The education Ira received there was functional if limiting.

But it gave him something his parents’ generation had been denied: literacy, English fluency, and some familiarity with the wider American world.

He came of age in a community that had given enormous amounts to the United States — land, water, labor, military service — and received comparatively little in return.

Akimel O’odham men had served in World War I.

They would serve again in World War II in numbers far exceeding their proportion of the general population.

Native Americans across the country volunteered and were drafted at rates that, per capita, exceeded those of any other group.