The International Examiner is proud to honor Ken Mochizuki with a Community Voice Award (CVA) for a Leadership in Journalism Award. Please join us in-person, on October 23, 2025, to celebrate him and other community leaders.
Editor’s Note: The following two articles include a reflection piece from Mochizuki about his life, followed by a homage written by his friend Ron Chew. Both are intended to be read as companion pieces. The family of Ken Mochizuki also has the following to say:
The family of Ken Mochizuki, who passed away on September 20 after battling cancer, expresses gratitude to friends, colleagues and extended family who accompanied Ken in his last days, providing rides, meals, memories, honors and presence.
Your friendship and care enlivened and enriched his life.
A celebration of life will be planned in the near future.
An essay from Ken Mochizuki
By Ken Mochizuki
Through my years being educated, and through my time as a student at the University of Washington during the early-mid ‘70s, I detested writing. I became a last minute, late-night writer of term papers due the next day.
Ironic, then, that I would become a writer.
Years later, I morphed into a young reader’s author, beginning with children’s picture books. Being in this role led to conducting presentations about my works. An astute fifth grader once asked me: “What is the greatest regret you’ve had in your life?”
Shocked by such an adult question, I was equally surprised that I had an immediate answer: “That I didn’t take college as seriously as I should have.” I was a subpar student in the University of Washington’s School of Communication, hoping to learn something about my lifelong passion: film and filmmaking (it didn’t teach those subjects—there would later be a Cinema Studies department).
In retrospect, I was receiving an equal amount of education outside of the classroom. With the nascent Asian American identity movement in Seattle. I joined in and worked for its first newspaper, Asian Family Affair. During my last years in college, electrified by some exciting new actors on film, I took the plunge myself, being cast in a few productions produced by the first Asian Pacific American theater group in Seattle, Theatrical Ensemble of Asians, later to become Northwest Asian American Theatre.
Then I dove into the deep end in 1976. Becoming a film actor meant going to Los Angeles. I spent most of my five years there at East/West Players, the oldest Asian American theater group in the country. With many of the actors there having already accumulated a resume of screen credits, I paid my dues, got cast in its shows. Outside of East/West, I secured a sizeable role in the TV series M*A*S*H. Though not a highlight, I performed in an apocalyptic, post-nuke stage version of “Macbeth,” with the role of Macbeth played by a then-unknown: Danny Glover.
I do consider memorable the 13-weeks of work for a PBS series produced in Boston, “The New Voice.” About a group of high school kids who start a school paper, I was mixed in with a perfectly multiracial cast (which would be derided as “woke” these days). As the APA member, I was initially costumed like a bookish nerd. I brought that up to the show’s producers; that was the last time. I also advocated to make my character more human, rather than just being motivated by scooping stories for the school paper—part of my life’s work to fight the stereotypes of APAs. Unfortunately, the series premiered at a bad time—when the country was moving toward the Reagan years.
I learned about life the hard way in La-La Land, especially working all my odd jobs where I witnessed the social class differences. Being an actor also meant being unemployed a lot. I immersed myself in reading—a lot of the classic works I was supposed to have read in high school and college. I read John Okada’s now-classic novel, “No-No Boy,” which demonstrated to me that we APAs could write our own stories—if we would just do it!
A story about a group of Japanese American guys during the early ‘70s, the birth of the APA movement and why it needed to be born began to creep around within me. A colleague at East/West told me as he gave me one of his old typewriters: “Don’t talk about it! Just do it!” Then one morning, I rolled a sheet of paper into that typewriter and typed in all caps at the top, “BEACON HILL BOYS.”
I didn’t fail at having an acting career. I wanted to become a writer instead.
Back in Seattle by 1981, with my new ambition of getting “Beacon Hill Boys” finished and published, a reality remained: the dreamer still had to financially support himself. Taking on an assortment of work, including digging crawl spaces and lasting a week as a telemarketer, I kept my goal in sight: If I wanted to become a writer, I had to learn how to write. I had met and heard of Ron Chew, editor of the International Examiner, while at the UW.
I thought I had left acting behind. I took some elements of “Beacon Hill Boys” and entered my piece into a short story contest co-sponsored by the Examiner. Two Evergreen State College film students, Dean Hayasaka and Bill Blauvelt, happened to see my submission and approached me about re-creating Seattle’s early ‘70s APA community. I thought they were crazy, but then I joined the craziness, condensing the events of a year-and-a-half in my manuscript into two nights and a day.
