A Sierra Club trip leader told me in the 1980's that during World War II Japanese inmates of the Manzanar Internment Camp would sometimes take deceased inmates and bury them in the Mt. Williamson area which was behind the camp.
Japanese inmates were actually allowed to leave the camp to do this?
I'm guessing that anecdote was a corrupted version of the true story of the one man who happened to die up there and was buried there by necessity.
As to whether they were allowed to leave, fascinating info on that topic in this article:
https://ktla.com/2019/10/23/bones-found-...zhskyY-bURIEzHsSome of the men began sneaking out at night to go fishing for days at a time, evading the spotlight from a guard tower manned by soldiers with machine guns, said Cory Shiozaki, director of the documentary “The Manzanar Fishing Club.” The anglers would slip back into the camp with big trout caught in the streams and lakes around Mount Williamson, California’s second-highest peak at 14,374 feet (4,381 meters).
Unlike the early days of the clandestine outings, there was no security on July 29, 1945, when Matsumura tagged along with six to 10 fishermen on the arduous trek to a chain of lakes beneath the mammoth peak.
At the time, Germany had surrendered, and the U.S. was days away from dropping the first of two atomic bombs on Japan that ended the war. People were allowed to leave Manzanar, and the population had dropped by half, said Brian Niiya of Densho, an organization dedicated to preserving the history of Japanese internment.
Many stayed behind, however, because their homes had been taken or they feared racism and violence upon their return.
“It was kind of a black comedy,” Niiya said. “They were trying to close the camps and people didn’t want to leave. They heard how bad things were on the outside.”
