Skeleton is identified as the ‘ghost of Manzanar’

LOS ANGELES >> A skeleton found by hikers this fall near California’s secondhighest peak was identified Friday as a Japanese American artist who had left the Manzanar internment camp to paint in the mountains in the waning days of World War II.

The Inyo County sheriff used DNA to identify the remains of Giichi Matsumura, who succumbed to the elements during a freak summer snowstorm during a hiking trip with other members of the camp. Matsumura had apparently stopped to paint a watercolor while the other men, a group of anglers, continued toward a lake to fish.

His body wasn’t found for another month and the tragedy was overshadowed in the immediate days after his Aug. 2, 1945, disappearance when the U.S. dropped the first atomic bomb, hastening Japan’s surrender in the war. Matsumura was one of more than 1,800 detainees who died in the 10 prison camps in the West, though it’s one of the more unusual deaths.

While his burial in the mountains was well known among members of the camp and his family, the story faded over time and the location of the gravesite in a remote boulder-strewn area 12,000 feet above sea level was lost to time.

Lori Matsumura, the granddaughter who provided the DNA sample, was surprised when Sgt. Nate Derr of the Inyo County sheriff’s office contacted her to say they believed her grandfather’s remains had been discovered. After all, he had been found nearly 75 years ago and buried.

“It was a bit of a rediscovery,” she told The Associated Press.