I didn’t plan on acting in what became a 43-minute dramatic film, but I ended up playing the lead. I didn’t think the finished product would be a big deal, but after standing-room-only audiences at its Seattle premiere, “Beacon Hill Boys” was in demand across the country.
I am still mystified as to the continuing popularity of that short film, with local showings continuing to sell out. Maybe others could tell me why it is so.
After contributing the occasional freelance story to the Examiner, I was hired as its staff writer in 1985. My real school began.
When it came time to edit my story, I sat next to Ron, watching the computer screen as he showed me the edits he was making and explaining why. During that process, combined with a session in which he covered the basics of copyediting (such as headlines and cutlines, or captions, are written in the present tense), I learned more about writing and print journalism than I did in four years of college.
Implicit while working at the International Examiner was a mission statement with no need to be written out. We were advocates for the national APA community and locally, for Seattle’s Chinatown/International District. We covered what the mainstream media didn’t, or provided an alternative view to what it did.
During the ‘70s and ‘80s, I heard stories about the Asian American Vietnam veteran: that they were brought before their own fellow soldiers as an example of “what the enemy looks like”; that they had to play the enemy during training; that they were mistaken as the enemy and shot at by their own troops while in combat in Vietnam.
How much of this was true? At that time, Vietnam veterans were still being treated as pariahs and not as the appreciated veterans which they are today. Mostly through a connection with a respected APA vet, I secured a list of names and phone numbers. I made sure to proceed carefully.
A few were still haunted by experiences while serving in Vietnam, where their ethnicity did put their lives in jeopardy. Others had left that time in the past and moved on. Ethnicity in the U.S. military was never a factor, some said.
Later, one of the vets I featured told me that, as a result of my series of stories, more APA Vietnam veterans began to make themselves known and sought each other out. Just to hear that made all the work I had done on that subject worth it.
Then came the phone call that would change my life.
During the summer of 1991, I received a call from Philip Lee, publisher of a new multicultural children’s book company, Lee & Low Books. He was then canvassing the country for authors and illustrators to start his first line of books, getting my name from his wife whom I had worked with at the Examiner. Had I written anything in the young reader’s field? No. Would I be open to the idea? My priority remained getting “Beacon Hill Boys” published as an adult novel, but I decided to give it a shot.
Philip suggested a story about playing baseball within the American incarceration camps for Japanese Americans during World War II. From the countless stories I had done on the wartime camps, I had already done my research. Titled “Baseball Saved Us” and illustrated by Korean immigrant Dom Lee, it was released during spring 1993. I didn’t think it would go that far, after all, it was a children’s picture book. But with an almost-full page review in the New York Times book section, thus began some 100 book presentations around the country. After over 30 years, the book still continues to sell and remain popular.
However, I am particularly gratified when members of younger generations tell me they first learned of the wartime camp experience through “Baseball Saved Us.”
It is also one of the most banned books in America. What is my reaction?
In lines from Sly and the Family Stone’s song “Stand”:
“Stand, for the things you know are right. It’s the truth, that the truth makes them so uptight.”
And:
“Stand, they will try to make you crawl. And they know what you’re saying makes sense and all.”
A background in journalism leads to other opportunities. After having left the Examiner and working totally as a freelancer, I was hired by the Wing Luke Museum during the late ‘90s to write the history of APAs in the U.S. military for the book and exhibit, “A Different Battle: Stories of Asian Pacific American Veterans.” There was no central source on this subject; I had to pull all the disparate accounts together. I found that Filipinos fought with American forces as far back as The War of 1812.
Coincidentally, I was invited to be the speaker for Asian Pacific American Heritage Month events held by the U.S. Army’s 1st Armored Division stationed in Germany. I used this history I compiled and concluded my talks with a listing of APA Medal of Honor winners and their actions to receive the medal. After one presentation, a 1st Armored soldier introduced himself as being of Chamorro and Korean descent. He commented, “I didn’t know we had that many heroes.”
Within myself, I was celebrating: “YES! THIS IS WHAT I DID THIS FOR!”
If I were not there, the recognition of APA Heritage Month would have included food, martial arts demonstrations, and Polynesian dancers—nothing about our American experience.
I had a couple more successes in the children’s picture book realm: “Heroes” and “Passage to Freedom: The Sugihara Story.” Then came the chance to get “Beacon Hill Boys” published, the story that started it all for me. My editor from Lee & Low Books had moved to Scholastic Press and proposed that the story be converted into a “young adult” novel. However, major sanitization had to take place: four-letter words had to go and drug use—a core of the story—had to be dialed back. I did agree to all, and the result became more like juvenile, family-focused angst. I have used the term “disemboweled” retrospectively to describe the end result.
“Beacon Hill Boys” ended up being a commercial dud. Riding high like I did in the ‘90s was over, ushering in a time of unacknowledged depression. A stark reality for full-time freelancers is maintaining financial stability. Without a guaranteed and regular paycheck, was there going to be enough money to pay the bills?
If a source of revenue required words, I desperately sought it out: writing family histories, more Wing Luke books/exhibits, a year-and-a-half return to the International Examiner, a few more young readers’ books which never received the welcome like my books in the ‘90s. Book projects, marking years and decades of toil, went unpublished.
However, sales and acclaim are conceited reasons for gauging a lifetime’s worth of work. How much more did I assure the possibility that an American-born APA will not be asked, “But where are you really from?” Do the younger and next generations of APAs no longer need to discover their legacy in this country, but are spurred on to learn more about it?
As Bruce Lee wrote: “I did what I wanted to do. What I’ve done, I’ve done with sincerity and to the best of my ability. You can’t ask much more from life.”
Ken Mochizuki: ‘He follows his heart in all that he does’
By Ron Chew
When I asked Ken Mochizuki to respond to a list of 14 questions for this story, it felt like déjà vu. A much older Ron Chew was preparing to interview a much older Ken.
Ken had been selected to receive the International Examiner’s 2025 Community Voices Award for Leadership in Journalism.
He made things easier for me by simply responding to my questions with a mini essay, reflecting on his career.
Whew! Thank you, Ken.
The editing burden was lifted. But here, I add context. Ken, the ever-evolving cultural artist, has meant much to me, the newspaper and our community.
The two of us share a long history.
I had been his editor at the International Examiner in the mid-1980s, after his return from acting in Los Angeles and during the quiet inception of his career as a journalist, filmmaker and educator. Both of us are now authors; he has achieved national acclaim writing children’s books.
We were both Beacon Hill kids. We grew up in small-town Seattle, well before Microsoft and Amazon ushered in a harried era of technology and money.
In the 1950s and ‘60s, we romped in the same bramble-covered vacant lots on College Street. We both detonated Mattel Greenie Stick-M-Caps bought at the IGA store on Rainier. We both remember the gravel streets and the tidy homes with small patches of lawn bordered by flowers. We experienced Seattle before traffic and congestion began to drown out the naked sound of birds and silken rustle of trees.
I didn’t know Ken during this time because he attended Cleveland High School, and I went to Franklin. He was an Eagle, and I was a Quaker.
At the University of Washington, both of us came-of-age in the heady milieu of the Civil Rights Movement and anti-Vietnam War protests. We both studied communications at the University of Washington. Eventually, we both had to navigate past the sting of discrimination. When he ventured down to Los Angeles to chase his acting dreams, he found that there weren’t roles for Asian male leads. Racism hit me when I was rejected for an editorial job at the UW Daily.
Friend Andy Mizuki recalled that after Ken’s return, he got a job digging ditches and footings at a house near Franklin High.
“One day, the family’s kids were watching the TV series M*A*S*H,” Mizuki said. “It was the episode in which Ken played a Korean kid. They looked at each other and said, ‘Isn’t that the guy working in the backyard?’”
Ken and I both returned to community. We met and became fast friends at the International Examiner, a fledging tabloid founded by two Asian businessmen. We began to write news stories about Asian American issues: deterioration and willful neglect of the Chinatown-International District; ballooning needs for housing and social services for our elderly, immigrants and refugees; racist public policy; and enduring media stereotypes.
In the 1980s, we toiled in two adjoining 200-square-foot offices in the Jackson Building, surrounded by metal file cabinets, stacks of old newspapers and Asian American publications. We sat at small tables in front of Morrow computers with 5 ½-inch floppy disks, pecking away at keyboards. We frequently paused to chat with visitors: volunteers, newsmakers, noisemakers and artists. The office became a teeming community center, much like what Mam’s Books is today.
