Yuri Kochiyama

Yuri Kochiyama
Kochiyama at Central Park anti-war demonstration c. 1968
Born	Mary Yuriko Nakahara (1921-05-19)May 19, 1921 San Pedro, California, U.S.
Died	June 1, 2014(2014-06-01) (aged 93) Berkeley, California, U.S.
Education	Compton College
Occupation	Civil rights activist
Spouse	Bill Kochiyama ​ ​ (m. 1946; died 1993)​
Children	6

Yuri Kochiyama (河内山 百合子 (ユリ・コウチヤマ), Kōchiyama Yuriko, formerly Mary Yuriko Nakahara; May 19, 1921 – June 1, 2014) was an American civil rights activist born in San Pedro, California. She was interned at the Jerome War Relocation Center in Arkansas during World War II, an experience that influenced her later views on racism in the United States. While interned, she helped run a letter-writing campaign to Nisei (transl. 'Second-generation') soldiers, wrote for the Jerome camp newspaper, and volunteered with the United Service Organizations (USO).

After the end of the war, Kochiyama moved to New York and eventually to Harlem, where she became involved in the civil rights movement. At first working with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), Kochiyama's friendship with civil rights leader Malcolm X led her to affiliate with Black nationalist organizations such as the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU), the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), and the Republic of New Afrika (RNA).

Kochiyama was an advocate for political prisoners, including imprisoned members of the civil rights movement, the Puerto Rican independence movement, and others, helping to found the National Committee to Defend Political Prisoners (NCDPP)^[a] in the early 1970s. She is credited with playing an influential role in the Asian American movement and was a member of the organization Asian Americans for Action (AAA). In the 1980s, she participated in the redress movement for Japanese Americans interned during World War II, resulting in the signing of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which offered reparations to internment survivors.

Kochiyama is noted for her revolutionary nationalist views and her opposition to imperialism. She drew controversy in 2003 by praising Osama bin Laden, comparing him to Malcolm, Che Guevara, Patrice Lumumba, and Fidel Castro. She has also been the subject of several biographies, children's books, and documentaries and was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 alongside 1,000 other women.

Yuri Kochiyama was born Mary Yuriko Nakahara on May 19, 1921, in the San Pedro neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. Her mother and father were both Japanese immigrants. Her father, Seiichi Nakahara, was from Iwate, while her mother, Tsuyako Sawaguchi, was from Fukushima.^[1]

According to a family history compiled by Kochiyama's cousin, Tama Kondo, and his wife, Mary Tama Kondo, Kochiyama's father was the son of a retired samurai who arrived in the United States in 1907, working first as an orange picker and then as a fish canner before eventually opening a fish market and starting a business called The Pacific Coast Fish Company. Her mother, meanwhile, was an English teacher and piano instructor.^[2] She had two siblings: Arthur Masao, an older brother, and Peter Minoru, her twin.^[1]

Due to the relative affluence and prestige that came with the success of her father's fishmongering business, Kochiyama enjoyed a comfortable childhood.^[3] She was raised Christian, with her family attending the St. Mary's Church in Los Angeles. While she expressed interest in some aspects of Christianity, attending several nearby churches of her own initiative and working as a Sunday school teacher, she also criticized aspects of the religion that she viewed as being overly sectarian or chauvinistic.^[4]

During high school, she became involved in numerous extracurricular activities. She attended Japanese language school; became the first female student body officer at San Pedro High School; wrote articles for the local San Pedro News-Pilot; played tennis; and served as a counselor for the Bluebirds, the Girl Scouts, and the YWCA Girl Reserves.^[2] After graduating, she attended Compton Junior College, where she studied art, journalism, and English. She graduated in June 1941 with an arts degree, after which she struggled to find employment due to racial discrimination.^[5]

