ON AUGUST 31, 1942, HARRY, MARY, AND Jeanie, along with the Nagatas and Matsumotos, walked through the Tulare Assembly Center gate past rifle-toting sentries to an idling, soot-stained locomotive. Gray plumes of smoke curled over the 516 people assembled for the trek. On their twenty-eight-hour trip, they would cross their second desert in four months, the Gila, moving farther inland to another dust-clogged basin. Harry, Mary, and Jeanie took their seats. The soldiers pulled down the shades, allegedly for the evacuees’ own safety from belligerent mobs. Harry and Mary knew better. They were
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