrine, and during the war was the scene for group photographs of reservists and the Women's National Defense Association members who would pose on the steps of the approach to the shrine. It is also said that the local children's prayers for Japan's victory in the war were made here on the eighth day of every month. (*The shakaku system was a ranking of shrines. The system was abolished in 1946, when the Second World War had ended and the management of shrines ceased to be under the control of the government.)

The main shrine and all the other buildings at Sanno Shinto Shrine, located around 800 meters away from the hypocenter, were totally destroyed when the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, and the branches and leaves of these large camphor trees were blown away leaving just their thick charred-black trunks, which looked just as though they were dead. However, about two months after the bombing new buds started to sprout, a sight that was captured in photographs of the time. The trees later steadily regained their health, and after a few years revived to become large camphors growing abundant foliage.

The area around them was left in a state of complete ruin by the atomic bomb, and the vigor of these trees became a powerful source of encouragement to those who had lost not only their families and relations but also their homes.

As the first, second and third gateways at the entrance of the shrine precincts were destroyed by the bombing, the trees had a rope to mark the consecrated area tied around them and serve as a substitute to the gateways as the point marking the extent of the shrine's precincts and its boundary with the secular world.

Although the upper parts of the two trees snapped in the blast wind, their trunks and boughs later started to grow again, creating a great canopy measuring around 40 meters from east to west and 25 meters from north to south. Damage due to the atomic bomb and rotting due to age are visible in their trunks, and this has led to hollows forming in about half of the trunks. A typhoon in 2006 caused damage to the extent of which a large branch snapped off from the trunk of one of the trees, but the local community centering on the shrine and its parishioners continue to maintain the flourishing trees with the support of tree doctors and so on, and the two camphor trees silently watch over the people of the locality. Along with the gateway that was left standing on one pillar by the bomb, these large camphor trees have become symbolic entities conveying the damage caused by the Nagasaki atomic bomb.