New Releases by Ken Mochizuki

A powerful biography of Michi Weglyn, the Japanese American fashion designer whose activism fueled a movement for recognition of and reparations for America’s World War II concentration camps. The daughter of Japanese immigrants, Michi Nishiura Weglyn was confined in Arizona’s Gila River concentration camp during World War II. She later became a costume designer for Broadway and worked as the wardrobe designer for some of the most popular television personalities of the ’50s and early ’60s. In 1968, after a televised statement by the US Attorney General that concentration camps in America never existed, Michi embarked on an eight-year solo quest through libraries and the National Archives to expose and account for the existence of the World War II camps where she and other Japanese Americans were imprisoned. Her research became a major catalyst for passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, in which the US government admitted that its treatment of Japanese Americans during World War II was wrong. Thoroughly researched and intricately told, Michi Changes History is a masterful portrayal of one woman’s fight for the truth—and for justice.

In this blend of fiction and nonfiction, two young Japanese American sisters try to make sense of a world where their government imprisons them in World War II concentration camps while some of their friends and neighbors come to their aid.

"Author Ken Mochizuki reads his award-winning book. There is some soft background music, and a few gentle sound effects, but the power of the words need little embellishment...This treasure of a book is well-treated in this format." - School Library Journal

Mochizuki tells the true story of the formative years of Bruce Lee''s early life growing up in Hong Kong in the 1940s and 1950s, before he became an international film star.

The long-awaited first novel about growing up Asian American by award-winning author Ken Mochizuki. Like other Japanese American families in the Beacon Hill area of Seattle, 16-year-old Dan Inagaki''s parents expect him to be an example of the "model minority." But unlike Dan''s older brother, with his 4.0 GPA and Ivy League scholarship, Dan is tired of being called "Oriental" by his teachers, and sick of feeling invisible; Dan''s growing self-hatred threatens his struggle to claim an identity. Sharing his anger and confusion are his best friends, Jerry Ito, Eddie Kanagae, and Frank Ishimoto, and together these Beacon Hill Boys fall into a spiral of rebellion that is all too all-American.

In this authorized true story of Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat in Lithuania in 1940, the author explains how Sugihara used his powers -- against the orders of his own government -- to help thousands of Jews escape the Holocaust.

Japanese American Donnie, whose playmates insist he be the bad guy in their war games, calls on his reluctant father and uncle to help him get away from that role.