Well on further reading, I'm finding that I am indeed using the binary compare. This is my field definition:
StrComp([field1],[field2],0)
According to Access help, the 0 is using the vbBinaryCompare. For some reason those two values are still equal in an Access join.
I really did not want to import this data into Oracle, but it looks like I'm going to have to.
I do appreciate your time and attention. Thank you!
Ken