[bright music] - [Announcer] "The Mystery of George Masa" is made possible in part by Great Smoky Mountains Association, creating books and multimedia in support of Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

And from the George Masa Foundation, inspiring young people to be like Masa and creatively face environmental challenges.

[wind rustling softly] [bird screeching] [gravel crunching] [wind continues rustling softly] [gentle piano music] ♪ [gentle piano music continues] ♪ [gentle piano music continues] [bird screeching] - [Speaker] He was this fellow from Japan, you know, who came along and loved the area and stayed.

You love anytime someone loves what you love.

And I think he was obviously well loved and a popular person and he gave his heart and soul to his work here, you know, worked very hard.

So all that kind of ties up into this wonderful little bundle we know of George Masa that he was mysterious yet very giving and very loved.

- [George E.] George must have been quite a sight, particularly if you ran into him back in the back country 'cause he had all of that camera equipment on.

He wore that red bandana.

And then he was always pushing this bicycle wheel so he could have the exact distances and things that he had traveled.

- [Speaker] He certainly was prolific in his photography.

I liken him and, and I've called him before the Ansel Adams of the Southern Appalachians.

[gentle music] - [Narrator] He came to the mountains of Appalachia in 1915 with little money and barely any more in the way of English.

But he did possess a magnetic smile and a spirit that would prove as generous as it would irrepressible.

Over the next two decades he would climb from laundry hand to a leading hand in movements behind a pair of American icons: the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Appalachian Trail.

He emerged as an unlikely creative force in the burgeoning mountain city of Asheville, North Carolina.

A city that attracted money and influence like a magnet through its gilded age of the 1920s.

Lugging heavy gear over rugged, often uncharted terrain, he crafted thousands of photos.

His work projected a remarkable vision of the sublime Appalachians to a vast and influential audience that reached all the way to the White House.

But for all his wealthy contacts and his consummate art with a camera, he died penniless just one year before his dream of a Great Smoky Mountains National Park was realized.

Though hundreds attended his funeral in the rain, he was truly known by few, if any, in this country at least.

If things were different in Japan, there was no indication.

He had no known contact with his native land for almost 20 years, perhaps longer.

What he left behind there, what brought him here and what drove him so selflessly in his mission to save ancient mountains are the secrets locked deep in the mystery of George Masa.

[train clattering] - [Masa] Launched out on adventure today.

- [Narrator] On January 18th, 1915, Masahara Izuka departed San Francisco on a train bound for New Orleans.

- [Masa] Denver, a church covered in snow.

- [Narrator] Years later, he told a newspaper writer that he arrived in America at age 24 and that he traveled the United States extensively before setting foot in North Carolina and changing his name.

- [Masa] The color of the snow.

Kansas City, extremely cold.

- [Narrator] He told the reporter he'd studied mining engineering at Tokyo's prestigious Meiji University.

A newspaper report after his death said he came to the United States for further studies and that he severed ties with Japan following the death of his father.

While George Masa worked in an era when his camera never lied, the truth about his life in Japan is shrouded in secrecy and his time in America is cloaked in contradictions.

Even official records such as the national census taken in 1920, and again in 1930, show radical discrepancies in what Masa claimed as his age and year of arrival.

Somehow he aged 16 years in that decade while his immigration dates slipped from 1914 to 1906.

Institutions he was said to have attended in the United States and in Tokyo hold no record of any enrollment or graduation under the name Masahara Izuka.

Meiji University has never offered courses in mining engineering or anything similar, but a personal diary sprinkled with poetry reveals details of Masa's travels to the mountains in 1915.

- [Masa] Arrived in New Orleans, went to look for employment agency but was disappointed.

Fine weather.

- [Narrator] In his diary, Masa painstakingly accounts for every cent he spent as if maintaining an expense account.

His Japanese characters also record the date and time of day he sent what is best translated as a formal report, though there is no hint of how these reports were delivered, to whom they went or what they said.

In late February, he recorded the successful transmission of his ninth report and there, without explanation, ended all references to the reports.

In March, perhaps homesick, Masa attempted a haiku poem about peach blossoms, then a four month gap in entries.

The next entry is in July.

- [Masa] Now I have to raise money.

It can't be helped for I have just enough money to travel, but not a penny extra.

- [Narrator] On July 10th, 1915, George Masa headed north by train.

An employment agency had arranged an interview in the mountain town of Asheville, North Carolina.

With its elevation and mild climate, Asheville had long been a haven for the treatment of tuberculosis.

Asheville was also a popular haven of the rich and famous.

Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and Harvey Firestone were frequent visitors.

Extending the city's celebrity, born 20 years earlier when George Vanderbilt, heir to his family fortune, completed a fabulous estate known as Biltmore.

- In 1915.