The Japanese military launched an aerial assault on the naval base at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, triggering the Pacific War between the United States and Japan and causing many Americans to become suspicious of Japanese Americans, viewing them as "undesirables".^[6] Soon after, the Kochiyama's family's home was ransacked and Kochiyama's father was detained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and taken to the Terminal Island federal penitentiary due to his friendship with prominent Japanese figures, including Ambassador Kichisaburō Nomura, and the discovery photographs of Japanese naval ships in the Kochiyama family home.^[7] On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which called for the forced internment of all people of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast.^[8] Kochiyama's father, who had been experiencing health issues that were exacerbated by his imprisonment, died two days later on January 21, 1942, just after being released from the Terminal Island penitentiary.^[2]

In accordance with Executive Order 9066, the remaining members of Kochiyama's family were sent to the Santa Anita Assembly Center. While there, Kochiyama worked as a nurse's aide and helped to organize a group of Sunday school students called "the Crusaders", who participated in a letter-writing campaign to Nisei soldiers.^[9][10] After seven months at the Santa Anita Assembly Center, the family was then sent to the Jerome War Relocation Center in Arkansas, where they lived for the next two years.^[2] While imprisoned at Jerome, she continued her work on the letter-writing campaign; wrote for the camp newspaper, the Denson Tribune; and volunteered with the USO.^[11][12]

Yuri met her future husband, a Nisei soldier named Bill Kochiyama, while working with the USO. They initially planned to get married at Camp Shelby, where Bill was stationed, in 1944, but the wedding was postponed due to objections from Bill's father, who wanted to meet Yuri before the two married. Soon after, Kochiyama left the camp to work with the USO in Hattiesburg, Mississippi and later to work with Nisei soldiers in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Jerome War Relocation Center closed on June 30, 1944, and Yuri's family returned to San Pedro in 1945.^[13] Yuri moved to New York on January 23, 1946, and married Bill on February 9 of the same year.^[14]

The couple's first two children were born in 1947, while Bill was attending college at Long Island University and Yuri was working as a waitress. They struggled financially for some time before Bill found work as a public relations officer for the Japan International Christian University Foundation (JICUF). Soon after, they had four more children.^[15] They held social gatherings at their home on Friday and Saturday nights. The popularity of these gatherings led their home to be nicknamed "Grand Central Station", with numerous important figures attending the gatherings. including Japanese Supreme Court justice Mansaburo Shoda and advisor to Jawaharlal Nehru Ishwar Gulati.^[16] They couple also joined the Nisei Sino Service Organization (NSSO), which worked to support Asian American soldiers, and advocated for the Hiroshima Maidens, a group of 25 hibakusha (lit. 'survivor of the bomb')^[b] who traveled to the United States in 1955 to receive reconstructive surgery.^[18][19]

In 1960, the Kochiyamas moved to Harlem—at the time a predominantly Black neighborhood—during which time they befriended James Peck, an activist for the CORE who was injured as a result of his activity with the Freedom Riders. She joined both CORE and the Harlem Parents Committee, an organization advocating for improved education for inner-city children, in 1963.^[20] Also in 1963, Kochiyama participated in a series of protests organized by CORE in Brooklyn. The purpose of the protests was to oppose racially discriminatory union hiring practices at the SUNY Downstate Medical Center's construction site.^[21] Kochiyama attended the protests with her children and was at one point arrested alongside her son Billy for disorderly conduct, spending half a day in jail before her release.^[22] In the end, Black and Puerto Rican workers were not guaranteed employment at the construction site as the protesters had hoped, but the protests did attract new members to CORE's cause.^[c][24]

