Celebrate the arrival of Spring at the National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington DC. The official purpose of the festival is to commemorate the enduring friendship between the people of the United States and Japan. In 1912, more than 3,000 cherry trees were shipped on a Japanese ocean liner to Seattle and transported by train to Washington, where First Lady Helen Herron Taft helped plant the first two on the banks of the Tidal Basin.