When George Masa arrived World War I had already started, but the United States was not yet involved in it.

They wouldn't get involved until 1917.

[jaunty music] Asheville was one of the hip places in the United States.

People came down here to sample the mountains and stay in the great hotels, to be seen.

- [Narrator] One of those great hotels was the Grove Park Inn, The creation of pharmaceutical tycoon Edwin Wiley Grove.

- [Masa] The hotel is huge.

In truth, it's claimed to be the biggest in the world.

Such an elaborate, magnificent building.

- [Narrator] Opened in 1913, the inn boasted 150 rooms and commanding views of the mountains.

The Grove Park Inn was designed by Grove's son-in-law, Fred Seely, who served as the inn's manager.

- [Masa] I had an interview with the manager, Mr. Seely, and to make a long story short, they took me.

Quite interesting and exciting.

Nothing can be better now if only I make a lot of money.

- [Narrator] If Masa was in the United States on any mission, his diary gives no further explanation.

Seely trained Masa for work in the inn's laundry room.

Within months, Masa progressed to the valet desk where he enjoyed constant exposure to the inn's high-paying guests.

- And working as a valet at the Grove Park Inn.

I mean, he was in the thick of it.

Getting to know the Vanderbilts over at the Biltmore Estate, and he was so skilled at presenting himself both in a way that was deferential and interesting.

He was fulfilling his part of the bargain being interesting.

He was this treasure that they could bring along with them and they sought those kinds of treasures.

- [Narrator] Whether through his manner or his novelty, Masa became a favorite of the inn's clientele.

Photos show him in regular company of visiting aristocrats.

Fred Seely was the consummate promoter.

He knew photographs could portray an image of the inn and its guests that would generate interest and increase business.

He lent Masa his camera to shoot famous guests at the inn and while exploring the surrounding mountains.

Images of presidents and industrialists still adorn the inn's walls today.

Masa soon began a side business processing film and printing photographs from the guest's own cameras.

His skill as a photographer and the quality of his processing far exceeded the capabilities of any amateur suggesting previous training.

Despite his dual income and the company of high society, or perhaps as a result, Masa was moved by ambition.

In November, 1916, he wrote Seely, saying he had tired of hotel work and was making plans to leave.

- [Masa] I imagine great future, the castle of success.

Now I have a job not suit me.

I will go to big city and get good job easy.

I am very sorry to say goodbye, but I believe you will pardon me.

- But as Masa prepared to leave, Fred Seely sent an urgent letter to Washington.

- [Fred] We have had a Japanese in our employee for considerably over a year whose actions I would like to call to your attention in confidence.

He has become very proficient and has further developed into, or was, a most expert photographer and is far more brilliant than we had reason to suppose.

He spends most of his spare time taking and developing pictures, making records, et cetera, and now is talking about leaving.

He boards in our officer's quarters and while I do not know if a matter of this kind would interest you, still, he seems to have quite a collection of records in his room, which were certainly not made just for the fun of it.

- [Narrator] As local president of the American Protective League, a citizens group charged by the U.S. Department of Justice to guard against anti-American persons, Seely included samples of Masa's Japanese notes.

- The Grove Park Canyon and the Vanderbilt Estate were involved in trying to provide accommodations for the war effort.

There were huge rallies in Asheville.

And in the United States, they developed this nationalism that was fervent.

- [Narrator] A month later, the Bureau of Investigation wrote Seely explaining that the absence of a Japanese translator had delayed any action on his alert.

Still the Bureau assured Seely it would look into Masa.

In the interim, Masa changed plans and decided to remain in Asheville.

Seely also stepped back.

As long as he could keep an eye on Masa, federal investigators might as well hold off.

Seely never raised his suspicions again.

Instead, he soon had Masa taking photographs of the family Christmas at the elaborate Seely home.

Still, Masa had designs on his own castle of success.

[gentle music] In May of 1917, he again prepared to leave.

This time in search of gold.

Masa's destination was Colorado Springs, a focal point of the Colorado Gold Rush, a phenomenon that was fast losing its luster by the time he arrived.

In need of work, Masa wrote Seely asking for a recommendation.

Seely responded with a request of his own.

- [Fred] I hope you will soon have enough of your visit so you can come back and go to work.

If you do not like it out there, you must write me at once.

- [Narrator] Soon after, with no mention of work or his dream of striking it rich, Masa wrote.

- [Masa] I had a good time seeing the beauty of nature.

I had a fine time hiking.

Sure the country's wonderful.

When you find a petition to suit me except valet, please tell me.

I am glad to come back to work, but please let me have a couple months wages in advance.

- [Narrator] Seely readily consented.

He sent Masa $40, about three weeks pay, with the promise of a better job and one month off every summer.

