When David Takeda walked through the gates at Manzanar, under the barbed wire, past the guard towers with mounted automatic weapons pointed down and directly at him, into the enclosed compound, and saw the tar-paper barracks, the dirt and dust whipping across the dry, barren yard, the city of Asian faces herded together under the American flag, he freaked.

  As much as you'd ever see a Buddhahead raised in L.A. freak; which means he sighed, shook his head, looked down at the ground and trudged forward.

  And his blood pressure skyrocketed, his heart raced, his throat contricted, his eyes stung and his ribs tightened into a stranglehold around his lungs, all of which you did not see.

It had only been two days since he had put his sister Kate and her kids on a train, in the same Gardena lumberyard his grandparents and his parents had departed from over half a century ago, to take them to first the horse stalls at Santa Anita Racetrack, then the American concentration camps at Rohwer, Tule Lake, Manzanar.

  His folks and other Niseis just called it camp.

  "We met in camp," they'd say:  "We were in camp together" "Our families lived next to each other in camp," they'd say.

  Kids all thought they were talking about summer camp until they got to college and found out their parents' camp fit Webster's definition of a concentration camp.

  David kissed Kate and held her tight.  Little sister, forty-seven years old, married with kids of her own.  He was glad they were a huggy family.  Not so Japanese.

  "Are you sure you don't want to come with us?" she said.

  "Soon as Johnny gets home, we'll take off.  By the time we report to Manzanar, Ray should be back with you guys."

  Kate's husband Ray had been taken away by the FBI one week before, the day ReVac was announced.  After they were satisfied that his import/export business had truly gone belly up, they would transfer him to Manzanar to rejoin his wife and kids.  It shouldn't take long.

  The train whistle blew.

  The American soldiers, wearing helmets bearing an uncomfortable resemblance to Nazi helmets, began herding the evacuees into the cattle cars.

   David's eleven-year-old nephew Graham shuffled along to his American-made Discman clone, listening to the number one hit on the Billboard charts, "I Capped a Jap (It's My Patriotic Duty)" by DJ Patriot Missile.  Like everything of commercial worth, it was catchy, had high production values and no one really got the message right away.

  The boy danced onto the train, no idea where he was going.  A great adventure, done to the beat of a very popular song that was, after all, about them.  And how often could Americans of Japanese ancestry say that?

  "First time this many Buddhaheads been on time for something," David said, looking around at all the people who looked like him, thick, beige luggage tags fastened with wire to their collars.

  Buddhahead standard time:  either an hour early or a half hour late.

  Kate was always early.  He and Johnny were always late.

  At first he thought it was a family thing.

  When they were growing up, they never saw a movie from the beginning.  They never seemed to plan on going to a movie.  They all just meandered out of the house any ol'time, tiptoed into the theater in the middle of the main attraction, saw the end, sat through cartoons and preview, then the crappy second feature, then the beginning of the first one, and just when he was starting to remember who was who and figure out what they saw before, his parents would wake up and tell them this is  where they came in and they were leaving now.

  He began to wonder if other families were like that, or if only Japanese American families were so irritatingly nonki and late all the time.

  The train whistle blew, softly this time, almost whispering for them to please leave quietly.

  There were no TV cameras, no Minicams to be seen.

  No footage of American citizens being herded onto cattle cars for future historical re-interpretationists to throw in their faces.

  The great lesson of Watergate: Never leave a paper trail.

  The lesson of Rodney King: Minimize video opportunities.

  David didn't see any old folks, which was good.

  Standing by the ramp to the cattle car was one man with a Japanese American Citizens League badge, handing out pamphlets on what internees could expect and how to cope with this situation.  The JACL was once again trying to make the best of a bad situation, hoping the President would realize the folly of eliminating law-abiding taxpayers from the economy while they tried to formulate plans to prove, one more time, to their fellow Americans that they were loyal.

  Anyone with any money got out of town as soon as ReVac was announced.  The smart ones and the rich Kanemochis had already cashed out and bailed.  Any Sansei with parents still alive made damn sure no Nisei would ever go through internment again.  They drove to Canada, flew to Brazil, got outa Dodge.

  Only the stupid ones, like David, who still believed it couldn't happen in this country again, remained, muttering "Wait, this is America" as they were rounded up.

  Graham, oblivious, face buried in his American-brand-name Nintendo-clone videogame, was the one David was worried about.  Gray knew what was up and he dealt by shutting down.  David had seen the same pattern in his own generation.  Twenty years from now, some natural cause would kill Gray or take his mind, and no one would make the connection.

  Kate straightened the tag around Mary's neck, and as the uniforms dropped the flat, plywood shutters over the windows and locked them in place, David caught a glimpse, a look of panic, that passed over her face for a brief moment, the realization that they were completely at the mercy of uncaring, uncontrollable forces.

  They had no one to blame but themselves.

  Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice...

  The train pulled out of the lumberyard.

  It was only half full.