Kochiyama's hearing for her arrest during the SUNY Downstate Medical Center protests took place on October 16, 1963, and it was there that she first encountered Malcolm. Malcolm invited Kochiyama to meet with him at his office to discuss his stance on integration, but was unable to do so initially due to his conflict with Nation of Islam (NOI) leader Elijah Muhammad. The two did eventually meet again while Kochiyama was hosting an event at her house on behalf of the Hiroshima-Nagasaki World Peace Mission Study, a group of hibakusha activists calling for disarmament who had expressed a desire to meet Malcolm while in the United States. In a speech before the gathered activists, Malcolm compared the plight of the hibakusha with the racism experienced by Black Americans and praised Asian communist leaders like Ho Chi Minh and Mao Zedong. Malcolm and Kochiyama continued to correspond after this event as Malcolm traveled throughout Africa, Asia, and Europe.^[25] Kochiyama also began attending lectures given by the OAAU, a political advocacy organization created by Malcolm to further the civil rights movement, in 1964.^[26][27]

External image
"The Violent End of the Man Called Malcolm", LIFE, March 5, 1965. Photo of Kochiyama cradling the dying Malcolm X's head.[28]

Kochiyama was present for Malcolm's assassination at the Audubon Ballroom, where Malcolm was holding an OAAU rally, on February 21, 1965.^[29] She attended the rally with her son Billy, who was sixteen at the time.^[30] While it is not entirely clear what happened that night,^[d] Malcolm was shot multiple times by several assailants wielding shotguns and semi-automatic handguns. Initially, Kochiyama stayed to comfort Malcolm's wife, Betty Shabazz, and his children. However, eventually, Kochiyama went onstage to try to render aid to Malcolm, resting his head on her lap.^[35] A photograph taken by Life magazine depicts this moment.^[28][36]

Beginning in 1964, Kochiyama began to affiliate with the RAM, a Maoist organization founded in Ohio by members of several activist groups whose tents included revolutionary nationalism and self-defense.^[37] While she never formally joined the organization, she did provide support for its work in Harlem, with civil rights activist Muhammad Ahmad (also known as Max Stanford) identifying her as a pivotal figure in the establishment of the RAM Black Panther Party (BPP) in Harlem.^[38] Beginning in 1966, the FBI began monitoring her activities, describing her as a Black nationalist "ring leader" and potential "Red Chinese agent".^[39]

After the mass arrest of 17 RAM members in 1967, Kochiyama joined the RNA, a Black separatist organization who claimed five states in the Southern United States as the territory for a new Black nation.^[40] She took an oath of citizenship to the RNA on September 13, 1969, and, in accordance with the practice adopted by many Black activists of adopting Muslim names, she began to go by her Japanese name, Yuri. After attending the organization's Brooklyn Consulate, she also began to take classes on various aspects of revolutionary life with the RNA and acted as the organization's "communication person" in Harlem.^[41]

Kochiyama supported various political prisoners and people who she saw as victims of suppression by law enforcement throughout her life.^[43] Her support began in the mid-1960s, when she began advocating on behalf of Mae Mallory, who had been arrested for allegedly kidnapping a white couple in retaliation for an attack by the Ku Klux Klan on Freedom Riders in Monroe, North Carolina.^[44] Subsequently, after the arrest of the arrest of the members of RAM, she organized a fundraising event on their behalf so that they could meet their $200,000 bond. She also corresponded with imprisoned members of the Black Panther Party (BPP); acted as a point of contact for many political prisoners affiliated with the RNA; and advocated on behalf of the Harlem Six, Martin Sostre, Mutulu Shakur, and various other imprisoned political activists.^[42][45][46] As part of this work, she helped found the National Committee to Defend Political Prisoners (NCDPP) in the early 1970s.^[47]

Kochiyama is considered an important figure in the Asian American movement, which, drawing upon anti-imperialist and antiracist ethics, adopted a pan-Asian focus, with members of the Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, South Asian, and Southeast Asian communities all participating.^[43][48] In 1969, she joined AAA, a pan-Asian advocacy organization operating in New York.^[49] As part of her work with the AAA, Kochiyama participated in various anti-war demonstrations in New York and Washington, D.C. Many Asian American activists considered Kochiyama to be a mentor, and she spoke at several events on behalf of the movement.^[50]

