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MN: Now you remembered Estelle Peck Ishigo from Heart Mountain. For those who don't know who Estelle Ishigo is, can you give us a little background who she was?

BS: Okay, Estelle Peck. She was a child from a couple up in San Francisco. The mother was an opera singer, the father was an artist. And they moved around a little bit, and they came to Los Angeles. And they came to Los Angeles, Estelle Peck I think was just out of high school, or something like that. And oh, she was like a foster kid. The parents didn't want to take care of her, so they had people take care of her and stuff like that, and then even put in a foster home. So when she graduated high school, she ran away. And then she was roaming the streets for a while, then she wanted to settle down, so she went to art school. So I don't know what she did for money, but she went to art school, and that's where she met Arthur Ishigo, a Japanese American that was in our class. And then they started going around together, so they got married around 1930. But Estelle being Caucasian and Arthur being Japanese American, they couldn't marry here in California, so they went to Mexico to get married. And then they came back, but when they did that, the mother really disowned her now, so she was disowned by her parents.

So she lived with this Arthur Ishigo, and he got odds and ends job, but he couldn't get an art job. But he got a job in one of the major studios, so he was doing odds and ends at the studios. But he wanted to get acting jobs, too, but he couldn't get it. But then when the war broke out, after December 7th, he got fired on Monday, December the 8th, because he was Japanese and they were at war with Japan. So he lost his job then. Then they were incarcerated into Pomona. Pomona, they were there four or five months, and then they were shipped off to Wyoming. So there, she felt, gee, she didn't get prejudice even though she has a Caucasian face and sort of a tannish, brownish hair, they welcomed her. And she was able to play the violin in a Japanese band, so she performed for many activities or entertainment in a Japanese band, and she stood out like a sore thumb because all the Japanese have dark black hair and she had a brownish tan color hair. But she was accepted there.

And being an artist, she recorded lots of pictures of Heart Mountain camp, whether it's waiting in line to go see the movie, waiting in line to go eat, or waiting in line to see a performance, she did all those. She took, sketched pictures of the latrines and the shower room, the mess halls, so she really recorded life in camp. So she eventually, I think, in about 1970, she published a book, Lone Heart Mountain." So that's when we got lots of artistic pictures of Heart Mountain life.

MN: She really didn't have to go into Heart Mountain.

BS: No. In fact, she made a request, that she said she wanted to stay with her husband, since her husband was required to go in.

MN: Let me ask a little bit about your parents. What did your father do in Heart Mountain?

BS: He worked for Community Enterprise. They, I guess, took charge of the PXs or the... I don't know what else, something else, but PXs. So he went around, maybe, he collected the money or something, but he worked in Community Enterprise there. So he worked, I think, in the drafting office in camp. So I'm not sure what he did there. So we probably got sixteen dollars a month. But the professionals like the doctors and the teachers got nineteen dollars a month, and the pure laborers got twelve dollars a month. So just to let you know what the pay was during, way back in the 1940s, the army private, the lowest rank in the army, got twenty-one dollars a month. So it gives you an idea of what the camp life was.

MN: So in your father's free time, do you know if he made a lot of furniture for your barrack?

BS: No, he must have made some stools or something, but that's about all we had. Probably maybe a desk for us to study at, too. But I remember one, he made a jewelry box, maybe about fifteen, twenty inches long, and about a couple, two, three inches high. Then on the background of the jewelry box, he had the outline of Heart Mountain camp. So that made it, little bit. And I had that after camp, and now... I don't know where it is now.

MN: Somewhere in your house.

BS: Somewhere. Maybe my sister has it.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.