Estelle Ishigo sketches and photographs 

Estelle shown near a barracks building. 

Estelle married San Francisco Nisei Arthur Ishigo in 1928. They married in Mexico to avoid American anti-miscegenation laws.

After the war and their release from internment, Arthur and Estelle lived in poverty for many years. Arthur died in 1957.

Arthur worked in a boiler room that provided hot water for a block of barracks.

Arthur Ishigo standing by packing cases with dog near hut B-14-6.

After the war and their release from internment, fellow Heart Mountain inmates helped Ishigo republish her 1972 book Lone Heart Mountain. Estelle died on February 25, 1990, in Los Angeles, California. 

Executive Order 9066 was rescinded in December 1944. Internees were released, often to resettlement facilities and temporary housing. Interned Japanese-Americans had not only lost their personal liberties, many also lost their homes, businesses, property, and savings. 

Internees braved the elements to travel between buildings during their everyday life.

It took about four train car loads of coal a day to provide heat for internees during the cold winter months.

Although there were some activities for children at the center, young children had days of boredom and loneliness.  

Playtime could often become dangerous near the barbed wire fence. 

Men's and women's washrooms offered little if any privacy.

Internees did what they could to make their situation liveable such as sports, clubs, and events.

Families lived in apartments within tarpapered barracks. The largest apartments were simply single rooms measuring 24 feet by 20 feet.

In Japan, geisha is a class of female performance artists trained in traditional performing arts styles, such as dance, music and singing, 

Adults attended evening school for classes in such things as sewing, English, and the U.S. Constitution. 

In many cases doors and windows were improperly installed and failed to close completely. In addition, gaping cracks between wallboards made both privacy and protection from Wyoming weather difficult. Coal burning stoves became a main heat source during the cold winter months.

Internees braved the elements to travel between buildings during their everyday life. 

Almost half of the Japanese Americans interned nationally were children. They had to help with daily tasks and chores at internment centers like Heart Mountain. 

Internees had to wait their turn to eat at the mess hall despite harsh weather conditions. 

Inexpensive foods such as wieners, dried fish, pancakes, macaroni, and pickled vegetables were served often. But internees were able to supplement their diet by completing a 5,000-foot irrigation canal and clearing many acres of sagebrush to make way for peas, beans, cabbage, carrots, cantaloupe, watermelon, and other fruits and vegetables. Milk was supplied through a creamery in Powell, but the camp raised cattle, hogs and chickens for its own consumption. 

Fires were common at Heart Mountain because of the tar papered covered barracks.

The center was known for fomenting and supporting draft resistance amongst the Nisei during World War II through the Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee. There existed at Heart Mountain a tradition of protest, both violent and non-violent.

Furniture making was the most immediate art activity of many detainees during the first days of imprisonment as they attempted to transform dilapidated barracks into adequate shelter.

Only 2,000 people had left Heart Mountain by June 1945. Those who left were only given $25 and a train ticket to the destination of his or her choice. If the internee didn't supply officials with a home address, the person was simply sent to the area where they resided prior to the war, whether they had a home there or not. Wyoming officials discouraged Japanese Americans from remaining in the state and earlier had passed laws preventing them from owning land and from voting. The last trainload of incarcerees left Heart Mountain on November 10, 1945.