In 1971, Kochiyama, influenced by Malcolm's teachings and by imprisoned imam Rasul Suleiman, converted to Sunni Islam, attending the Sankore mosque in Greenhaven Prison in Stormville, New York to study with Suleiman. She hid her conversion from most of her family with the exception of her daughter Aichi. She also began to experience marital difficulties during the early 1970s as her movement activities interfered with her home life.^[51] In 1975, her son, Billy, committed suicide by drowning himself in the Hudson River after being severely injured in a car accident several years earlier in 1967, which left him without a leg. After Billy's death, Kochiyama's reduced her commitments to spend more time with her family. She also deconverted from Islam in 1975.^[52]

As part of her work with political prisoners, Kochiyama met Lolita Lebrón, a Puerto Rican nationalist who had been arrested in 1954 after shooting at a group of United States Representatives alongside Rafael Cancel Miranda, Andres Figueroa Cordero, and Irvin Flores.^[53] According to historian Diane C. Fujino:

Yuri reasoned that the independentistas would have preferred nonviolent tactics, but since the U.S. government had not responded to their peaceful requests, they viewed armed struggle as a legitimate form of struggle, as sanctioned under international law. Although highly controversial, independentistas and supporters like Yuri claim that because the U.S. government is responsible for the conditions of devastation and dependency in Puerto Rico, targeting the symbols of American imperialism—the president’s residence and Congress—is a legitimate form of resistance, even self-defense, from a revolutionary perspective.^[54]

Kochiyama served on the board of the Committee for Puerto Rican Decolonization and the Puerto Rican Solidarity Committee, though she was asked to resign from the Solidarity Committee due to her support for paramilitary organizations such as the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional Puertorriqueña (FALN, transl. 'Armed Forces of National Liberation'). She also participated in an occupation of the Statue of Liberty on behalf of Lebrón and her fellow imprisoned activists on October 25, 1977, seizing it for nine hours before she and the other participants were arrested and released the next day.^[55] In 1979, President Jimmy Carter commuted the sentences of Lebrón, Flores, and Cancel and posthumously granted clemency to Figueroa, who had died of cancer in 1978.^[53]

In the 1980s, as organizers of East Coast Japanese Americans for Redress and Reparations, Yuri and Bill advocated for reparations and a government apology for the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II and spearheaded the campaign to bring the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWIRC) to New York.^[2][28] Yuri also founded the Day of Remembrance Committee in New York to commemorate the day President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized Executive Order 9066.^[56] After the publication of the CWIRC report on Japanese American internment, Personal Justice Denied, and pressure from Japanese American advocacy organizations, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which, among other things, awarded $20,000 to each internment survivor.^[57]

In the 1980s, following her husband's retirement, Kochiyama began working with the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR), a Christian organization that helps communities recover from disasters.^[58] She also taught international students English, volunteered at homeless shelters and soup kitchens, and continued her support for prisoners, including Mumia Abu-Jamal, a Black activist sentenced to death in 1982 for the murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner.^[59][60]

Kochiyama helped form the David Wong Support Committee in 1987 on behalf of prisoner David Wong, who had been sentenced to twenty-five years to life in prison by an all-white jury for the murder of a fellow inmate. Kochiyama wrote letters to, fund-raised for, and visited Wong in prison.^[61] In 2004, Wong's conviction was overturned by the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court, granting him a new trial where his charges were ultimately dismissed. Soon after, he was deported to China.^[62] Kochiyama also formed a similar support committee for Yū Kikumura, an alleged member of the Japanese Red Army convicted of planning to bomb a United States Navy recruitment office in the Veterans Administration building in 1988. Kochiyama believed that Kikumura's sentence was an example of political persecution and organized in his defense.^[63] Kikumura was ultimately released from prison in the United States, after which he was deported to Japan.^[64]

On November 19, 1989, the Kochiyamas' third child, Aichi, was killed after being hit by a taxi in Manhattan. Soon after, Aichi's common-law husband, Alkamal Duncan, died of sickle cell anemia and Kochiyama was fired from her position at the UMCOR.^[65]

