The soldier was found not guilty, she adds. The camp director, Charles Ernst, was not present at the time of the shooting. When he returned, "he was so angry at the soldiers that he told them they could keep their guns, but he got all the bullets."

Earlier in the camp's history, guards had shot at people nine or 10 times and "nobody was wounded." Beckwith corresponded with Ernst's son, who said his father had been nervous because "the soldiers were kind of trigger-happy."

Living quarters

Roads through the camp remain intact. Surfaced with cinders to allow truck passage in spite of muddy surfaces in the camp, their straight lines and right-angle intersections stretch through the brush. They pass a few wooden signs, such as "BLK 32" — a small board with peeling black and white paint mounted on a stake.

The sign marks Block 32, one of the 42 blocks of barracks. There were 12 barracks per block, numbered right to left, Japanese style.

"The barracks were divided into little apartments," she said. On the ends, apartments were about 20-by-15 feet, while others were 20-by-25 and 20-by-20.

"They had three doors on those barracks, and if you had a small family of three, then you had the 20-by-15. If you were a really large family, sometimes you'd get two rooms."

A heavy block of wood lay on the desert and Beckwith identified it as one of the props for a barracks. The barracks had no foundations and must have been freezing in the winter and roasting in the summer. According to the Topaz Museum Web site, temperatures ranged from minus 30 to 106.

Residents worked to make the place more comfortable. Near the recreation hall, at Block 22, a stretch of flat rocks is set in the ground "kind of like a patio," she says. "It's a very cobblestony look to it."

A row of small rocks is shaped like a capital D without the vertical stem. "Here's a little garden area," Beckwith adds. The rocks marked off the front and sides of the garden while the barracks was the back.

"This is all brought in." The rocks were hauled there from an area to the west. Also from the west was a piece of shale, of the type at Antelope Spring, where trilobite fossils are found.

"Walkway," she gestures. A concrete path marks the route to a door of a vanished barracks. "And then right here, this guy was able to find a little cement to make his walkway."

Nearby is a Japanese rock garden of small stones.

"Right here is the mess hall," Beckwith says, walking to a large flat expanse of concrete that once formed the floor. It has studs that once anchored equipment and bits of debris from the 1940s, with snow encroaching. Clinkers from the boiler show up here and there.