It is the essential context for understanding why the gap between the symbol and the reality was so wide.

The symbol said: an American man from an American community, fighting for American values, winning the Pacific war alongside his fellow Marines.

The reality said: a man returning to a community that had been dispossessed of its water, that was managed by a federal bureaucracy rather than allowed to govern itself, and that in some respects remained legally outside the full protections of citizenship.

He was expected to carry the symbol without requiring the country to confront the reality.