Santa Monica, Calif. • In the closing days of World War II, a Japanese American set out with other men from the infamous internment camp at Manzanar on a trip to the mountains, where he went off on his own to paint a watercolor and got caught in a freak summer snowstorm.
A hiker found Giichi Matsumura's body weeks later, and he was laid to rest in a spot marked only by a small pile of granite slabs.
Over the years, as the little-known story faded along with memories, the location of Matsumura's remote burial place was lost to time, and he became a sort of ghost of Manzanar, the subject of searches, rumors and legends.