Ken and I both became renters at the mouse-infested Evergreen Apartments on Maynard Avenue, eliminating the need to commute or forage very far for good Asian food. He lived on the second floor in 201; I was above him on the third floor in 301.
That was our spartan life.
After we both left the Examiner, we briefly landed as staffers at the Washington State Commission on Asian American Affairs. We had regular paychecks and benefits.
We reconnected again at the Wing Luke Museum, where I worked for 17 years as director. Ken was always ready to serve as an advisor, writer or guest speaker. He has continued to work on projects at the Museum after my departure in 2007.
In March,1993, publisher Philip Lee launched Ken’s career in multicultural children’s literature by printing “Baseball Saved Us.” The book has sold more than 500,000 copies and has been adapted into an audiobook and a play by The Fifth Avenue Theatre Company.
Lee said Ken often visited schools. “I remember how Asian American children would proudly stand in line to meet their very first AAPI author,” Lee said. “I couldn’t tell who was beaming more—the kids or Ken.”
Lee noted that Ken’s book, described as a “modern-day classic,” was tied for fifth on the list of most banned picture books of the 2023-24 school year.
In recent years, Ken and I stayed in touch at our monthly “IE Lunchee Bunch” meals at Tai Tung Restaurant, harkening back to the riotously fun lunches that the newspaper staff used to enjoy at Ying Hei Restaurant on South King Street.
Serena Louie, another member of our early IE staff family, fondly recalled the Ying Hei lunches which always commenced with me guessing what each person was going to order.
“One of Ken’s favorite dishes to order was the ‘off-white dish’, or as we named it—’the lo-fon dish’, which was stir-fried squid and cauliflower over rice,” Louie said, with a chuckle.
Since last December, when Ken was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, he hasn’t been able to join us for lunch. The ranks have thinned. Other Examiner old-timers cope with chronic health issues or have passed away.
After a recent hospital visit, I visited Ken in his Mill Valley townhouse with an offering of egg foo yung from Tai Tung. This nostalgic comfort food rekindled his appetite following a challenging hospital stay. On another occasion, I brought chili and cornbread from Red Apple Market. The food hit the spot.
Recently, the community has risen to acknowledge the significance of his life’s work.
On August 2, the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) honored Ken with its Lifetime Achievement Award. Lori Matsukawa, AAJA Seattle chapter co-founder, remarked, “He is one of the few Asian American men breaking the ceiling for many of us to enter careers in film, on stage, in journalism, in TV news production and as authors of historical fiction for children.”
Charlene Mano, longtime educator at the Wing Luke Museum and a close family friend, said Ken co-wrote “Within the Silence,” a deeply moving one-person play that has been produced in schools across the country, educating thousands of children about the World War II incarceration.
Mano said she is indebted to Ken for producing an oral history book centering on her grandfather’s experiences at the Minidoka, Idaho concentration camp.
“Ken has written numerous community histories, and this is just one example,” she said.
Artist Michelle Kumata said that Ken—in addition to being an amazing “multi-disciplinary artist,” has been a “big brother” to her. In 1980, they both became core members of the Seattle Taiko Group, now Seattle Kokon Taiko. “He brought passion, dedication and humor to taiko,” she said. “He follows his heart in all that he does.”
On October 23, the IE will honor Ken with the Leadership in Journalism award. As with the AAJA event, Ken will likely not be able to attend. But he will be there in spirit.
He fights his cancer with an optimistic spirit. I typically visit him on Saturdays at his Mill Valley home. He is aided by a hospice care worker and a rotating team of friends who serve as caregiver support throughout the week.
“I may be physically limited,” he said, “but I have good friends. There is still good food. There is love. I look forward to more life. You don’t miss it until you don’t have it.”
On my August 30 visit, I was joined by Serena and Michelle. We brought fruit, an orchid, and helped him brew his morning coffee. We told him how much he meant to each of us.
As we prepared to leave, I asked him, “Reflecting back on all you’ve done, what life advice would you give?”
After pausing, he said, “When you come to a window, don’t just stare through the pane. Open the window and step through it. Just do it. Just keep doing it. Who knows what possibilities will pop up?”