If such terms suggested any fondness for this once suspected spy, they certainly confirmed that Seely also regarded Masa's presence as good for business.

In the fall of 1917, Masa moved out of the inn and in with the family of Oscar Creasman, a carpenter.

- As I remember from my family talking about it, he fell in love with these mountains and wouldn't go back to Japan.

I was always a little, I don't know what the word I should use, maybe in awe of him because he was so different from us, you know?

He was a small man and he laughed a lot and he played a lot with the children.

I have all kinds of pictures.

They played ball, he made a go-kart they rode on and just was a member of the family.

- The Creasman family album is heavy with photos of George Masa entertaining the youngsters, working in the garden and picnicking on the Biltmore Estate where Oscar Creasman worked construction and befriended the Vanderbilts Masa's own photos in the Creasman album reveal experimentations with framing, hand coloring, and artistic composition.

Masa's interest in photography led him at last to a permanent break with the Grove Park Inn, if not with Seely himself.

In February of 1919, he wrote Seely announcing he had taken a job with a prominent local photographer.

- [Bill] Herbert Pelton was a commercial photographer in Asheville.

Pelton and Masa met and they became business partners for a time in downtown Asheville.

- The new partners formed a company called The Photo-Craft.

- I bet Masa was absorbing some of the business knowledge needed to open and run his own studio because Pelton had had, gosh, maybe 12 to 15 years of experience doing that at that point.

And you can be the world's greatest photographer, but if you don't have the business wherewithal to keep yourself running, it's for naught.

- [Narrator] Once again, Masa's ambition outstripped his resources.

He wrote Seely.

- [Masa] So I need some more capitals.

Would you kindly loan me $300 at six months term with regular interest?

By any chance, if I do not pay you back at the time, just put me in your shop and work till the debt pay back.

- [Narrator] Less than a year later, in December, 1919, the partnership with Pelton dissolved and Masa went into business for himself as Plateau Studios.

- It's hard to imagine what the climate was in Asheville in the 1920s.

It was this lit up, beautiful jewel.

The arts flourished and the population doubled.

It was what is called in this area, the golden age.

- [Narrator] The business of photography also thrived.

At least a dozen different companies were in operation in the city of 30,000 people.

But from 1920 through 1924, the quality of Masa's work, his artistic compositions, perfect exposures and sharp prints, set Plateau Studios apart.

[gentle rustic music] - It's one thing to look and admire the mountains, they're beautiful, but then to aim your camera in a way that's gonna make an image that people wanna look at over time is quite challenging.

And he had a way of identifying in nature and in the mountains scenes that would best capture what the essence is about this land that we love and the mountains that he loved.

- [Narrator] With his business and reputation growing, George Masa assembled a library of images he began selling as prints and colored postcards to the thriving tourist trade.

His photos became trademarks of the area, but the business of the Appalachians was not all about tourism and the diversions of aristocrats.

The ancient forests of towering chestnut, oak, and hickory fed the rise of one of the fastest-growing industrial nations in the world.

Housing, factories, and railways were being built on Southern Appalachian timber.

But after the turn of the 20th century, industrial harvesting grew at a staggering rate.

The toll commercial loggers extracted on the landscape became the source of intense debate that soon reverberated through the halls of government in Washington, D.C. [gentle music] James Bryce, the British historian, statesman, and diplomat, once said it was America's unique contribution to democracy.

Writer Wallace Stegner called it, "The best idea we ever had."

This idea was that land with all its natural features and varied creatures could be preserved for the enjoyment of the people in the form of national parks.

As George Masa's photographic abilities merged with his growing love of the mountains, it was natural that he would be drawn to a movement to turn the Great Smoky Mountains into a national park.

His photos would become instruments of this cause.

They were often accompanied by impassioned words from prominent author Horace Kephart, a man who, like Masa himself, had come as a stranger to these mountains.

♪ Kephart, Kephart, Belial's in the briar ♪ ♪ Coming through the laurel, eyes on the fire ♪ ♪ Kephart, Kephart, aim your rifle well ♪ ♪ That pig would cross a rotten log ♪ ♪ Over the flames of hell ♪ - [Narrator] In 1904, Horace Kephart's life fell apart.

He quit his job as director of the Mercantile Library in St. Louis, where he won acclaim compiling the finest collection of American Plains Indian artifacts of the day.

A cultured man, Kephart had traveled, studied, and worked in Europe and was a published writer and expert in firearms.

But his ability to function at work and as a husband and father of five children was undermined by his habitual drinking.

When Kephart questioned his wife's marital fidelity, she left with the children for New York State.

Kephart had never been to the Southern Appalachians, but after careful research, he located what he felt would be the most remote land left in the Eastern United States.

And there he went in search of a simpler life.

Horace Kephart found his new home and his solace along the little fork of the Sugar Fork of Hazel Creek, deep in the Great Smoky Mountains.

