Biography:
Takeo “Tak” Ishikawa was born on April 12, 1919, in Mountain View, California, one of seven children born to parents Kome and Asakichi. Ishikawa graduated from Mountain View High School in 1936 and attended San Jose State University for two years, before returning home to work on his family’s farm full-time from 1938 to 1942. Ishikawa arrived at Santa Anita Assembly Center with the rest of his family on May 27, 1942, and at Heart Mountain on September 10, 1942. He lived in apartment 24-16-F. During his incarceration, Ishikawa had a job in camp and also left for seasonal work, predominantly working as a laborer on the railroad. He answered Undecided to Question 27 and Yes to Question 28 on the 1943 loyalty questionnaire. Ishikawa was arrested for violating the Selective Service Act on March 27, 1944. He was tried and convicted in the trial of 63 draft resisters in June 1944. Ishikawa was sentenced to three years in the federal prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He was pardoned on December 24, 1947, by President Harry Truman. After his release, Ishikawa eventually returned to the Mountain View area, where he married Hideko “Dixie” Yamanaka, with whom he had two sons, Walter and Richard. Takeo Ishikawa passed away on June 5, 2016 in Santa Clara County, California.