the showgirl ad the writer: a friendship forged in the aftermath of the japanese american incarceration

The Showgirl and the Writer, A Friendship Forged in the Aftermath of the Japanese American Incarceration encompasses Mueller’s own story, beginning at her birth to Caucasian parents in the Tule Lake Japanese American High-Security Camp in Northern California, and tells the tale of her long friendship with Mary Mon Toy, a Nisei performer who was incarcerated in the Minidoka Japanese American Camp in Idaho during WWII. The two met by chance in 1994. By then, Mueller was a published author, and Mary Mon Toy, by necessity of old age, had retired from an unusually successful career on stage and television for an Asian American actor of her time. After Ms. Mon Toy’s death, Mueller penned the previously untold story of Mon Toy’s fierce determination to put the Incarceration behind her and her precipitous rise as a working actor.