Michael G. Malaghan
Five years ago, after a lifetime in the corporate world, retiree Mike Malaghan attended a Maui Writer’s presentation on historical novels. As a life long history enthusiast, Mike felt the call. But what subject? A few weeks later, he attended the premier of the documentary, “The First Battle,” showing how the Japanese-Hawaiian community avoided mass internment by preparing for this expected consequence of the coming war … three years BEFORE Pearl Harbor. As a long time resident of Japan and Hawaii, it was a minor leap to tell the entire Japanese immigrant experience from the turn of 20th century environment in Japan to Hawaii in the picture bride era to the 442nd, 100th, and MIS exploits in WWII.
The Issei/Nisei story has been told piece by piece in a host of wonderful non-fiction books. But a paucity of novels. And no one novel has captured the entire saga. Too much for one book!
A trilogy is in the works. Book I is “Picture Bride,” taking our heroine Haru from a teenager in Amakusa to arriving in America as the picture bride wife of a Buddhist priest and then raising six children (Including one whom readers will recognize as a stand in for Sue Isonaga) up to the eve of WWII. In Book II, we follow two of hers sons, one in the 100th and the other in 442nd. Through these two fictional soldiers, we will weave the stories of all 21 Nisei Medal of Honor recipients. Book III follows Haru’s MIS son from Guadalcanal to the post war occupation of Japan to Daniel Inouye’s election to the Senate. Mike hits the gym almost every day to stay healthy enough to finish the project!
Born in the Midwest, raised in Florida, Mike took a summer job in 1961 selling books door-to-door to earn money to go to college. After graduating from the University of Florida in 1966, Mike volunteered for the Peace Corps. Little did Mike know that he had launched himself as the stereotype intrepid traveler and history aficionado. He has conducted business in 29 nations and traveled inside 180 counties and territories. He finished his full time business career in 2003 as president of a Walt Disney licensee marketing English language learning materials in Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Korea.
If you have ever attended a “destination lecture,” on a cruise ship, you might have watched Mike give a historical background of your next port of call. He delivers edutainment lectures in Asia and the Caribbean several weeks most years.
Mike and his Japanese wife, Tomoko from Tochigi, have ridden water conveyances from rafts in tribal Thailand, to cigarette speedboats and chugging “African Queen” river tugs down the Mekong, and rivers boats meandering along the Danube, the Nile, the Peruvian Amazon, and the Yangtze. They have climbed the mountains in Kinto Balu and Japan. Their live-on train experiences include South Africa, China, Tibet, India, and the former Soviet Republics in Central Asia. They have bungee jumped over the bridges of Taiwan, white water rafted on the Zambezi and hot air ballooned over the game reserves of South Africa and Spanish ranches.
Mike splits his living between his homes in Waikiki and Marietta, Georgia plus a month or each year visiting his in-laws in Japan and conducts cruise ship history lectures on Asia sailings.
