SILENT SACRIFICE - STORIES OF JAPANESE AMERICAN INCARCERATION illuminates a dark chapter in American history. In February 1942, just 10 weeks after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized the removal of any or all people considered a threat to national security from designated military areas. SILENT SACRIFICE shares the experiences of Japanese Americans who were living in the San Joaquin Valley prior to Executive Order 9066. Interviewees discuss what drew them to the area, the businesses and farms their families established, and both the discrimination many faced in their adopted land as well as the friendships they formed. They then reveal the shock and confusion felt in the immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbor and the tragic and disorienting uprooting of lives as families were forced to abandon their homes and move into temporary assembly centers before being sent to permanent internment camps.
