One white woman finally found a place she belonged: a Japanese American concentration camp.
July 15, 1899: Artist Estelle Peck Ishigo was born in Oakland, California.
Estelle Peck was born in Oakland to a family of English, Dutch, and French ancestry. Both of her parents were artists, who were rarely at home. She didn’t feel wanted at home.
In the 1920s, while studying art in Los Angeles, she met Arthur Ishigo, a Japanese American sometime actor, sometime animal wrangler, and sometime janitor at Paramount Studios.
The two fell in love and married in 1929.
At the time, interracial marriage was still prohibited in California. They drove to Mexico to marry because of the state’s anti-miscegenation law. Estelle’s family disapproved of the relationship and disowned her.
Despite all the prejudice they faced, they built a life together.
Difficult Choices
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese Americans on the West Coast were ordered to leave their homes. Arthur, who lost his job, was one of them. Estelle was not.
As a white American, Estelle was not subject to the exclusion order. Instead of remaining behind, she chose to accompany Arthur. She was warned that she would receive no special privileges and would be treated like the Japanese American prisoners. She accepted those conditions and gave up their home, possessions, and life outside the camps.
She became one of the few non-Japanese people to voluntarily live inside a Japanese American concentration camp.
They were sent to the Pomona Assembly Center at the Pomona fairgrounds. Then moved to Heart Mountain in Wyoming.
Finding Acceptance
Life at Heart Mountain was difficult. More than 10,000 people lived in hastily built barracks surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards. Winters were harsh, dust storms were common, and families had lost nearly everything they owned.
Yet Estelle later said she felt accepted there in a way she never had before: “Strange as it may sound, in this desperate and lonely place, I felt accepted for the first time in my life.”
Outside the camp, many people judged her because she had married a Japanese American. Inside the camp, that no longer mattered. She became part of the community and developed close friendships with many of the families living there.
She drew scenes of people trying to recreate the comforts from home while keeping their Japanese culture alive. She also documented the quiet agony of incarceration.
Recording Camp Life
Estelle carried sketchbooks with her throughout her time at Heart Mountain.
She was recruited as a “documentary reporter” by the War Relocation Authority to record life at Heart Mountain. That didn’t hold her back from honest depictions of the brutal conditions found there.
She drew children at school, families in their barracks, people waiting in mess hall lines, and ordinary moments that government photographs often overlooked.
Her artwork documented daily life from the perspective of someone living inside the camp rather than observing it from the outside.
Many of her drawings remain among the most honest visual records of the Japanese American incarceration.
A Lasting Legacy
After the war, Estelle and Arthur returned to Los Angeles and struggled financially as they rebuilt their lives. Arthur died of cancer in 1957.
In 1972, Estelle published Lone Heart Mountain, combining her writing and artwork to document their incarceration.
Filmmaker Steven Okazaki later found Estelle living in severe poverty in Los Angeles. She reportedly told him, “I’ve been waiting for someone to tell my story to, then I can die.”
His documentary, Days of Waiting: The Life & Art of Estelle Ishigo, was completed shortly before her death in 1990. It won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject the following year.
Today, Estelle’s drawings and paintings are recognized as some of the most important visual records of the Japanese American incarceration.
Thank you for telling Estella’s story.