Forty years later, a Japanese construction crew, digging a foundation for a memorial, found the tunnel. Among the rusted canteens and bleached bones, a backhoe operator named Sato saw a small leather pouch. It crumbled at his touch. But inside, pressed against a decayed strip of cloth, was a paper square.

The paper fluttered once, twice, then drifted toward the water.

I will be the wave that touches the shore.

He did not find the soldier’s name. But he found the last line, the one that had survived forty years of darkness and damp: