Mochizuki, Ken 1954–

PERSONAL:

Surname pronounced "Moh-chee-zoo-kee"; born May 18, 1954, in Seattle, WA; son of Eugene (a social worker) and Miyeko (a clerical worker) Mochizuki. Ethnicity: "Third-generation American of Japanese descent." Education: University of Washington—Seattle, B.A., 1976.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Maple Valley, WA. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Actor in Los Angeles, CA, 1976-81; International Examiner (newspaper), Seattle, WA, staff writer, 1985-89, assistant editor, 2007—; Northwest Nikkei (newspaper), Seattle, assistant editor, 1990-97. Gives presentations to schools and other groups.

MEMBER:

Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Parents' Choice Award, Washington State Governor's Writers Award, Publishers Weekly Editor's Choice, and American Bookseller Pick of the List, all 1993, all for Baseball Saved Us; Notable Children's Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies, National Council for the Social Studies/Children's Book Council (NCSS/CBC), and Notable Book for Children, Smithsonian magazine, both 1995, and Teachers' Choices selection, International Reading Association (IRA), 1996, all for Heroes; Parenting Best Book of the Year designation and Notable Book for Children, Smithsonian magazine, both 1997, Notable Children's Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies, NCSS/CBC, Notable Books for a Global Society, IRA, and Notable Children's Book in the Language Arts, National Council of Teachers of English, all 1998, and Utah Beehive Award, 1999, all for Passage to Freedom: The Sugihara Story.

WRITINGS:

Baseball Saved Us, illustrated by Dom Lee, Lee & Low (New York, NY), 1993.

Heroes (picture book), illustrated by Dom Lee, Lee & Low (New York, NY), 1995.

Passage to Freedom: The Sugihara Story (nonfiction), illustrated by Dom Lee, Lee & Low (New York, NY), 1997.

Beacon Hill Boys, Scholastic (New York, NY), 2002.

Be Water, My Friend: The Early Years of Bruce Lee (picture book), illustrated by Dom Lee, Lee & Low (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor to A Different Battle: Stories of Asian Pacific American Veterans, edited by Carina A. del Rosario, University of Washington Press (Seattle, WA), 1999. Some of Mochizuki's works have been translated into Spanish.

ADAPTATIONS:

Passage to Freedom: The Sugihara Story was adapted as an audiocassette, Live Oak Media (Pine Plains, NY), 2000; Baseball Saved Us was adapted into a stage musical by the Fifth Avenue Theatre and produced in Seattle, WA, 2003; Beacon Hill Boys was adapted as an independent film.

SIDELIGHTS:

Journalist Ken Mochizuki is the author of a number of award-winning picture books for children. Through his 1993 title, Baseball Saved Us, Mochizuki was credited by a Publishers Weekly contributor with introducing young readers "to a significant and often-neglected … chapter in U.S. history," the imprisonment of Americans of Japanese descent in internment camps during the early 1940s. Mochizuki, whose parents were sent from their home on the West Coast to Idaho's Minidoka camp during World War II, explains the history surrounding his story and attempts to illustrate for children the difficulties caused by living with racism. Ira Berkow wrote in the New York Times Book Review that in Baseball Saved Us, Mochizuki "captures the confusion, wonder, and terror of a small child in such stunning circumstances with convincing understatement."

Shorty, the book's young Japanese-American narrator, begins the story by remembering how he was ostracized, how other children called him "Jap," and how voices on the radio talked on and on about Pearl Harbor before his family was sent to live in the crowded, dusty camp. Life in the camp was stressful as well as boring, causing tension within families. Shorty's father decides to do something: "One day, my dad looked out at the endless desert and decided then and there to build a baseball field." Everyone's efforts and talents are marshaled and scarce resources are cleverly used: water is channeled to pack down earth for a field, uniforms are sewn from mattress covers, bleachers are constructed, and friends from home are asked to send bats, balls, and gloves. Baseball begins to occupy the minds and time of the camp's captives. For Shorty, baseball becomes a way to excel and battle the racism that follows him even after leaving camp and returning home.

Reviewers recognized the importance of the message in Baseball Saved Us, although several voiced concerns regarding the story's presentation. Horn Book contributor Ellen Fader maintained that Mochizuki "effectively conveys the narrator's sense of isolation, his confusion about being a target of prejudice, and the importance of baseball in his life." Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books writer Roger Sutton, however, thought that while the "political consciousness" reflected in Mochizuki's book rings true, the "children's book vehicle it rides in is dated and sentimental." Hazel Rochman, writing in Booklist concluded, nonetheless, that "the baseball action will grab kids—and so will the personal experience of bigotry."

In the 1995 picture book Heroes, Mochizuki once again mines his roots as a Japanese American growing up in mid-twentieth-century America by telling the story of Donnie Okada, a young boy who always gets stuck playing the part of the evil enemy when he and his friends play battleground games. The reason? He looks like "them": the Koreans and Japanese that the boys' fathers' generation fought against in World War II and the Korean War. Although Donnie tries to explain that his father and uncles served on the American side in the same wars, his friends do not believe him. It is only after his uncles arrive at his school in full uniform that Donnie's friends begin to understand. Noting that Mochizuki intended Heroes as a tribute to the Japanese-American 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a Kirkus Reviews contributor praised the book for illustrating "how subtly prejudice was passed on to … children" in the postwar years. Comparing the book to Baseball Saved Us, a Publishers Weekly contributor praised both Mochizuki and illustrator Dom Lee for "adroitly" causing young readers to think about an important social issue by working it into the life of a child, "neither trivializing the issues nor condescending to their audience."

