[2]: 39–40  Ishigaki, who came to the US as a migrant worker in the early 20th century, depicted the contradictions of American society from the perspective of a minority person.

[3] Ishigaki was also a founding member of progressive and politically active organizations, including the John Reed Clubs (JRC) in 1929 and the American Artists' Congress in 1936.

[6] According to the short biography in the anthology Asian American Art, 1850-1970, Ishigaki arrived with his father in Seattle and moved with him to Bakersfield, California, the following year.

[1]: 338  Like the majority of Asian immigrants on the US West Coast, Ishigaki experienced life in the United States at that time as a migrant worker who had to do underpaid and physically strenuous work.

For example, he worked as a day laborer on orchards, an assistant (busboy) in restaurants and as a cleaner in hotels in Bakersfield, San Francisco, and Seattle.

During his third stay in the United States, Katayama was considered an influential activist in small circles of Japanese immigrants in San Francisco and New York.

[2]: 48 Gertrude Boyle Kanno and Ishigaki lived in New York in the Greenwich Village district, to which her husband followed them, securing a residence nearby.

In January 1927, the women's rights activist and author Ayako Tanaka visited Ishigaki in his apartment on Horatio Street, where his works impressed her.

When Ayako Ishigaki published her autobiography Restless Wave in 1940 under the pseudonym Haru Matsui, the book contained illustrations made by her husband.

[2]: 66  Because the presentation of his controversial paintings in 1938 had led to considerable criticism, the New York City Council ruled his murals offensive and they were eventually destroyed in 1941.

[9] While Ishigaki was still working on the murals in the Harlem Courthouse, he was fired from the Federal Art Project together with other emigre artists in July 1937 because they were not American citizens.

[1]: 338  His painting, Man on the Horse (1932), depicted a plain-clothed Chinese guerrilla confronting the Japanese army, heavily equipped with airplanes and warships.

His other painting, Flight (1937), depicted two Chinese women escaping Japanese bombing, running with three children past one man lying dead on the ground.

[10] In addition to his studies, Ishigaki was involved in a communist gathering led by the Japanese political activist Sen Katayama.

Under these influences, the style of his works, which have long reflected social issues, developed towards the sculptural modelling of forms that can be found in Rivera's murals.

(Ku-Klux-Klan) was positioned to illustrate an article by Dorothy Calhoun about her visit to two mothers of the Scottsboro Boys, victims of racism in the American judicial system.