- He was looking for a place so remote that he could get away and start all over again.

And he came here to the mountains, to his back of beyond, seeking a place where he could hope to renew himself and refresh himself.

And indeed he did find the right place.

And those years were the touchstone for the rest of his life, for his writing really and for his love of the Smokies.

- [Narrator] Kephart utilized and honed his skills as an outdoorsman and made meticulous notations and observations about every aspect of his experience.

Much of this became the basis of his two most successful books.

"Camping and Woodcraft," first published in 1906 and "Our Southern Highlanders" in 1913.

- He felt like the Great Smokies had saved his life and he wanted to help save these mountains so that others may benefit by them as I have.

- [Narrator] With the Smokies home to some of the last remaining virgin forests in the East, Kephart knew they would soon be lost unless something was done.

- In 1925 Kephart wrote, "When I first came into the Smokies, the whole region was one of superb forest primeval.

I lived for several years in the heart of it."

Of course, he means down at Hazel Creek.

"My sylvan studio spread over mountain after mountain, seemingly without end, and it was always clean and fragrant, always vital, growing new shapes of beauty from day to day.

The vast trees met overhead like cathedral roofs.

I am not a very religious man, but often, when standing alone before my maker in this house not made with hands, I bowed my head with reverence and thanked God for his gift of the great forest to one who loved it.

Not long ago I went to that same place again.

It was wrecked, ruined, desecrated.

Turned into a thousand rubbish heaps, utterly vile and mean.

Did anyone ever thank God for a lumberman's slashing?"

- [Narrator] Good writers know the value of good images and just when he needed them most, Horace Kephart met George Masa.

- He was passionate about it, but George Masa and he apparently hit it off very well together, and I think they had a great community of interest just in the mountains, in the trees.

You can't walk through one of these virgin forests here and not feel, in my opinion, I think you're in God's cathedral when you're one of those forests, and I think they must have felt that very much.

- So when they wrote an article, when Kephart wrote an article with a Masa photograph, people knew where this was was coming from.

- [Narrator] George Masa threw himself fully into the campaign for a Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Through precisely-detailed letters, maps, and photographs, Masa conducted a constant exchange of information with top government officials such as Arno Kammerer, associate director of the National Park Service.

- [Arno] Dear George, it seems that everybody has been telling me about your fine spirit and your helpfulness and your love of the outdoors.

I have admired your photographic work very much.

- [Narrator] Courted by the growing park movement, representatives from the Department of the Interior made numerous visits.

In this rare footage retrieved from the National Archives, George Masa, providing directions and authoritative descriptions, won allies among the visitors from Washington.

In 1925 and 1926, President Coolidge signed bills allowing for a national park in the Great Smoky Mountains, but there was no federal funding.

Finding the enormous sums necessary to buy the land from lumber companies fell to the states of North Carolina and Tennessee.

Masa's beautiful photos proofed invaluable in money-raising efforts.

In 1927, just when the entire effort seemed on the verge of collapse due to lack of funds, Arno Kammerer, working outside his official role, met with industrialist, John D. Rockefeller Jr., one of the richest men in the world.

The meeting went well, with Kammerer later reporting.

- [Arno] I filled his briefcase with all the photographs of the big Smokies I had collected.

- Rockefeller made a $5 million donation to the park effort in memory of his mother, Laura Spelman Rockefeller.

Rockefeller's public support also lent important credibility to the national park effort.

- Rockefeller's donation, you know, becomes tremendously important.

I mean, it would not have happened or they would've had to scale way back the amount of land that would've been in the park.

- [Narrator] A year later, Rockefeller visited the Smokies and stayed at the Grove Park Inn.

There he was photographed by Masa who sent the pictures on to Rockefeller in New York.

Rockefeller wrote Masa a thank you note inquiring if there was a fee for the unexpected gift.

In April of 1928, George Masa also delivered to first lady, Grace Coolidge, a book of photos celebrating the proposed park.

- From the beginnings, artists and photographers were tremendously important in terms of letting the American public in general know and the legislators in Washington who are ultimately making these decisions know, why should we bother with this?

Why should we preserve this?

- [Narrator] Ansel Adams, one of the nation's most revered photographers of the natural world once wrote, "It is necessary to penetrate the illusion of mere scenery to achieve a more profound understanding of the world about us."

[water splashing] After meeting Horace Kephart, George Masa became a deeper student of the mountains.

Learning from Kephart and from the books he recommended much about the unique plants, animals, and history of the backwoods.

The pair were constant companions on countless hikes and expeditions, gathering information and images during the day and exchanging impressions and inspiration over the campfire at night.

