Before we began, a quick note, this episode contains descriptions of violence and injuries that might be disturbing to some listeners.

Hi, Coco, this is Josh. Thank you for doing this. Oh, thank you for finding me.

We found Coco Kondo at her home outside of Kobe Japan

huddled in front of a zoom screen. Whenever she turned her camera on, the internet

went out, so I got only a brief glimpse of where she lives in a house that's attached to a church.

For Coco, this place is a throwback to how she grew up.

My father's a Methodist minister in the church in Hiroshima.

As a little girl, she was always tagging along with her father and desperate to get his attention.

There were constantly parishioners coming in and out to see him.

I could understand why he was so busy.

One day in the early 1950s, a group of young women showed up who Coco had never seen before.

Many high school junior high or senior high school students came to church one by one.

They met in the church's basement and sat together in folding

chairs. They sang hymns and talked for hours and they treated Cocoa like one of their own.

They were so sweet. They called me Coco-Chang.

Cocou-Chan.

They treated me like their little sister.

Week after week, they kept coming back to sing and to talk and to spend time with

cocoa. One day one of the women started combing cocoa's hair. When cocoa turned her head to look, she saw the woman's hand.

I was so sharp.

All the fingers was stick together, melted together. I wish I could ask her, what's happened to your hand?

Koko was too polite to ask that question. So she sat and listened, and gradually she learned what these meetings were about.

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