“There was never enough food—diet was rice and vegetables and if the prisoners wanted anything more than that, they had to grow it themselves. But, of course, they couldn’t just stroll down the road and buy a couple of chickens, could they? And they couldn’t fish in the creek because they might swim away and slit the throats of Americans nearby or radio the longitude and latitude of Fort Ord to the hundreds of Jap­anese submarines in Monterey Bay just waiting for that information.” He scoffed.

He strode to a reedy plot of sand. “I’ve reconstructed about where my relatives were incarcerated.” He looked the spot over. “It’s here that my grandfather died. He had a heart attack. The doctor wasn’t in the camp that day. They had to call one from Fort Ord. But it took a while because, of course, the yellow menace would feign a heart attack to escape, so they had to find some armed soldiers to guard the medical workers. He was dead before help arrived.”

“I’m sorry,” O’Neil muttered.

“He, like my grandmother, was a nisei—second generation, born here. My father was a sansei, third generation. They were citizens of the United States.” He looked at them with still, cool eyes. “We need to keep the memory of what happened here alive. I’ve always planned to build a museum to do that. On this very site, where my relatives were so badly treated.

“The sign at the entrance will read, Solitude Creek Kyōseishūyōsho Museum and Memorial. That means ‘concentration camp.’ Not ‘relocation center.’ That’s not what it was.”

Almost as an afterthought he said, “Before you go to a judge to get warrants to arrest me, look up the corporate documents for Kodoku. It’s a nonprofit. I won’t make a penny on it. Oh, and about murdering people to buy some property cheap? You’ll see from the plans we’ll be filing for permits, I don’t need the roadhouse. If Sam Cohen sells we’d just doze the club down for an extension of the parking lot. If not, we’ll buy some of the property closer to Highway One. Or if Sam would like to keep the land, he could tear down the building and put up a restaurant.” The congressman cocked his head. “I can guarantee him a good supply of clientele if he put sushi and sashimi on the menu.” His eyes strayed to the waving grasses, the ripples on gray Solitude Creek.

“I know what you’re thinking: I could have told you this in my office, yes. But I don’t think we can ever miss an opportunity to remind ourselves that hate persists. What happened here happened only seventy years ago.” A nod at the concrete boarders along Solitude Creek. “That’s a drop in the bucket of time. And look now, on the Peninsula. Those terrible hate crimes over the past month. Synagogues, black churches.”

He shook his head and turned back toward the parking lot. “We haven’t learned a thing. I sometimes doubt we ever will.”