Masa and Kephart's reputation as authorities on the Smokies was confirmed when they were charged by the Department of the Interior with the task of recording the name of every mountain, river, cove, creek, and valley that fell within the park boundary.

This involved the painstaking examination of existing maps, scouting remote areas, interviewing residents, and delving deep into the history of the Cherokee and the white settlers.

Kephart marveled at his close friend's fearless dedication.

- [Horace] Often boring his way through untracked jungles, scaling precipitous mountainsides, delving rocky defiles where no sign has been left by man.

- [Narrator] Masa would spend weeks, often alone, in the mountains.

He drew detailed pencil sketches to assist in mapmaking and records and labeled his photographs carefully.

His commitment to systematically transferring the detail of every nuance of the terrain to public record was unrivaled.

As Masa and Kephart explored, they sometimes turned to local landowners who knew their patch of the mountains better than anyone else.

That's how they met a cattle farmer and mountain guide named Charlie Connor.

- One night he and Kephart and Masa were sitting at the fire and Charlie took off his shoe and he said, "I'll tell you right now," said, "this bunion feels as big as that big knoll over there.

So Kephart and Masa named that knoll Charlie's Bunion, and it still stands in the mouth today.

- The more you know the peaks and valleys around you, the more you can name them, the more you you know where you are.

And the more you know where the where you are, the better you can realize who you are.

And I think they were defining themselves in their writing, in their photography with the landscape in order to know both where they were and to find more clearly who they were.

- [Narrator] Just as Horace Kephart had done, Masa won the trust and goodwill of the mountain folk through his respect for their way of life.

- Both of 'em, Kephart and Masa fitted in and living here now myself for a good many years.

I know exactly why they were accepted.

And that's because they did not try to tell mountain people how to live their lives.

And mountain people appreciate that quite a bit.

- The reason I liked him, he was about my size.

[laughs] He was a small fella, I'd say he weighed about 125 pounds soaking wet.

And we had a lot of fun together.

He was witty as could be.

- [Narrator] Masa and Kephart shared a profound fascination for the Cherokee who called the mountains home for centuries before white explorers introduced the name Appalachia.

Masa and Kephart's knowledge of Cherokee history and myth provided a font of inspiration as they sought appropriate names for geographic features within the Smokies.

If studying Cherokee ways helped Kephart through his self-imposed isolation at Hazel Creek, they may well have resonated with Masa on another more spiritual level.

Throughout his life in America, Masa carried a small collection of classic Japanese tales of the samurai and the ninjutsu or ninja.

They both followed strict chivalrous codes of loyalty, frugality, and self-sacrifice.

The ancient ninja came from humble backgrounds and were devoted to life in accordance with nature.

They sought spiritual enlightenment through long mountain pilgrimages.

They believed that by enduring grave hardship, they would draw exceptional powers from the earth.

These frayed volumes may offer tantalizing insight into the source of Masa's selfless commitment to the mountains.

Ever secretive about his own origins, he would say more than once that he came from nothing and that his church was in the mountains.

Masa attended the Cherokee fair on the tribal reservation west of Asheville almost every fall.

Descendants of the first residents of the Smokies competed in traditional games like stickball and danced and sang in the old ways.

Masa, under special permission, was the first to record the celebrations and ceremonies by motion picture camera, though not without incident.

A story handwritten on the back of photos taken by another photographer describes how the motion picture camera arrived without film.

To avoid disappointing his subjects, Masa hand-cranked the camera empty, pretending to capture footage until the film arrived.

Masa was under contract with both Pathe and Paramount as a motion picture newsreel photographer.

One reel from the early 1930s corresponds with an agreement Masa had with the park's first ranger to shoot scenic footage.

This may be the only known example of Masa's motion picture proficiency.

[gentle music] In August of 1929, "The Asheville Times" interviewed Masa extensively for what would be the only newspaper article devoted to him while he was alive.

The subsequent report celebrated Masa's idealism.

- [Reporter] In this day, when work is so often done for the sake of the immediate returns it will bring, it is refreshing to find a man who devotes all of his time and his thought to work because it means to him the fulfilling of an ideal.

- [Narrator] And at the pen-covered map on his studio wall, the reference to his losses suggests that the reporter, like so many others, was mystified by Masa's past.

- [Reporter] If everything else were taken from him, he says there would be contemplation and beauty enough, set free by study of that map to fill all the days and to console him for whatever other losses there might have been.

- [Narrator] In the summer of 1930, Masa and Horace Kephart encountered an intelligent young woman who shared their interest in the Cherokee.

Margaret Gooch worked as a court magistrate in the small town of Lexington, east of Asheville.

Masa would turn to Gooch, writing frequently and openly of his financial struggles with the onset of the Great Depression.

- [Masa] Banks closed their doors.

I never saw such excited people in my life.

I lost every cent I had in American National Bank, so that's that.

