The city of Nagasaki will work with popular singer, songwriter and actor Masaharu Fukuyama to promote peace through trees that survived the 1945 U.S. atomic bombing of the southwestern Japan city, officials said recently.

The city aims to start the "Nagasaki Kusunoki" (camphor trees) project later this month, sharing online videos of the trees and maps specifying their locations. Nagasaki has 46 trees that withstood the heat and blast of the atomic bomb, according to the officials.

Because the trees can live for several hundred years, they have been seen as "silent storytellers" of the devastation caused by the bombing on Aug. 9, 1945, three days after a similar attack on Hiroshima in western Japan in the final days of World War II.

Fukuyama, a 51-year-old Nagasaki native whose parents survived the bombing, is scheduled to talk about the trees on radio and social media as the project's producer.

In April 2014, he released "Kusunoki," a song about a camphor tree that survived the bombing at a shrine located near the hypocenter.

Supplied photo shows singer songwriter Masaharu Fukuyama. (Kyodo) 

Since the trees hit by the atomic bomb were hollowed out and required treatment, the singer started raising funds in December that year to preserve them with the money later given to the city.

The city of Nagasaki will spend about 13 million yen ($123,000) on the project, including the donations received through Fukuyama's fundraising.

Fukuyama is also known for his acting career, starring in "Like Father, Like Son," a film directed by Hirokazu Koreeda that received the Prix du Jury at the 2013 Cannes International Film Festival.