On the Road: Lessons learned, or not

As I drive up towards Parker from Blythe, I always pass through Poston, and I usually stop at the Poston Memorial.

Poston isn't really quite a complete ghost town in the physical sense, there's still a fire station, and Woody's II convenience store is always a draw. But in the metaphysical, and in scars on the desert floor, it is a town of ghosts.

Poston was built in April, 1942 for one purpose: internment. Almost 18,000 Japanese Americans lived there until March, 1946 in a place that was as far from epitomizing Japan as New York resembles a Yanamami village.

It's hot here, folks. And dusty - the common good stiff wind will put sand in all your nooks and crannies without the fun of a beach party. It's in a more interesting part of the Colorado Desert than, say, Thermal, but that's not saying all that much unless you're really into botany and the occassional gila monster.

Personally, I think the folks living in Poston during WWII were more interested in survival, and how to get the sand out of their teeth. But, they did manage to build a school, and have various social groups, so maybe botanizing was one of the ways to pass the time. Still, it's not the rainforest. You see one ocatillo, you've pretty much seen them all.

The thing that always gets me to stop here is the Memorial. Or perhaps the ghosts, pulling at me to never forget, and turning my steering wheel to the right. Here is a reminder to never repeat the mistakes of the past, a goal with every Presidential news conference I am less and less hopeful of meeting success.

The preceding few days on the radio before pulling up to take this picture, in addition to immigrant health care, Mexican polka, folk music, opera, and Roy Orbeson, were filled with news on vigilante groups patrolling the border, immigration "reform," secret prisons, Iraqi war, potential Iranian war, torture, illegal wire tapping, and detention of terrorist suspects without due process of law. The next day would break the news of a huge database being kept by the NSA on phone calls by unsuspected (and unsuspecting) American citizens.

And there, in front of me, was a tall cylindrical monolith practically shouting, "THIS IS WRONG! DON'T DO IT AGAIN!"

Some days, I think the only thing keeping vast communities of Mexican-Americans and Arab-Americans, and, Hell, French-Americans from being rounded up and sent to Glamis is this bit of concrete. And the huge off-road community- they'd have something to say about all those people taking up space on their sand dunes. Both of which are losing their influence with the people in power as they continually cite "national security" as a reason for thumbing their noses at constitution-protected rights.

Take a look. Read a bit. Think of losing your home and being sent to a camp in the middle of crap for no other reason than your ancestry.



Don't let it happen again.