Day 18: Tempe, AZ to near Florence, AZ

March 12, 2013

I'm riding on the sidewalks and on my way out of Tempe at 5:45 a.m. The sky doesn't yet have the blues that signal daylight is coming; it's black-on-black from above my head all the way down to the line of the horizon. When I say that I can't get out of the city and into the mountains soon enough, I mean it.

I pass by sleeping residential neighborhoods, strip malls with white and tan exteriors made to look like adobe, and convenience stores where office and construction workers grab coffee and 44-ounce tankers of soda. It's mile after mile of winding streets lined with palm trees. I look out on man-made lakes, baseball diamonds, a golf course, and a few dozen tennis courts — all of them empty. The park playgrounds have canopies built over top of them so that little kids don't pass out or die in the crazy heat of the summer. It goes on and on and on.

Until at last it doesn't. I hang a right onto the highway, pass a few gas stations, a wrecking yard, and a golf cart lot, and then I'm back into open fields and cacti and broad sweeps of sand dotted with little green bushes. Frost heaves on the shoulder have never felt so good. Cow shit has never smelled so sweet.

Seven miles out into the desert, past a couple of homes, a hay farm, and some orange groves the road has turned from rutted pavement to smooth dirt and gravel. Roadrunners move quick-footed from one side to the other. The openings of the ant hills at the road's edge are surrounded by mounds of dirt pushed out into circles that look like little tan-colored mini-donuts. And I'm anxious. That's because I passed a pair of No Trespassing signs several miles ago to reach this point, and I'm well inside the boundaries of an Indian reservation where I shouldn't be. Trucks appear in my mirror every few minutes, and each time they draw close I'm sure a window will come down and a kind but firm man will tell me that I'm not supposed to be out here and that I have to turn back.

But it never happens. Dozens of private trucks and tribal vehicles pass without so much as a wave. And so I keep going.

I'm out here because of history. America has done volumes worth of terrible things to its own people, and one of the more revolting examples of its moral weakness happened out here in the desert just south of the Phoenix suburbs. Following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, and driven by war hysteria and racial prejudice, constituencies of both civilians and military officials expressed concern about the loyalty of ethnic Japanese living in the United States. To wit: the general in charge of the Army's Western Command said during testimony to Congress, "I don't want any of them here. They are a dangerous element. There is no way to determine their loyalty ... It makes no difference whether he is an American citizen, he is still a Japanese. American citizenship does not necessarily determine loyalty ... We must worry about the Japanese all the time until he is wiped off the map." And from an editorial in the Los Angeles Times: "A viper is nonetheless a viper wherever the egg is hatched ... So, a Japanese American born of Japanese parents, nurtured upon Japanese traditions, living in a transplanted Japanese atmosphere ... notwithstanding his nominal brand of accidental citizenship almost inevitably and with the rarest exceptions grows up to be a Japanese, and not an American ... Thus, while it might cause injustice to a few to treat them all as potential enemies, I cannot escape the conclusion ... that such treatment ... should be accorded to each and all of them while we are at war with their race."

Driven in part by such wisdom, in February of 1942 President Roosevelt signed an executive order that allowed military commanders to define so-called "exclusion zones." The military could then relocate and intern all Japanese Americans who lived in these areas. This led to the uprooting of about 100,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast from their homes and communities. (Almost two-thirds of them had full American citizenship.) The majority of the internees were sent to one of ten camps known as relocation centers. The ground that I stand on today was, for a period of just over three years, the Gila River War Relcation Center.

Gila River took in internees mostly from the Los Angeles, Fresno, and Sacramento areas of California, but also about 2,000 people from another camp in Arkansas after it closed. At its peak, more than 13,000 people called Gila River home, which at the time made it the fourth-largest city in the state of Arizona. And in many ways it felt like a city, with its post office, police station, laundromat, gas station, warehouses, and office buildings. Those relocated to the camp passed their days working as barbers, seamstresses, beauticians, store clerks, farmers, and teachers. Children went to school, families went to church, and there was access to libraries, movies, basketball courts, playgrounds, and even a 6,000-seat baseball stadium. The place was considered less oppressive than similar camps, based on the fact that it had only one watchtower, no barbed wire fencing, and people could sometimes leave for a short time to visit Phoenix. But that characterization only works as long as you're willing to ignore the fact that every man, woman, and child living there was, you know, forced into doing so by the government.

