“History has a habit of repeating itself, sometimes you have to look to the past to see the future.”
That’s what my dad used to say. He came to Hiroshima during R&R in the early 1950s, after his Jeep was blown up in the Korean War. The city was still rubble, scarred and silent. He had a photo taken on the steps of a building near the shadows the ones burned into stone by the bomb. That image stuck with me my whole life.
Today, I stood in that same city but it wasn’t rubble anymore. It was cherry blossoms and school kids and silent reflection. And I understood, finally, what he meant.
Standing Where the World Changed
We started at the Peace Memorial Park, where the air still feels heavy despite the quiet. You walk under trees, past memorials, and eventually, you find yourself in front of the A Bomb Dome the skeletal remains of a building that survived when nothing else did. It’s haunting, beautiful, and real.
Then there’s the Cenotaph, perfectly aligned with the Dome in the distance, the eternal flame flickering in between. The black stone reads:
“Let all the souls here rest in peace; for we shall not repeat the evil.”
It echoed my dad’s words so sharply I had to pause.
Inside the Peace Memorial Museum, it’s raw. You see scorched school uniforms, fused lunchboxes, and heartbreaking stories. But one thing that’s barely mentioned if at all is how the UK helped build the bomb why America chose this site and how it all came to this!?
It’s just a piece of the puzzle that gets lost in the silence.
The Step That Held a Shadow
In the museum, I found the stone step my dad told me about. Preserved behind glass now, but still bearing the faint silhouette of someone who sat there as the bomb detonated. The heat flash etched their shadow into the stone.
He sat on that very step back in the day, when it was still outside. And now I stood in front of it. Different decade. Same silence, more than likely thinking the same as him. What the hell..
After all that, we needed to breathe. We wandered over to Shukkeien Garden, it was just a couple hundred yen to enter and worth every one. It was like stepping into a painting.
Cherry blossoms floated in the air. The pond shimmered. And Georgia climbed to the top of the arched bridge, looking out at the water like she’d found her own piece of peace.
She’s the future my Dad was talking about. And today, she stood where history once broke and where beauty now grows.
This was a full circle moment for my dad, for me, and for my family and I felt honoured saddened and joyous at the same time.
Hiroshima isn’t just a place where something terrible happened. It’s a city that rebuilt. A place that chose peace. And a reminder that if we stop looking back, we risk losing the map forward, as my Dad said…
“History has a habit of repeating itself, sometimes you have to look to the past to see the future.”
I think he was right now more than ever given the state of current world affairs
