{"id":6504,"date":"2026-03-16T15:19:19","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T07:19:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/?p=6504"},"modified":"2026-03-16T15:19:19","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T07:19:19","slug":"where-memory-stands-walking-between-hiroshima-and-marawi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/where-memory-stands-walking-between-hiroshima-and-marawi\/","title":{"rendered":"Where Memory Stands: Walking Between Hiroshima and Marawi"},"content":{"rendered":"

Raihan A. Yusoph<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

On November 30, 2024, I stood quietly before the Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima City. The late-autumn air was cold, and the river flowed gently beneath the bridges, carrying reflections of a city once reduced to ashes. Around me, visitors walked slowly, some in silence, others taking photographs. For them, this is a historical site. For me, it is something else, an encounter between two cities, two memories, and two unfinished stories of war.<\/p>\n

I had traveled to Hiroshima as a scholar, but I arrived as a survivor.<\/p>\n

In 2024, I was given the rare opportunity to become one of the sixty-three Filipino recipients of the Japanese Government MEXT scholarship. To my knowledge, I was the only Moro and Mranaw among the recipients. It was a moment of pride, but also a quiet burden. I carried not only my academic aspirations as a PhD student in International Peace at Hiroshima University, but also the lived experience of being an internally displaced person from Marawi City, which, like Hiroshima, had experienced destruction, loss, and the arduous work of rebuilding.<\/p>\n

From my apartment in Sun Square, Saijo, the train ride to Hiroshima City took about thirty-five minutes. It was a short distance geographically, yet a long journey in reflection. Hiroshima is now a city of prosperity, beauty, and resilience. It is a place where tragedy has been transformed into a global symbol of peace. Yet as I stood before the remains of the Atomic Bomb Dome, I could not help but think of another city, my own city, Marawi.<\/p>\n

Hiroshima lost approximately 140,000 lives in a single moment, and many more in the years that followed from radiation exposure. The scale of devastation is almost unimaginable. Marawi, by comparison, did not suffer the same immediate death toll. Yet the violence that unfolded in 2017, marked by urban warfare and aerial bombardment, left its own deep scars. Many civilians were killed, and others remain unaccounted for, their names missing from official records. The destruction was not only human but also spatial. Entire neighborhoods in Barangay Naga and Perez Street were erased. The schools, homes, historic padian,<\/em> and Bato Mosque, which is unrecognizable today due to changes in its structure and design, along with other mosques and spaces that once held life, were reduced to rubble.<\/p>\n

What is lost in war is not only life but also memory. As I gazed at Hiroshima\u2019s preserved ruins, carefully protected and contextualized within a narrative of peace, I thought of the spaces of my childhood in Marawi. I remembered the simple pleasures that gave meaning to everyday life. The ten-peso halo-halo<\/em> in Banggolo and the kwek-kwek<\/em> stalls, open from late afternoon until evening, lingered beside the restless hum of traffic, a familiar road traced by the routes of Saduc <\/em>Public, ISIS (named after the Ibn Siena Integrated School Foundation and carrying locals toward Basak Malutlut<\/em> to Sarimanok<\/em> to Prep), Mapandi<\/em>, and MSU Armak<\/em>. Along Barrio Paypay<\/em>, close to towak a bata<\/em>, rows of smoky grilled chicken filled the streets, mingling with the rich scent of spices and sauce that hung in the air. Osme\u00f1a Street awakened to the quiet rhythm of morning jogs, and before the day fully unfolded, we would pause to share apang sa malaig<\/em>, a simple, generous rice pancake, still warm in the early light. And then there was the Padian<\/em>, the beating heart of Lanao, where the city gathered, traded, argued, and lived, its pulse steady, its energy unmistakably our own.<\/p>\n

Inside the Padian<\/em> Mall, I remember the karinderya<\/em> where meals were shared without ceremony and conversations flowed as easily as the rice served on plastic plates. There were stalls selling affordable Levi\u2019s jeans and imitation branded clothing, where commerce blurred the lines between necessity and aspiration. In the Sultan area, one could find delicacies such as dodol, amik<\/em>, and other Mranaw foods that carried the taste of tradition. In the wet market, I watched my mother negotiate prices with quiet determination, asking for discounts on fish, shrimp, or chicken, not out of stinginess but out of care for a family budget stretched thin. These were not grand monuments. They were ordinary spaces. But they were ours.<\/p>\n

Today, many of these places exist only in memory. In Marawi, reconstruction is framed as progress, with roads widened, buildings redesigned, and new structures rising over ruins. Yet beneath this narrative lies a troubling reality: rebuilding has often been imposed from above, with little regard for memory, culture, or the lives once rooted in these spaces. Marawi risks becoming not a restored community but a project. For thousands of internally displaced people, rehabilitation remains unfulfilled. Nearly a decade after the siege, many still live in temporary shelters, facing daily uncertainty, limited water, unreliable electricity, and fragile livelihoods. The promise of return has become a prolonged wait. The younger generation now inherits a city without memory. In Hiroshima, memory is preserved. Ruins are protected, history is taught, and loss is acknowledged. Marawi is still searching for its story. Reconstruction must go beyond rebuilding; it must restore dignity, memory, and justice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Raihan A. Yusoph On November 30, 2024, I stood quietly before the Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima City. The late-autumn air was cold, and the river flowed gently beneath the bridges, carrying reflections of a city once reduced to ashes. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essay"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":false,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6504"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6506,"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6504\/revisions\/6506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}