Silent Sacrifice: Stories of Japanese-American Incarceration in Central California and Beyond (film)

Sprawling documentary film on the wartime incarceration story of Japanese Americans from Central California, focusing on the experiences at the Fresno , Pinedale , Merced , and Tulare Assembly Centers. In addition to interviews with survivors and descendants, there are many brief silent reenactments of scenes describes by the narrators. The last quarter of the film focuses on Saburo and Marion Masada's pilgrimage to the Jerome and Rohwer sites, where Saburo had been incarcerated with his family as a child.

Silent Sacrifice was produced by ValleyPBS of Fresno, California. Executive Producer Elizabeth Laval came up with the concept for the film and with her staff was able to secure grants from the Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program ($373,716 awarded in 2016) and California Civil Liberties Public Education Program ($100,000, awarded in 2017). Other major funders included The Larry & Alice Kitahara Foundation, Nisei Farmers League, and Sun-Maid Growers of California. ValleyPBS contracted Jeff Aiello and his company 18Thirty Entertainment to produce the film. It premiered on Fresno PBS on February 22, 2018. In 2019, it won a Northern California Area Emmy Award for "Outstanding Achievement for Documentary Cultural/Historical." ^[1]

Might also like And Then They Came for Us (2017); The Merced Assembly Center: Injustice Immortalized (2012); Democracy Under Pressure: Japanese Americans and World War II (2000)