Estelle Peck Ishigo

Estelle Ishigo (née Peck; July 15, 1899 – February 25, 1990) was an American visual artist known for her watercolors, pencil and charcoal drawings, and sketches. During World War II she and her husband were incarcerated at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Wyoming. She subsequently wrote about her experiences in Lone Heart Mountain and was the subject of the Oscar winning documentary Days of Waiting: The Life & Art of Estelle Ishigo.

Ishigo stands out as being one of the few individuals who were not ethnically Japanese incarcerated under Executive Order 9066.

Early life Estelle Peck was born in Oakland, California, on July 15, 1899. She was the daughter of concert singer Bertha Apfels and portrait and landscape artist Bradford Peck. She was of English, Dutch and French ancestry. Throughout her childhood, she was surrounded by music and art. Her parents were largely absent and she was primarily raised by a nurse. The couple lived in the Japanese American community of Los Angeles, and were avid campers – finding refuge from racial prejudice in nature. Shortly thereafter, Estelle resigned as an art instructor at the Hollywood Art Center School to join her husband. Both were American citizens. After President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, Arthur was ordered to report to the temporary detention center at the Pomona Fairgrounds. Estelle faced a decision – stay with her husband of 13 years and be incarcerated or remain in Los Angeles alone. She was informed that if she chose to go with her husband, she would not have any privileges due to her race and would have the same status as the Japanese American prisoners. On May 10, 1942, Estelle chose to report for incarceration, and began sketching the series of events that followed.

Estelle and Arthur were first held at the Pomona Assembly Center, where over 5,000 individuals of Japanese ancestry were incarcerated. She chose charcoal sketches and pencil drawings as her main media because she found watercolors to be "too clean and untroubled" to capture the experiences of camp. Although the Ishigos never had children, much of Estelle's work involved depicting children within the camps, illustrating young Japanese American youth playing while behind barbed wire.

Post-war and death The War Relocation Authority (WRA) closed the Heart Mountain concentration camp in November, 1945.

Days of Waiting Days of Waiting (1990) was produced, written and directed by Steven Okazaki. When Okazaki met Ishigo she reportedly told him, "I've been waiting for someone to tell my story to, then I can die." She died shortly before it was released. The film notably won a Peabody Award and an Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject).

Estelle left her watercolor collection in the care of Allen Hendershott Eaton, an art collector who notably amassed a large collection of camp artwork. After the Eaton collection was narrowly saved from a private sale in 2015 and acquired by the Japanese American National Museum (JANM), Ishigo's watercolors were conserved and loaned to Heart Mountain, where she had been incarcerated. Following the loan from JANM, Bacon Sakatani, an Advisory Council member of the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation (HMWF) and personal friend of Ishigo, donated 137 of her pencil sketches. Her work was on view at Heart Mountain from May 15 – December 31, 2018, in the show Works by Estelle Ishigo: The Mountain was Our Secret. This collection consists of documents (including many documents pertaining to Ishigo's post-war Evacuation Claims Act filings), records, correspondence, photographs, paintings, pencil drawings and sketches, and watercolor sketches.