But my head is up.

Never surrender.

- Masa's spirits were further dampened when devastated by the Depression, several acquaintances committed suicide.

- If Clarence suicide depend on his business worries, I might do the same thing.

There is only one thing I can, raise up $250 more and do business by myself or burst.

And I never told anyone business is rotten.

Whenever they ask, I say, "Business fine."

- [Narrator] Within three months, Masa's optimism had returned.

- [Masa] My financial situation has settled.

Soon I'd like to stand on my feet.

When I want to make trip, these things don't bother me.

I just leave the office go in to woods, get fresh, fulsome air, then come back.

Start strong fight.

No use to worry.

That's what I do.

Maybe I am wrong, but it's good to me all the time.

[gentle music] [typewriter clacking] - [Narrator] But as the Depression dragged on, optimism alone offered scant security.

Masa began to approach clients and associates for loans to save his existing business, cover expenses while he worked on the Appalachian Trail, and to launch a tea house and photography shop he and Kephart planned for the new National Park.

Masa's requests met with polite regrets, but one rejection in particular illustrated the depths of his financial despair.

- [Fred] Sorry to hear the trouble you have had, but I believe I have as much trouble as you have, and I don't see any possible way I could help you.

Money is scarce and very difficult to get.

Very truly yours, Fred Seely.

- [Narrator] As Masa battled to keep his business growing through the grip of the Depression, he and Kephart remained steadfast campaigners for the National Park, but there was another major task before them: charting the southern portion of the Appalachian Trail.

Harvard graduate and U.S. Forest Service employee Benton MacKay first proposed the idea of a hiking trail running from Maine to Georgia in 1921.

The concept of a supernational forest connected by a trail gained momentum, but the leadership to see it through came from Myron Avery, a lawyer from Maine.

In 1927, Avery formed the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club while working for the U.S. Navy.

He oversaw the monumental task of connecting existing trails, mapping new routes, and carving paths through the wilderness.

George Masa's intimate knowledge of the terrain and his extensive maps and records were invaluable.

Though the Depression continued to drain Masa's financial resources, even so, he would find time to print photographs for fellow campaigners, then shrug off their offers of payment.

- [Masa] Now listen, I don't want you to pay these.

Anything you want, just drop me a line, that all.

Money doesn't mean anything for this.

- And you sense in a way that his sense of commitment and need to accomplish these other's goals really eclipsed the business.

- [Narrator] Masa was the principal organizer, with Horace Kephart's assistance, behind the formation of the Carolina Appalachian Trail Club in January, 1931.

The club's role was to assist in clearing and marking the trail and it comprised a small but hearty bunch.

Snow was falling heavily when 23 people turned up for the club's initial venture.

- [Masa] Start hike in snowstorm.

Craziest people I ever saw.

Sure enough hikers, all right.

I should say they are.

- [Narrator] While his business floundered, Masa was clearly thriving on the progress of the dual campaigns that would secure the future of significant stretches of his beloved mountains.

Then on April 3rd, 1931, the morning paper delivered tragic news, the sudden death of his best friend.

In a letter to Margaret Gooch, Masa wrote.

- [Masa] I don't know what I say about the death of our Kephart.

It shocked me to pieces.

This morning I have read paper in headline, "Horace Kephart killed."

[sighs] I couldn't believe it.

- [Narrator] In the company of visiting writer Fiswoode Tarleton, Kephart had journeyed to the town of Cherokee by taxi cab to buy moonshine.

On the return trip, they made the fatal mistake of sharing their hooch with the driver resulting in an accident which killed both Tarleton and Kephart.

- Well, we got here and they had Horace laid out in the parlor of the Cooper boarding house where he lived.

And I sat there, I know all one morning, I guess it was the day of the funeral, and watched the mountain people come in and pay their respects.

These people had walked 25 miles from Hazel Creek to be there.

There were a lot of them.

And these big burly mountain people, men, would come in and stand there and cry like babies.

I'd never saw a man cry before.

It was something.

Of course, amongst the people who were most stricken by his death was George Masa.

I mean, he came immediately and he stayed the whole time we were there, he was there and he talked a lot I know with my father and with my grandmother.

And they talked a lot about his time with Horace Kephart.

- [Narrator] A letter to Paul Fink, written by Kephart just two weeks before his death, provides a rare-but-emphatic record of his esteem for the friend he left behind.

- [Horace] It is astonishing that a Jap, not even naturalized so far as I know, should have done all this exploring and photographing and mapping on his own hook, without compensation, but at much expense to himself, out of sheer loyalty to the park idea and a fine sense of scenic values.

He deserves a monument.

- [Narrator] Less than a year after its launch, the Carolina Appalachian Trail Club merged with the Carolina Mountain Club.

