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Executive Order 9066 was rescinded in December 1944.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.

Adults attended evening classes which were organized by the internees.

Children entertained themselves however they could, in this case taking advantage of the Wyoming wind. The graves in the  foreground of Ishigo's sketch are significant. While most internees chose to cremate their loved ones, some bodies were buried at Heart Mountain.

A popular pastime for incarcerated boys, like other boys in Wyoming at the time, was playing marbles.

The children of Heart Mountain had a school band and boy and girl scout troops. The bugle would have been used by the groups.

This is one of Estelle Ishigo's more detailed sketches capturing the personalities of two incarcerated boys.

Heart Mountain had a Catholic church and a community Christian church which served all denominations, but about two-thirds of those incarcerated at Heart Mountain were Buddhist.

The Heart Mountain canteen provided internees with a place to buy necessities as well as ice cream.

Incarcerees, from the more temperate West Coast, didn't have winter clothes needed to survive in a Wyoming winter. Most had to buy them, although the government eventually supplied surplus Navy pea coats.

The canteen general store was always busy serving more than 10,000 incarcerated people.

Each block of 24 barracks was designed to have two mess halls. There were 20 blocks in the camp, but for reasons that are not clear, only 39 mess halls at Heart Mountain.

The incarcerees ate together at long tables in the mess halls. Meal times were cramped and noisy.

As with mess halls, there were two laundry rooms for each block of 24 barracks. Washing clothing and bedding by hand using a washboard was an arduous process.

Incarcerees, including children, spent a great deal of time waiting in lines, even outside in the cold of winter.

The Heart Mountain Relocation Center was surrounded by a barbed wire fence. Guards in nine guard towers watched over incarcerees.

Vegetables grown in the garden incarcerees planted were a welcome replacement to the canned vegetables which had been served in the mess halls.

As with any town of more than 10,000 people, Heart Mountain had a police department.

The children of Heart Mountain started school on October 5, 1942. Their classrooms were barracks. Supplies and classroom furniture were basic - the chalkboard was a piece of plywood painted black.

Heart Mountain incarcerees had to acquire a permit or pass from the War Relocation Authority to leave the camp for work or to visit nearby towns. Some incarcerees worked as domestic servants in well-off Park County homes. Others worked on farms.

Dust was everywhere in Heart Mountain and cleaning was a perpetual job.