I asked my father what the interview process has been like for him, if he thought about the interviews, was he affected afterward. He tells me it's like anything, it tickles your memory and brings you back to the smells and the feeling.

"It's like you get off this plane and it's so hot you feel twenty pounds heavier. The smells of diesel trucks running and jet planes, all these fuel smells mixed together It's confusing because it's still dark, just before sunrise and there's a million things going on, none of which you understand."

I am watching the tapes again, trying to sort it all out. When he answered this question I didn't think he understood it. I am discovering my own perception is twisted. These tapes don't lie, I am faced with my own misconceptions. I am fighting urges to snap the cassetes in half, crush them under my shoe and walk on. I am so uncomfortable watching my father move, hearing my own voice, the awkward, sterile way I make my approach.

I have spent the last week at my father's new home, deep in the woods of Northern California. It is vastly different from the terrain of our native East Bay. I have thought him moody, angry, distant, and as the days tick I'm changing my theory. My father is a joker, a wise man, a prophet. But he is also an actor, a man who cuts mountains to be a hero. I am beginning to see my father is my father, but this man in the woods is a purer version of what I have known. He spends days chopping wood, pushing snow, solitary and stoic. He is not in a mood, he is himself. We have not yet met.

On film I ask him again about arriving in Vietnam.

"We were all lined up with our duffle bags ready to get on this plane,Flying Tiger Airlines, throw some more water on board fuel back up and... I remember they're waiting to go home and they're giving you shit, you have no idea what's gonna happen. I remember that's how it was when I went home too. All this fresh meat coming in. All the guys are fresh and neat in their stateside fatigues."

I am caught on the word fatigue. Uniform? What?

"States were a little more streamlined, " he tells me. "Built to be tucked in and have creases in the sleeves and kind of a different color green, still the olive drab, but different."

"So what did you do after that?"

"After getting into country?"

He says this like I know. Like 'country' is a real place to me.

"Yeah."