Sharon Yamato

@Sharony360

Sharon Yamato is a writer and filmmaker in Los Angeles who has produced and directed several films on the Japanese American incarceration, including Out of Infamy, A Flicker in Eternity, and Moving Walls, for which she wrote a book by the same title. She served as creative consultant on A Life in Pieces, an award-winning virtual reality project, and is currently working on a documentary on attorney and civil rights leader Wayne M. Collins. As a writer, she co-wrote Jive Bomber: A Sentimental Journey, a memoir of Japanese American National Museum founder Bruce T. Kaji, has written articles for the Los Angeles Times, and is currently a columnist for The Rafu Shimpo. She has served as a consultant for the Japanese American National Museum, Go For Broke National Education Center, and has conducted oral history interviews for Densho in Seattle. She graduated from UCLA with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English.

Updated March 2023

Stories from This Author

Through the Fire: Sharing Redress Stories

April 1, 2008 • Sharon Yamato

The following article was written in response to The Community Day of Remembrance, an annual public program held at the Japanese American National Museum on February 16, 2008 to mark President Roosevelt's signing of Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, that authorized the unconstitutional forced removal of 120,000 Japanese Americans from the West Coast and Hawai`i during World War II. This year's program recognized the grassroots activism starting with Japanese Americans testifying at government-sanctioned hearings in 1981, through letter …

California communities Day of Remembrance Edison Uno Frank Emi Japanese American National Museum Japanese American National Museum (organization) Jim Matsuoka Kathy Nishimoto Masaoka Kay Kaneko Little Tokyo Los Angeles Redress movement United States World War II

Japanese American National Museum Magazine

Overcoming Tragedy at Manzanar: The Story of the Sakaguchi Family

April 13, 2007 • Sharon Yamato

After living in this country for thirty-four years and raising seven children, my mother, who was a schoolteacher in Japan before coming to this country, was doing stoop labor. She carried around the ashes of my brother, father, and sister for several years. When she received the government’s token compensation of $1,800 for the family’s losses, it paid for the gravestone under which the three are buried. —Dr. Mary (Sakaguchi) Oda at Commission Hearings on Wartime Relocation and Internment of …