I was a senior in high school when the first Gulf War began. My family and I were living in Tokyo, Japan, at the time, so it was about 9:00 in the morning on Thursday, January 17. I was sitting in calculus class.

As the world had approached the January 15 deadline and Saddam still wouldn’t get out of Kuwait, I’d read the International Herald Tribune at home every night, feeling the tension grow. My friends and I would talk about the impending war during our 75-minute train ride out to the American School in Japan. Many of my friends loved to blab about politics and religion and anything controversial. (The cool kids called us the Nerd Herd.) Riding to school that morning, the deadline behind us but war not yet begun, we were in full blather.

So it wasn’t a surprise when, sitting in class shortly after 9:00, I saw my friend appear in the doorway near the back of the room, holding up a handwritten sign that said “WAR.” Not a surprise, but still kind of shocking.

The administration set up a big TV in the school lobby. My school didn’t have periods — when you weren’t in class, your time was your own — so a changing crowd gathered in front of the TV as the day went on. I remember talking with one of my friends in physics class later that day, saying to him, “I can’t believe our country is at war.” At war. Our country is at war. The words sounded so strange. It was like this huge legalism had clicked into place. I could hear the gears shift. Things just felt different.

That afternoon I rode home with a friend of mine. We listened to the news on Walkmans. Or maybe we listened together on his Walkman. I can’t remember. But that night (or maybe it was the next night), a few of my friends came over and we sat on the couch together, glued to CNN, watching Richard Roth report from Israel as Scud missiles fell.

That Saturday, our school’s annual Battle of the Bands went on as scheduled. Student rock bands from the international schools in the Tokyo area came out to ASIJ to compete. My friend Joe, an amazing guitar player, channeled the ghost of Jimi Hendrix by playing “The Star-Spangled Banner” on his electric guitar.

It brought down the house, and his band won.

Because we were Americans living overseas, our school took some precautions. Many ASIJ students rode to school on buses that said “The American School in Japan” in big letters. The administration decided to cover those signs for a while, so they wouldn’t draw attention to the fact that there were American kids on board. Sure, this was Japan, a very safe country, but we were still living overseas.

Had we been in the States at the time, of course, we would have felt safe and secure. The United States was the most powerful country in the world.

Our nation might have been at war, but nothing bad would ever happen on American soil.

That would be unthinkable.