Sharon Yamato
@Sharony360Sharon 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
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 …
