Yuri Kochiyama Reading I Was Red White and Blue
Yuri Kochiyama
Yuri Kochiyama
Source: Wikipedia
"The legacy I would like to leave is that people try to build bridges and not walls."
From teaching Sunday School in her youth to fighting for political prisoners in her old age, Yuri Kochiyama remained humble yet became a fierce defender of human rights. Her transformation began after the US government forced her to live behind barbed wire with other Japanese Americans during World War II. Kochiyama saw the need for solidarity to fight injustices. Her activism spanned struggles for Black empowerment, Puerto Rican independence, and reparations for Japanese American internees.
"AAPI Civil Rights Heroes - Yuri Kochiyama"
Early Years
Yuri Kochiyama (birth name: Mary Yuriko Nakahara) was born on May 19, 1921, in San Pedro, California to Japanese immigrants.[1] Her father, Seiichi Nakahara, was a prosperous fish merchant; her mother, Tsuyako Nakahara, was a homemaker. She and her brothers grew up in a largely immigrant neighborhood with families from various European countries. Unlike European immigrants, her Issei (first-generation) immigrant parents and other East Asians were prohibited by US law from obtaining citizenship—only "free whites" could be naturalized.[2,3] Yuri—a Nisei (second-generation)—was a citizen by birthright.[4] She described herself as "red, white, and blue" as a child: "I just thought America was such a wonderful country... I didn't realize how bad racism was."[5] A popular girl, she liked playing sports, reading poetry, volunteering with the Girl Scouts, and attending church.[6] She graduated from high school in 1939 and from Compton Junior College in 1941. Searching for work, she began to see racism—some stores did not let her fill out an application because she was Asian—but she finally found a job at Woolworth's, and her life continued to be comfortable.
Her life changed on the Sunday morning of December 7, 1941.[7,8] News reached her community that Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor. At her church, the superintendent dismissed the Sunday School class that she taught: "I could just feel the difference, that they were looking at me, not as another American." At home, FBI agents came and ordered her to get her father. She told them that he was sleeping and ill (he recently had ulcer surgery), but they made him put on his slippers and bathrobe, and then they took him away. Her father died six weeks later, soon after being released from custody.
On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which mandated the removal of Japanese Americans from "strategic areas" that included California.[9] Some neighbors, taking advantage of the situation, negotiated cheap prices for the property of Japanese Americans. Yuri and her family were sent first to an "assembly center"—smelly horse stalls at the Santa Anita racetrack—and then to a "relocation center" (concentration camp) in the wooded swamplands of Arkansas, where they lived in barracks and were surrounded by guard towers. The Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) notes that the government used euphemisms to describe the concentration camps so that they would appear legal and less harsh.[10]
Life's Work
When the war ended, she was able to return to her home in California (a kind family had watched the house), but she had trouble finding a job. Japanese Americans were widely seen as the "enemy." In 1946, she moved to New York and married Bill Kochiyama, whom she had met in the camp.[11]
Yuri Kochiyama did not become an activist until the 1960s, when she was a middle-aged homemaker with six children.[12] Her husband's salary was limited, so the family moved to a housing project in Harlem. Surrounded by Black neighbors, she became involved in struggles to improve schools and to end job discrimination. She joined the Harlem Parents Committee, and she participated in non-violent street protests led by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). During one protest, police arrested Kochiyama and her oldest son, Billy. In 1963, Kochiyama and her family visited Birmingham, Alabama, where they learned about the civil rights movement by talking with activists, viewing protest sites, and seeing Black homes and a store that had been burned and bombed by racists.
Kochiyama's politics became radical as she interacted with activists from all over the world.[13, 14] Most notably, she hosted a reception in her home between Malcolm X and three hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors) from Japan who were visiting Harlem as part of the Hiroshima-Nagasaki World Peace Study Mission. Her sharing of political ideas with Malcolm X ended on February 21, 1965, when she witnessed his assassination in the Audubon Ballroom. A famous photo shows Kochiyama kneeling next to him after he was shot.[15] In the mid-1960s, she joined the Revolutionary Action Movement, a Black nationalist organization (she was one of the few non-Black members), and she engaged in anti-war protests. In 1977, she participated in a takeover of the Statue of Liberty by activists demanding the release of Puerto Rican political prisoners. As the Asian American movement grew in the 1970s, Kochiyama joined Japanese American activists who were calling for redress of their internment during World War II. The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 made an official apology and authorized payments to former internees.
In her final years, Kochiyama moved to Oakland, California. She spoke out against anti-Muslim bigotry and racial profiling after 9/11, and she fought to free wrongfully convicted prisoners such as David Wong and Mumia Abu-Jamal. Her conversations over the years with Angela Davis were made into a documentary, Mountains That Take Wing.[16] The Blue Scholars, a hip hop duo, made a song celebrating her life.[17] Yuri Kochiyama died on June 1, 2014. While her politics—including her Maoist beliefs—are much debated, there is widespread admiration for the bridges that she built between races, generations, and nations.
Archival Guides
Yuri and Bill Kochiyama Papers, 1936-2003, bulk 1968-1998
Selected Bibliography
- Fujino, Diane Carol. Heartbeat of Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Yuri Kochiyama. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2005.
- Kochiyama, Yuri. Passing It on: A Memoir. Los Angeles, CA: UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press, 2004.
[1] Yuri Kochiyama, Passing It on: A Memoir (Los Angeles, CA: UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press, 2004).
[2] "Ozawa v. United States (1922)," Immigration History (blog), accessed May 2, 2021, https://immigrationhistory.org/item/takao-ozawa-v-united-states-1922/.
[3] "H. R. 40, Naturalization Bill, March 4, 1790," U.S. Capitol Visitor Center, accessed May 2, 2021, https://www.visitthecapitol.gov/exhibitions/artifact/h-r-40-naturalization-bill-march-4-1790.
[4] "United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898)," Immigration History (blog), accessed May 2, 2021, https://immigrationhistory.org/item/united-states-v-wong-kim-ark-1898/.
[5] Yuri Kochiyama, Idealism before war, being red, white and blue, June 16, 2003, http://www.discovernikkei.org/en/interviews/clips/280/.
[6] Diane Carol Fujino, Heartbeat of Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Yuri Kochiyama (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2005).
[7] Kochiyama, Passing It On.
[8] Fujino, Heartbeat of Struggle, xv-xxi, 37-69.
[9] "Executive Order 9066: Resulting in the Relocation of Japanese (1942)," accessed May 2, 2021, https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=74#.
[10] Japanese American Citizens League, "The Japanese American Experience: A Lesson in American History," 2011, https://jacl.org/resources.
[11] Fujino, Heartbeat of Struggle, 70-109.
[12] Fujino, 110-134.
[13] Kochiyama, Passing It On, 47-77.
[14] Fujino, Heartbeat of Struggle, 135-198.
[15] Ben Cosgrove, "Yuri Kochiyama, at Malcolm X's Side When He Died, Is Dead at 93," Time, June 2, 2014, https://time.com/3880035/yuri-kochiyama-at-malcolm-xs-side-when-he-died-is-dead-at-93/.
[16] Mountains That Take Wing: Angela Davis & Yuri Kochiyama (2009), accessed April 27, 2021, https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/mountains-that-take-wing-angela-davis-and-yuri-kochiyama-trailer/.
[17] KEXP, Blue Scholars - Yuri Kochiyama (Live on KEXP), 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcDmvJ4pb5c&t=19s.
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