The Carolina Mountain Club was an eclectic mix of foresters, doctors, college students, blue-collar workers and socialites, all with a passion for the outdoors.

Masa became one of the club's counselors, and relished his informal role as elder.

- We had a story commonly told in the hiking club, if it rained, George would put his camera equipment in his little tent and he would stay out.

He was minimal in his requirements and he was very generous about helping anybody.

George just became a kind of a handyman for the whole group.

- [Narrator] Masa was known for keeping up spirits and the hiking pace.

His expressions became mantras within the group.

- [Masa] More walk, less talk.

Off your seat and on your feet.

- [Narrator] For many, the club's activities were largely social, but for Masa and a handful of other leaders, every hike was an opportunity to record and rerecord trail distances, directional markers, memorable views and unexpected changes like the timber cutting on Grandfather Mountain.

- [Masa] Hell's bells.

All spruce cut down skinned up this old Grandfather.

- [Narrator] Regulars in many club photos were Barbara Ambler Thorn and Jewel King.

Young and of independent mind, the pair often helped with some of Masa's camera equipment, fed him meals from their packs and pushed the wheel.

A favorite trip for the Carolina Mountain Club was a challenging hike into the remote area of the Smokies called Three Forks.

In this remote place was a fishing camp run by Tom Alexander.

Alexander's memoirs record a favorite story of leading a young and exhausted hotel clerk into the Three Forks camp.

- My worn-out companion had just finished wondering for the dozenth time how in hell a horse got over such a trail when he looked up and noticed a man coming down the trail.

It was George Masa coming down from Three Forks, a red bandana outlining his dark face, pushing his trail-measuring rig before him, the hotel clerk's mouth dropped open, his eyes widened.

"My God," he gasped.

"Yonder comes an Indian riding a bicycle."

- [Narrator] On April 2nd, 1933, the second anniversary of Kephart's death, Masa organized a memorial hike.

More than 100 hikers took part in a ceremony on the summit of Mount Kephart, high in the Smokies.

An arduous climb, it would prove to be one of Masa's last hikes.

He was struck down by illness soon after.

When the first notice of Masa's illness went out in the "Carolina Mountain Club Bulletin," the tone was upbeat.

- [Club Member] Who'd have thought that George Masa of all people would fall victim to Old Man Flu?

Shoot 'em up the mountain, George, and let's see you on that Smoky trip.

- [Narrator] For all their time spent in his company, club members marveled at the hardships Masa endured to capture some of his photos.

Many of his journeys on the steepest trails and coldest rainy nights were completed alone.

It was remembered that those ventures took a toll on his system.

Incapacitated and broke, Masa declined rapidly.

His friends found him a room at the county sanitarium where many tuberculosis patients were treated.

The Carolina Mountain Club's June bulletin was somber.

- [Club Member] Mr. Moss's condition is still serious.

We miss you George, and send you greetings.

- [Narrator] His friend Margaret Gooch came to visit and was shocked by what she found.

She wrote to a mutual friend.

- [Margaret] On the 13th I went to see George and found him so critically ill that it was almost impossible for him to talk with me.

I stayed two days hoping against hope that he would improve.

I did not dream that conditions were so bad with him.

- [Narrator] In his final days, Masa did manage to call for his friend Barbara Ambler Thorn, to come to his bedside.

- [Masa] For I have something important to tell her.

- [Narrator] For whatever reason, Barbara Ambler Thorn did not reach him.

On June 21st, 1933, 18 years after arriving in Asheville as a stranger, a foreigner with little means and only a faltering command of the language, George Masa, died.

- The obituary said that he had died from influenza and other causes.

And I thought to myself, "You know what the other causes were, to a great extent, were the death of his friend."

[gentle music] - [Narrator] Shortly before his death, Masa told a friend he had become a Christian while in school in Tokyo.

When asked why he did not attend church, he said.

- [Masa] My church is out in the big mountains under the trees.

- [Narrator] In July, the "Carolina Mountain Club Bulletin" mourned his passing.

- [Club Member] In the deep, peaceful silence of the eternal, our leader is breaking trails and exploring new worlds.

We miss him keenly.

We shall continue to miss him, his kindness, his gentleness, his reliable wisdom as a guide, his knowledge and appreciation of the wealth of beauty and wonder to be found in the mountains.

- [Narrator] Masa died in debt.

Friends and members of the Carolina Mountain Club paid for his burial.

He told members of the club during his final days that he wanted to be buried next to his friend Kephart in Bryson City, but with limited resources, George Masa was buried in the shadow of a large white pine in Asheville's Riverside Cemetery.

Deep in a box of the Carolina Mountain Club archives is a file that had not been opened for decades.

The file contains a Japanese newspaper clipping and part of a letter.

