After a year of struggling with this issue I finally have a solution and I want to share it with the Internet!

• Go to Options > Document properties > Performance > Uncheck "Save model data"
• Save your drawing and assembly file
• Delete the offending components from the assembly
• Rebuild the drawing
• Close the assembly. DO NOT SAVE. When prompted to keep or discard changes in drawing, select "Discard changes in drawing".
• Rebuild the drawing.

The idea is that this sequences forces Solidworks to purge any assembly data from the drawing and to freshly rebuild it from the assembly file.