It's been almost 70 years since the relocation camp was active, so there aren't many obvious markers of the place that still exist. But it's not hard to tell that something substantial once happened here. The whole area is graded flat. The square grid of the main roads are still in place — I ride down them — and the outlines of minor paths are visible in between overgrown shrubs. Spread throughout the grounds are concrete pads and posts that once supported barracks and dining halls and health centers. I see remnants of wells. Demolished water towers sit in slumped piles on the ground, with chunks of rebar and concrete angled up toward the sky. Stands of trees that don't look native to the area sway in the breeze at evenly spaced intervals. The only thing that draws attention is the white-colored war veterans memorial that watches over the area from on top of a nearby hill.

It's so quiet; so desolate. I try to imagine what it must have been like to leave your home unwillingly, board a train and then a bus or a convoy truck, and end up out here in the middle of dry and hot nothing, not knowing how long you'd be here, or what your life at home would look like when you returned. And to further know that the government of the country you live in, pay taxes to, and pledged allegiance to, has put you here based on just one criteria: the part of the world where you or your family used to live.

I backtrack to the east and reach Sacaton around mid-day. It's a town of about 1,600 people and it's the largest place on the Gila River Indian Community. It has a lot of the elements common to most tribal towns: run-down one-story houses with bars on the windows, garbage spread all over front yards, broken glass along the edge of the road, more graffiti than a town of its size ought to have, and the feeling that this would be a tough place to build a life. It's also unusual in that the Community has a massive fleet of vehicles related to maintenance, irrigation, schools, and animal control. (I've seen one every ten minutes all morning.) The town's new health center takes up about half of a city block. Near the main intersection there's an attractive park with covered benches, a small covered stage, monuments to war veterans, and well-kept green grass. Birds chirp in the trees, people eat lunch together, and there's laughter from over at the gas station. Sacaton feels a little different than most tribal towns. It doesn't seem forever hopeless.

And there's a reason for that. The Community sits a short drive from the 3.25 million people of the Phoenix metro area, which allows it to operate not one but three casinos, along with a resort hotel, a spa, two golf courses, a drag strip, and a boat racing course. That means a lot of revenue, which means bigger budgets for meaningful jobs that pay enough to support a family. A ride through the reservation tells you that there are so many problems left to solve — money alone can't unwind decades of injustice, long-standing feelings of despair, or epidemic levels of diabetes and alcoholism — but Sacaton is nevertheless a town of slow, sure progress. There's something profoundly uplifting about that. Because unlike their Japanese counterparts of 70 years ago, the Gila River people are, for better or for worse, here to stay.

It's good cycling on the run east to Coolidge. The day turns hot when I stop, but as soon as I move again the breeze that blows over me locks in a good temperature. I'm still in the valley I entered about five days ago, so it's flat all the way. The story's not so good once I make it to town. Coolidge is a lot bigger than Sacaton, but it's also similar: wide but mostly empty streets, run-down homes and vacant lots, graffiti, dogs that bark and chase, and mothers that yell horrible things at their crying two-year-olds. The main difference is that everyone is white or black or Hispanic, not native, because the town sits just east of the reservation's edge. The main drag is lined with cabinet makers and barber shops and restaurants that all look like they're just scraping by. (The cash advance broker bucks the trend.) A hundred semi-trucks, cars with license plates from a dozen states, and two big white buses labeled Corrections roll through town while I eat my pizza. I try to figure out why people come to Coolidge and what makes them stay, but I come up empty.

The ride out of town is sweet, and not just because it takes me away from the cloud of depression that hangs over Coolidge. The cool of the late afternoon creeps into the air, a soft tailwind builds, and I pedal along cultivated fields of something that shines deep green in the lowering light and dances on the breeze.

A private lane to help keep the crazy Arizona drivers away.

A couple of hours later, with the day's light faltering, I say my goodbye to flat ground. For the next couple of weeks I'll face more hill and mountain climbing than any other part of this cross-country ride. I try to jam into my brain memories of easy pedaling.

Not long after the road starts tilting up I pass a sign that makes every wild camper smile: Entering Public Lands. I push on until just after sundown, then lug the bike down an ATV trail and off into a grassy patch between cacti and a bunch of prickly bushes. I do my best to ignore the rustling sounds that sneak out from the darkness that surrounds me while I think back on a long day upon which a tired body is about to bring down the curtain. Sitting in the motel in Tempe last night, I wanted so much to get out of the sprawl and return to the life of interesting and beautiful and remote places. Mission accomplished.

Today's ride: 86 miles (138 km)
Total: 751 miles (1,209 km)

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