Skeletal remains of Japanese American incarcerated at Manzanar found in mountains
In the treeless, boulder-strewn Williamson Bowl near California's second-tallest mountain, Giichi Matsumura stopped to paint.
It was Aug. 2, 1945, in the waning days of World War II. The 46-year-old Japanese American man from Santa Monica had been incarcerated with his family for three years at the Manzanar War Relocation Center and had set out with a group of men who left camp to go fishing near Mount Williamson, 14,380 feet above sea level.
When Matsumura stopped, the group kept moving. But a freak summer blizzard moved in. The fishermen hid in a cave, hoping Matsumura had returned to camp. He had not.
His body, found by hikers a month later, was buried beneath a pile of rocks. He was memorialized in a Buddhist ceremony at Manzanar. His widow never could reach the