In November, 1933, just months after Masa's death, a club member sent copies of his obituary to a friend of the club living in Japan.

There in "The Osaka Asahi," a major Japanese newspaper, the material generated a story on Masa that the newspaper referred to as, "The most moving international episode."

A return letter, of which only a few lines survive, describes how the newspaper report inspired another letter from someone in Osaka who thought that this George Masa whom he had read about was probably his long-lost brother that he had not heard from in 25 years.

On June 15th, 1934, barely a week shy of the first anniversary of Masa's death, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was formally designated.

While the occasion would have delighted Masa, he surely died believing the park was a foregone conclusion.

Just a few months before he died, Masa received a letter from Arno Kammerer, who would soon become head of the National Park Service.

- [Arno] The whole project is too far along to end in anything but ultimate success.

In my opinion, you are the best mountaineer on the North Carolina side.

- [Narrator] Camps of civilian Conservation Corps workers moved in to construct roads, bridges, and new trails throughout the new park, but it would be 1940 before President Franklin Roosevelt, a staunch advocate of protecting forests for the public good, would have the opportunity to preside over a formal dedication.

Today, the backcountry in which the little Japanese photographer spent so many days and nights alone is part of America's most-visited national park with more than 10 million visitors every year.

Initially, Masa's friends attempted to preserve his extensive collection.

An inventory of his estate recorded little in the way of personal effects, but a vast array of photographic equipment, prints, and original negatives, all cataloged in Masa's own precise numbering system.

By the time Masa's affairs were sufficiently ordered to allow a public offering of his equipment and commercial images, there were no buyers.

Thousands of Masa's negatives were finally sold to Elliot Lyman Fisher, a photographer who arrived in Asheville in 1934.

He reprinted Masa's work for many uses, at first acknowledging the source, but later, Fisher sold images and their reproductions under his own name.

- For years afterwards, I would see George's pictures different places, and it would have the Fisher name on it, you know.

Well, that really got me.

[chuckles] - [Narrator] An article on Masa in North Carolina's "Our State" magazine in 1952 described Fisher preserving the negatives.

In time, Fisher retired to Florida, where after a long illness, he took his own life in 1968.

There is no trace of a single Masa image from the thousands Fisher bought.

These poor quality reproductions from early publications on the new park offer some indication of the treasures that have been lost.

[bright music] If Masa did come to these mountains seeking solace or some kind of enlightenment, his spirit surely rests easy to this day because while so many of his images have disappeared, the views they depicted survive.

The memory and accomplishments of George Masa hung on with many Carolina Mountain Club members.

In 1938, $100 from his estate finally reimbursed the club some of his funeral expenses.

Plans to exhume Masa's body and move it to Kephart's side in Bryson City were being drawn When World War II broke out.

The Masa funds were diverted into war bonds and Masa's grave sat unmarked until 1947 when a small plaque was placed.

Although it puts him at age 52 when he died, no one can be certain.

Then in 1958, Carolina Mountain Club members, led by Dr. Samuel Robinson, pushed for a more prominent salute to Masa's efforts.

25 years after his death, they began a concerted effort to name a mountain after him.

Gone were the days when Masa and Kephart could sit around a campfire and formulate a name under moonlight.

On April 25th, 1961, a small peak that sits on the shoulders of Mount Kephart, close to Charlie's Bunion, officially took the name Masa Knob.

- Something interesting to me as well was that he was essentially was an outsider.

And in the medium, there's a history of photographers who were outsiders in a new culture, a new society, being able to give a clarity of vision that we, or that a person who's a native of the society might not have.

And I think that given Masa a little bit of an edge or acuity in terms of what he photographed and what he saw.

- His artistry, his knowledge, his commitment, I think even to this day, there have been no better photographs taken of the Smokies than those that George Masa took.

- And so there they are together, Mount Kephart and Masa Knob in the middle of a 520,000-acre national park that they helped to establish and that is now visited by 10 million or so people a year.

That's quite an accomplishment.

All of us should have monuments of that sort in our honor.

[gentle music] [shutter clicks] [grass crunching] [gentle music continues] ♪ - [Narrator] 20 Years after the release of this film, and through the work of many historians and advocates, a historical marker was unveiled celebrating George Masa in downtown Asheville, North Carolina, right across the street from Masa's first studio.

[crowd applauding] Research into and recognition of Masa has continued with a comprehensive biography underway by filmmaker Paul Bonesteel and writer Janet McCue that will unveil most of the remaining mysteries of George Masa.

[gentle music continues] [gentle music continues] [gentle music continues] [gentle music continues] - [Announcer] The mystery of George Masa is made possible in part by Great Smoky Mountains Association, creating books and multimedia in support of Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

And from the George Masa Foundation.

Inspiring young people to be like Masa and creatively face environmental challenges.