Steven Okazaki's new film tells the story of the artist Estelle Peck Ishigo, one of the few Caucasians to have been incarcerated by the U.S. government along with 110,000 Japanese Americans in 1942. In refusing to leave her Nisei husband Arthur, Estelle Ishigo committed herself to spending nearly four years behind barbed wire in Pomona, California and Heart Mountain, Wyoming; it was less a decision than a natural result of her identification with Arthur and his people, with whom she became one in their mutual imprisonment. As written by Okazaki, Days of Waiting is a compelling narrative of a woman, emotionally bruised from a chilling childhood, who found a few years of happiness with her husband before the cruelties of a government-sanctioned mass hysteria robbed her even of that small joy. But Estelle's saga, as told in the watercolors and drawings she produced in the camps, also throws into relief the story of many thousands of Japanese Americans for whom there was no happy ending once the prison gates were opened. Having watched her husband age beyond his years in the camps, she was "set free" to a life of dire poverty. When Okazaki found her she was living on five dollars a week, two cans of soup a day...and the pride that was the source of her art. Steven Okazaki's films include Survivors (1982), Unfinished Business (1985) and Living on Tokyo Time (1987).