Author’s books battle racism

  • Sue Waldburger<br>Enterprise writer
  • Monday, March 3, 2008 11:40am

As long as racism exists, so, it seems, will audiences for Ken Mochizuki’s books.

Edmonds Library hosted the Maple Valley author Oct. 19 for a discussion at the of his book “Baseball Saved Us,” the tale of life in a Japanese American internment camp during World War II. Released 13 years ago, the children’s picture book is a regular on recommended-reading lists in schools and public libraries throughout the country, Mochizuki said.

Interest in the book resurged when the events of 9-11 and “the whole issue of being singled out for who you are, not what you did” grabbed headlines, he said in reference to the public’s attitude toward Muslims.

Mochizuki’s publisher “calls (the book) the ‘Energizer Bunny’ — it just keeps going and going and going,” Mochizuki said.

Mochizuki, who describes himself as an American of Japanese descent, has found a niche as a chronicler of history and current issues involving Americans of Asian/Pacific descent.

Born and reared in Seattle, he is a communications graduate of the University of Washington. Currently, he is a freelance writer and an assistant editor for the International Examiner, a newspaper focused on Northwest Asian/Pacific American communities.

He said the U.S. government has hired him to give presentations on the history of Asian/Pacific Americans in the military.

“Baseball Saved Us” was born of his research in the 1980s on the issue of redress for Americans of Japanese ancestry, which resulted in the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. With that came a presidential apology and symbolic payment of $20,000 to those forced to move to relocation camps and others who lost liberty and property because of discrimination by the federal government during World War II.

Through a network of friends, he came to the attention of a publisher of children’s multicultural literature. He found himself agreeing to pen a story for Lee &Low Books of New York not on a player in the Nisei semi-pro baseball leagues as was suggested, but historical fiction about a boy who through baseball found a path to dignity and self-respect.

It was no easy task to decide how he would go about portraying discrimination for young readers, said Mochizuki, who is married and does not have children. He recalled he and his publisher went around and around about use of the word “Jap” (a term Mochizuki prefers to spell rather than speak aloud) before deciding to include it for historical accuracy’s sake.

The subject resurfaced this past summer, he said, when a Connecticut mother complained to his publisher about the term.

“I told her ‘I hope your son isn’t watching those John Wayne World War II movies where the word ‘Jap’ is used in a dehumanizing way,”” the author said. “It’s all about context. Does it instruct? Is it realistic to the time? How did those on the receiving end feel about it?”

The word, Mochizuki said, will remain in his books.

“Baseball Saved Us” and his books with similar themes that followed help break down stereotypes, he said. Mochizuki noted that in all the pictures children have sent him after reading his stories, “Never have I seen characters drawn with slant eyes, big grins and stereotypical dress.”

Mochizuki’s family’s “very Japanese mindset” of “that was then, this is now” meant they were not willing to be a resource for his research. “Even to this day they don’t want to talk about it,” he said.

Mochizuki has never been to Japan and, at 52, was born after the internment camps. However, he pointed out that he is the offspring of parents who were confined at the Puyallup fairgrounds (“in horse stalls”) as well as the Minidoka camp in Idaho. He has been to Minidoka with those who were confined there and it’s a subject he knows well, he said.

Mochizuki’s newest book is the just-released “Be Water, My Friend: The Early Years of Bruce Lee.”

When first asked by his publisher to consider writing a biography of the late actor and martial-arts expert, Mochizuki said his reaction was “Why? He’s just a perpetuator of stereotypes.”

After viewing a Bruce Lee memorabilia exhibit in Seattle and learning about his passion — even as a skinny child with poor eyesight — for ballroom dancing, reading (in adulthood his personal library held 2,500 volumes) and philosophical pursuits, the author said he was won over.

And beside, it posed another dragon to slay.

“I hope readers,” Mochizuki wrote, “especially guys, will think about this: If you call your peer who wears glasses a nerd, if you think reading is boring … ballroom dancing is for sissies …. you don’t have to take school seriously and won’t live to regret it, remember Bruce Lee, often considered the … most macho of men, was and did all these things …”

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