Mochizuki's nonfiction work Passage to Freedom: The Sugihara Story was inspired by news articles that circulated in 1994 and focused on a Japanese diplomat stationed in Lithuania during World War II. In 1940, so the news stories explained, Chiune Sugihara issued handwritten visas to hundreds of Polish Jews, allowing them to escape through the Soviet Union into Japan and thus be spared shipment by the Nazis to concentration camps. In his book, Mochizuki adopts the point of view of Sugihara's son, five-year-old Hiroki, and tells the story of the diplomat's courage through youthful eyes. Drawing on his journalism training, the author met with Hiroki Sugihara in 1995 and was able to obtain a great deal of background information—Sugihara and his family were subsequently interred for over a year in a Soviet detention camp and the diplomat released of his rank—and personal reflections on the man's childhood experiences during World War II. Scenes of desperate Jewish refugee families huddled at the door of the Japanese embassy and a boy's attempts to understand his parent's fear and agitation are brought to life in a "narrative [that] will grab kids' interest and make them think," according to Booklist contributor Hazel Rochman.

Discussing the inspiration for his early picture books in an essay posted on the Lee & Low Web site, Mochizuki commented: "The basic theme of … Baseball Saved Us was the power of positive thinking and believing in oneself. One of the themes implicit in … Heroes was the definition of a hero as one who knows that actions speak louder than words…. Passage to Freedom is about the moral choice: Does one do what is considered ‘correct’ at the time? Or does one do what is ‘right’ for all time?"

Issues of similar import, which Booklist contributor Gillian Engberg listed as "racial and cultural identity, prejudice, and family," are woven into the author's first young-adult novel, Beacon Hill Boys. Taking place in a Seattle neighborhood during the early 1970s, the novel focuses on a group of teens who are frustrated that the social and political changes sweeping the country in the wake of the civil rights movement are passing Asian Americans by, leaving them to bear the legacy of their traditionalist parents to conform and excel within the "system." Mochizuki's depiction of teenage life in the seventies earned praise from reviewers, with a Publishers Weekly critic remarking that "the author's understanding of teen conflicts and the need to forge an individual identity should resonate" with many readers.

Mochizuki and Lee teamed again on Be Water, My Friend: The Early Years of Bruce Lee, a biographical picture book about the early life of the actor and martial arts expert. Inspired by a multimedia exhibit of Lee memorabilia, the work chronicles Lee's often troubled childhood in Hong Kong, including his love of reading, his impatience with school, and his relationship with Yip Man, the mentor who introduced the youth to kung fu. "The team's narrative and artwork remain as vivid as ever," noted a Publishers Weekly critic. Writing in School Library Journal, Anne Chapman Callaghan called Be Water, My Friend "a gentle tribute to a martial-arts legend."

"My grandparents were from Japan," Mochizuki once told CA, "but my parents, brothers and I grew up and have lived in the U.S.A. all our lives. I have never been to Japan, nor do I speak any Japanese. Yet, I am still sometimes asked, ‘Do you speak English?’ or … ‘Where are you from?’ I am from Seattle, Washington, and learned my English in an American school like anyone else. When I am asked those kind of questions, I am being judged solely on what I look like. And that is a big reason why I write: to show that people of Asian and Pacific Islander descent in this country are Americans who are a part of everyday American life, and that they have been Americans for a long time.

"I hope to convey to young readers that they should actually get to ‘know’ others, rather than to ‘assume’ things about them—that really, all people are basically the same, and that there are only two types of people in this world: good and bad. I also try to communicate to young people a sense of positive thinking and self-esteem—that they should believe in themselves and what they can do, rather than listen to others who tell them what they cannot."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Mochizuki, Ken, Baseball Saved Us, Lee & Low (New York, NY), 1993.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, April 15, 1993, Hazel Rochman, review of Baseball Saved Us, pp. 1523-1524; May 15, 1997, Hazel Rochman, review of Passage to Freedom: The Sugihara Story, p. 86; November 15, 2002, Gillian Engberg, review of Beacon Hill Boys, p. 595; September 1, 2006, Carolyn Phelan, review of Be Water, My Friend: The Early Years of Bruce Lee, p. 118.

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, May, 1993, Roger Sutton, review of Baseball Saved Us, p. 290.

Horn Book, July-August, 1993, Ellen Fader, review of Baseball Saved Us, pp. 453-454; May-June, 1995, Ellen Fader, review of Heroes, p. 327.

Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 1995, review of Heroes, p. 389; November 15, 2002, review of Beacon Hill Boys, p. 1689; August 15, 2006, review of Be Water, My Friend, p. 848.

New York Times Book Review, April 4, 1993, Ira Berkow, review of Baseball Saved Us, p. 26.

Publishers Weekly, March 29, 1993, review of Baseball Saved Us, p. 55; March 6, 1995, review of Heroes, p. 69; April 21, 1997, review of Passage to Freedom, p. 71; November 11, 2002, review of Beacon Hill Boys, p. 65; September 18, 2006, review of Be Water, My Friend, p. 54.

Reading Teacher, September, 1998, review of Passage to Freedom, p. 58.

School Library Journal, June, 1993, Tom S. Hurburt, review of Baseball Saved Us, pp. 84-85; July, 1995, John Philbrook, review of Heroes, p. 79; June, 2000, Patricia Mahoney Brown, review of Passage to Freedom, p. 89; January, 2003, Alison Follos, review of Beacon Hill Boys, p. 140; November, 2006, Anne Chapman Callaghan, review of Be Water, My Friend, p. 122.

ONLINE

International Examiner Online,http://www.iexaminer.org/ (May 1, 2007), Gary Iwamoto, "Ken Mochizuki Examines the Early Years of Cultural Icon Bruce Lee."

Lee & Low Web site,http://www.leeandlow.com/ (May 1, 2007), "Book Talk with Ken Mochizuki."

Scholastic Web site,http://www.scholastic.com/ (May 1, 2007), "Ken Mochizuki."