I escaped the bullying by using it as an excuse — I applied to a private middle school in Shimonoseki, in the neighboring prefecture of Yamaguchi. Baiko Jo Gakuin, a Christian school with deep historical roots.

In Japan, Christian schools are called “mission schools.” I didn’t fully understand what that word meant until I traveled through Paraguay in South America, years later. But that’s a story for another chapter.

The physical bruises stopped at this school. But I still didn’t fit. I sank. My grades stayed somewhere in the bottom ten. I couldn’t understand the point of studying. Reading was difficult, almost painful.

But in second year of middle school, one book reached me: the autobiography of Édith Piaf, “Ma Vie.” Her rough, unpolished writing went straight into my chest.

Around that time I saw “The Glenn Miller Story” at a revival screening. When the music of that era filled the theater, something in me recognized it — familiar, warm, like coming home. When “Little Brown Jug” played in the final scene, tears came by themselves. Not sadness. Something deeper. What I’d now call a soul responding.

Then my legs broke out in a terrible rash. It spread and worsened until I could barely walk. No doctor could find the cause. My mother said: “Go to your father.”

A few years before, my father had entered the world of Shugendo — a Japanese ascetic practice weaving together Buddhism, Shinto, and something older. Mountain retreats. Austere discipline. Spirit work. I had resisted it. But the rash wouldn’t heal. So I sat down in front of him.

And I burst into tears. “I want to go back to America,” I said — though I had never lived there. The conclusion arrived: perhaps I had been an American soldier who died in fire, in a past life. My father told me to buy a statue of Mary and pray to it every day. Within a few days, the rash was gone.

That was when my questioning of the spiritual began — and never stopped.

In middle school I had exactly one friend. She was always in the top five of our class. We went to live music venues together after school, on weeknights. One day, the school called our parents in. My father was summoned. “Your daughter has been going to live music venues, which are forbidden by school rules.”

My father answered: “Is music something bad? My daughter goes there to listen to music.”

That night, over his evening drink, he said happily: “I used to go to live venues all the time.”

I kept going to school because I was afraid of my father’s anger if I didn’t. But most mornings, I sat at the Mister Donut in front of the station and watched the train to Shimonoseki leave without me.

There was a young woman who worked there — Matsuzaki-san, around 21. She always noticed me. On the days it was obvious I couldn’t face it, she’d fill a bag with donuts: “Shoko-chan, share these with your friends at school.” Then she’d send me off.

She was dating someone from one of the most popular local bands. Our town was known as the birthplace of “Mentai Rock” — the Fukuoka rock scene. She told me about the Roosters, about Sheena & The Rockets, a band I’d loved as a child. She even babysat for Sheena’s kids.

One day I told her: “I don’t want to go to high school.”

She looked at me with a serious face and took my hand. “Shoko-chan. Please. Go to high school. Even if it’s just for me. Those three years — if you can get through them, your life will get easier. I promise.”

She was so serious that I had no choice. I pouted and said “okay.” But my grades were too poor and my absences too many to continue at my current school. I told her: “I’ll take a year off and find another high school.”

“On the day of your entrance exam, come to the shop first,” she said.

The night before the exam, I was at a live show, shaking my head to the music. Then exam day came. I went to Matsuzaki-san’s Mister Donut.

“I made you something. Don’t open it until after the test.”

She pressed a small, folded piece of paper into my hand. She filled a bag with donuts. “Go. You’ll be absolutely fine.”

After the exam, I unfolded the paper. In very small, very unsteady handwriting — someone who found writing difficult — the words filled every centimeter of that tiny page:

“You will pass. You will pass. You will pass.”

Because she struggled to write, I understand now — even more than I did then — what it cost her to fill that page.

A few days after the exam, my parents were summoned to the school again. This time my mother went.

“They told me I was supposed to be called in last year,” my mother said, laughing. “But I was so careless, I completely forgot to go! Well, that’s good news then—they said they’d let you into the high school.”

The school explained: they had failed to communicate to my parents that high school progression was difficult for me and that I should apply elsewhere. Since the communication failure was the school’s responsibility, and my attendance record was just sufficient, they would allow me to advance to the high school division.

I got into high school. Most students there went on to university. For the first time, I wanted that too. I actually studied. But when I told my mother, she cried: we didn’t have the money.

So I looked at the job listings on the school bulletin board and applied to be a tour bus guide for Teizan Kanko, based in Kyoto. My attendance record was terrible — too many late arrivals, too many absences. So I told them myself: my mother had been ill. At the interview, we had to sing. I’d prepared a popular song of the time. But the night before, I decided: I’d sing Doris Day’s “Que Será, Será.” I loved it. I knew every word.

I got the job. Looking back, I think it was the “Que Será, Será.” And my life has turned out to be exactly that — a life that only makes sense if you sing it.

I quit in three months. Ha.

But at that job, I visited a place called Reiyama Kannon. I didn’t know it then. Twenty-five years later, that one visit became the single shared language — the only thread — connecting my path to the journey of the former POWs I would spend years trying to remember.