Estelle Ishigo papers, 1941-1957

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Summary

Creators:
Ishigo, Estelle
Abstract:
Estelle (Peck) Ishigo (1899- ) was born in Oakland, California. She attended Otis Art Institute where she met and married San Franciscan Nisei, Arthur Ishigo (ca. 1929). Following Pearl Harbor, both were fired from their jobs and Arthur was ordered to a concentration camp. Estelle voluntarily accompanied him, and they were eventually assigned to Heart Mountain concentration camp in Wyoming. Estelle documented life at the camp through her artwork. The collection consists of documents, records, correspondence, photographs, paintings, pencil drawings and sketches, and watercolor sketches related to Estelle Ishigo's life in the Pomona Assembly Center, California and the Heart Mountain Relocation Center, Wyoming. There is also material related to the Ishigo's postwar resettlement in Southern California.
Extent:
2.5 linear feet (5 boxes) and 6 oversize boxes
Language:
Materials are in English.
Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Estelle Ishigo Papers (Collection 2010). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.

Background

Scope and content:

Collection consists of documents, records, correspondence, photographs, paintings, pencil drawings and sketches, and watercolor sketches related to Estelle Ishigo's life in the Pomona Assembly Center, California and the Heart Mountain Relocation Center, Wyoming. The collection also includes material related to the Ishigo's postwar resettlement in Southern California. Additionally there are short essays, manuscripts, and draft manuscripts by Estelle Ishigo.

The Estelle Ishigo Papers are a part of the Japanese American Research Project (JARP) Collection (Collection 2010). JARP is considered one of the finest collections of primary sources in the United States on Japanese immigration history. Conducted under the sponsorship of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), JARP was a socio-historical research project which began in 1962 and lasted until 1972. During the course of the project, the JARP staff amassed a sizable body of material in the Japanese language which became the core of the JARP Collection. Additions were made as they were obtained.

The Ishigo Papers is part of the Nisei personal papers section of JARP's manuscript holdings. It consists mainly of documents, records, correspondence and other materials relating both to Estelle Ishigo's life in the Pomona Assembly Center, California, and the Heart Mountain Relocation Center, Wyoming, as well as documents, correspondence and materials relating to Arthur and Estelle Ishigo's postwar resettlement in Southern California. The papers also contain Estelle Ishigo's manuscripts, short essays and draft manuscripts. Noteworthy is the presence of Estelle's various paintings, sketches and watercolors.

Biographical / historical:

Estelle (Peck) Ishigo was born in Oakland, California, 1899; attended Otis Art Institute; met and married San Franciscan Nisei, Arthur Ishigo (ca. 1929); following Pearl Harbor, both were fired from their jobs and Arthur ordered to a concentration camp; Estelle voluntarily accompanied him and they were eventually assigned to Heart Mountain concentration camp in Wyoming; Estelle documented life at the camp through her artwork; they lived in poverty for many years following the war; Arthur died, 1957; fellow Heart Mountain inmates helped Ishigo republish her 1972 book, Lone Heart Mountain, ca. 1984; filmmaker Steven Okazaki made a documentary of Ishigo's life titled, Days of Waiting; she died before seeing the film (1990).

Estelle Ishigo was a Caucasian artist and daughter of a concert singer and portrait and landscape artist. Born in Oakland, California, Estelle was surrounded by music and art. At age four, she showed promising abilities in painting and singing. By age twelve, she learned to play the violin.

While attending Otis Art School in Los Angeles, Estelle met Arthur Shigeharu Ishigo (1902-1957), a San Francisco-born Nisei and aspiring actor. They were married in 1928.

At the outbreak of World War II, husband and wife were placed in the Pomona Assembly Center. Eventually, Estelle accompanied her husband to the Heart Mountain Relocation Camp in Wyoming where she was commissioned by the War Relocation Authority (WRA) to sketch her experiences.

During her three and a half year internment, Estelle helped with the camp newspapers and played violin in the camp's Mandolin Band. When the war ended and the camps closed, the Ishigos left Heart Mountain and returned to Southern California where they lived in a trailer camp and worked in fish canneries in San Pedro. Two years later, Arthur procured work at the Los Angeles International Airport which enabled them to visit New York, Chicago, Dallas, and Mexico City.

After Arthur passed away in 1957, Estelle stayed in seclusion until the California Historical Society asked to show her paintings in their Months of Waiting exhibit.

Discovered by the Hollywood Chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), Estelle's Lone Heart Mountain was published in 1972, a book which she wrote and sketched during her encampment years.

Just two years before Estelle's death, Producer/Director Steven Okazaki released the film Days of Waiting about Estelle's life as one of the few Caucasians to be interned with 100,000 Japanese Americans. The film earned the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject and received the prestigious George Peabody Award. Estelle Ishigo's extraordinary artistic talent as well as her devotion to her husband make Days of Waiting a poignant retrospection.

Processing information:

Collections are processed to a variety of levels depending on the work necessary to make them usable, their perceived user interest and research value, availability of staff and resources, and competing priorities. Library Special Collections provides a standard level of preservation and access for all collections and, when time and resources permit, conducts more intensive processing. These materials have been arranged and described according to national and local standards and best practices.

We are committed to providing ethical, inclusive, and anti-racist description of the materials we steward, and to remediating existing description of our materials that contains language that may be offensive or cause harm. We invite you to submit feedback about how our collections are described, and how they could be described more accurately, by filling out the form located on our website: Report Problematic Content and Description in UCLA's library collections and archives.

Arrangement:

Estelle Ishigo papers are found in Boxes 77-81, 719, 769, 781, 783, 788, and 863 of the Japanese American Research Project Collection of Material about Japanese in the United States(Collection 2010).

Arranged in the following series:

  1. Biographical materials and internment camp correspondence (Box 77).
  2. Documents, records, and other materials relating to Estelle's life in the Heart Mountain Relocation Camp and Federal Public Housing Authority resettlement trailer camps in Southern California (Box 78).
  3. Correspondence and documents relating to the Ishigo's evacuation claims and manuscripts for Estelle Ishigo's short stories and essays (Box 79).
  4. Miscellany and published materials (Box 80).
  5. Artwork at the relocation camp (Boxes 81, 719, 769, 781, 783, 788, 863).

Physical location:
Stored off-site. All requests to access special collections material must be made in advance using the request button located on this page.
Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Access and use

Restrictions:

Open for research. All requests to access special collections materials must be made in advance using the request button located on this page.

Terms of access:

Property rights to the objects belong to UCLA Library Special Collections. All other rights, including copyright, are retained by the creators and their heirs. It is the responsibility of the researcher to determine who holds the copyright and pursue the copyright owner or his or her heir for permission to publish where The UC Regents do not hold the copyright.

Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Estelle Ishigo Papers (Collection 2010). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.

Location of this collection:
A1713 Charles E. Young Research Library
Box 951575
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1575, US
Contact:
(310) 825-4988
AskLSC@library.ucla.edu
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