In April 1993, Kochiyama joined a delegation to Peru organized by the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) to gather support for Abimael Guzmán, the imprisoned leader of the Peruvian Maoist revolutionary group Shining Path.^[66] A year earlier, in 1992, Guzmán had been arrested by police acting on behalf of Japanese-Peruvian dictator Alberto Fujimori.^[67][68] Kochiyama was originally skeptical of working with Shining Path, which had been criticized by some members of the American left-wing movement for its use of violence. However, after being given "reading materials" by RCP member Phil Farnham to "become ‘educated’ on the real situation in Peru", she "came to completely support the revolution [there]".^[69]

Later that year, on October 25, Bill died of cardiac complications.^[70] Then, after having a stroke in 1997, Yuri moved to Oakland to live near her family. In 2000, she moved to a retirement home, and in 2004, she published the memoir Passing it On, which discusses her early life, her time at the Jerome War Relocation Center, her friendship with Malcolm, and the deaths of her children.^[71][72]

Kochiyama died in Berkeley, California on June 1, 2014, at the age of 93.^[73]

Journalist Elaine Woo, writing for the Los Angeles Times, describes Kochiyama as "straddl[ing] black revolutionary politics and Asian American empowerment movements".^[e][73] Fujino contends that Kochiyama's views on race first developed as a result of her time at the Jerome War Relocation Center; then developed further when she moved to New York City, where she maintained relationships with Black and Puerto Rican neighbors and observed the mistreatment of Black soldiers as a waitress, noting that they "couldn't walk on any main drags in the south, even in uniform"; and then even further when Kochiyama moved to Harlem, where she began to become more politically active and where she met Malcolm.^[74] During her first meeting with Malcolm, she praised his work on behalf of the Black community but criticized his "harsh stance on integration".^[75] She wrote in a subsequent letter that:

It may be possible that non-Negroes may wake up and learn to treat all people as human beings. And when that time comes, I am sure that your pronouncement for separation will be changed to integration. If each of us, white, yellow, and what-have-you, can earn our way into your confidence by actual performance, will you... could you... believe in ‘togetherness’ of all people?^[76]

However, Kochiyama's integrationist stance was challenged by her time attending lectures at the OAAU Liberation School, whose instructors advocated for self-defense as opposed to nonviolence and emphasized both international solidarity and the systemic causes of racism.^[77][78] In the 1966 issue of her family newsletter, the North Star, she praised the Black power movement and criticized integration's "frailty".^[79] Fujino also claims that Kochiyama was also influenced by the Black Arts Repertory Theater and School (BARTS), which was founded in 1965 by poet, educator, and activist LeRoi Jones (later Amiri Baraka) "for black people, and only black people".^[80] According to Fujino, Kochiyama may have developed an appreciation for the effect exclusionary, autonomous spaces had on white supremacy from observing BARTS's policies and practices. Fujino characterizes Kochiyama's views by the late 1960s as being firmly in line with the principles of revolutionary nationalism.^[81]

Later in life, Kochiyama tied the Black freedom struggle with the Asian American movement, praising civil rights activist Robert F. Williams for his overtures to Mao Zedong and drawing connections between the redress movement and the movement for reparations for Black Americans.^[82]

Kochiyama was a strong critic of what she saw as American imperialism.^[2] She opposed the Vietnam War, questioning the democratic motives of the United States government and claiming that the United States had actually invaded Vietnam for its natural resources. She also praised Vietnamese revolutionary Nguyễn Văn Trỗi, who had attempted to assassinate United States Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on May 2, 1964, by planting a mine under a bridge that he was set to travel over.^[83] Kochiyama called Văn Trỗi a "hero" and claimed that "many Movement people named their children after him".^[84]

