Local journalist and author Ken Mochizuki believed that we could only paint a complete picture of our communities if we told our own stories with honesty and courage.

Mochizuki, best known for his children’s book, “Baseball Saved Us,” about the role of baseball during the incarceration of Japanese Americans in World War II, died on Sept. 20 from esophageal cancer.

Born in Seattle on May 18, 1954, and raised on Beacon Hill, Mochizuki came of age during the turbulent 1960s and ’70s, attending Cleveland High School, where he first came to learn about Asian American history and causes.

Mochizuki told Seattle Times columnist Jerry Large in 2003, “You walked into this school on Beacon Hill and your multicultural education began. We were there at the right time. Everything was just forming.”

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