Estelle Ishigo (July 15, 1899 – February 25, 1990), née Peck, was an American 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. A year after she was born her family relocated from Oakland to San Francisco. Throughout her childhood, she was surrounded by music and art. Her parents were largely absent and she was primarily raised by a nurse. At the age of four, she showed promising talent in both painting and singing, and started learning the violin by the time she was twelve. At the age of twelve, when her family relocated once again to Los Angeles, where she was sent to live with relatives and strangers, and abandoned by her parents. In Los Angeles, Peck faced difficulties and was sexually assaulted by at least one guardian. Eventually she dropped out of high school and ran away. Later on, Peck decided to become a painter and enrolled in the Otis Art Institute, where she met San Franciscan Nisei Arthur Ishigo (1902–1957). He had moved to Los Angeles with dreams of becoming an actor and worked as a janitor at Paramount Studios. In 1928, the couple drove to Tijuana, Mexico to get married in order to avoid American anti-miscegenation laws. Being an interracial couple, they faced hardship and Estelle was disowned by her family. The couple lived in the Japanese American community of Los Angeles, and were avid campers – finding refuge from racial prejudice in nature. Incarceration Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the couple faced heightened discrimination. Arthur Ishigo and all other ethnic Japanese who worked at Paramount Studios were fired on December 8, 1941, one day after the attack. A few weeks later, Estelle was fired from her job as an art teacher at the Hollywood Art Center due to