Kochiyama also opposed American military presence in Okinawa, calling American military installations there "invasion bases" whose purpose was to "attack, supply military arms and ammunitions, and to transport supplies, and to train and entertain U.S. soldiers". While she initially supported Japanese control over the islands in 1969, her views had changed by 1970, as she criticized the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty as "the combining of American military might and Japanese economic power to rule a vast Pacific empire". She also criticized Japanese militarism, including the Japanese military's war crimes and its sexual enslavement of comfort women during World War II.^[85]

In response to actions of the United States following the 2001 September 11 attacks, Kochiyama stated that "the goal of the war [on terror] is more than just getting oil and fuel. The United States is intent on taking over the world" and that "it's important we all understand that the main terrorist and the main enemy of the world's people is the U.S. government". She drew comparisons between the targeting of Arabs and Muslims after the attacks and the targeting of Japanese Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbor, claiming that both led to "racial profiling".^[86]

Interviewed in 2003, Kochiyama said that she "consider[s] Osama bin Laden as one of the people that I admire. To me, he is in the category of Malcolm X, Che Guevara, Patrice Lumumba, Fidel Castro... I thank Islam for bin Laden. America's greed, aggressiveness, and self-righteous arrogance must be stopped. war and weaponry must be abolished".^[87] The statement generated some controversy, with Vox's Dylan Matthews criticizing Kochiyama's statement, characterizing bin Laden as "a mass murderer... a vicious misogynist and hardly the brave anti-imperial class traitor Kochiyama fancies him as".^[88][89]

During her life, Kochiyama was the subject of many biographical works. In 1992, an oral history Kochiyama recounted to Joann Faung Jean Lee was published in Lee's book Asian Americans: Oral Histories of First to Fourth Generation Americans from China, the Philippines, Japan, India, the Pacific Islands, Vietnam, and Cambodia.^[90] In 1993, Rea Tajiri and Pat Saunders produced a documentary about her life entitled Yuri Kochiyama: Passion for Justice. She also featured in the documentaries My America...or Honk if You Love Buddha, directed by Renee Tajima-Peña; All Power to the People, directed by Lee Lew Lee; and When Mountains Take Wing, directed by C.A. Griffith and H.L.T. Quan.^[91] Several biographies were also written about her, including 1998's Yuri: The Life and Times of Yuri Kochiyama by Japanese journalist Mayumi Nakazawa and 2005's Heartbeat of Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Yuri Kochiyama by Diane C. Fujino.^[92][93]

In 2005, Kochiyama was one of 1,000 women collectively nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize through the "1,000 Women for the Nobel Peace Prize 2005" project, though the prize ultimately went to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and its director general, Mohamed ElBaradei.^[94][95] Then in 2007, she was the subject of the play Yuri and Malcolm X, written by Japanese American playwright, Tim Toyama.^[28][96] In 2010, she received an honorary doctorate from California State University, East Bay, and in 2011, a song titled "Yuri Kochiyama" was released on the Blue Scholars album Cinemetropolis.^[59][97][98]

After Kochiyama's death in 2014, the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center released an online exhibition entitled "Folk Hero: Remembering Yuri Kochiyama through Grassroots Art".^[96][99] The White House under President Barack Obama also released a statement honoring Kochiyama's legacy. The statement praised Kochiyama for her "pursuit of social justice, not only for the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community, but all communities of color".^[100] She is featured in the book Rad American Women A–Z, which was written in 2015 by Kate Schatz and illustrated by Miriam Klein Stahl.^[101][102]

On May 19, 2016, Kochiyama's 95th birthday was commemorated with a Google Doodle, prompting both praise and condemnation of Kochiyama, whose praise of bin Laden and Mao Zedong was criticized, and Google.^[f] The Doodle's critics included Republican Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, who called for a public apology from the company.^[106]

Kochiyama is the subject of the 2024 book The Bridges Yuri Built: How Yuri Kochiyama Marched Across Movement, which was written by her great-granddaughter Kai Naima Williams and illustrated by Anastasia Magloire Williams.^[107][108]

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