YURI KOCHIYAMA: A REVOLUTIONARY JOURNEY

Yuri Kochiyama, whose pursuit of social justice was legend passed away on Sunday in California. She was 93. 

Kochiyama’s activism began after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, when she and her family were placed in an internment camp along with more than 100,000 Japanese citizens.  Her family was locked up at  Camp Jerome in Arkansas.  Her granddaughter, Maya Kochiyama, detailed life in the camp for Discover Nikkei in 2010:

Amidst this isolation and unwavering uncertainty of release, though they lived in dingy, cramped barracks, the Japanese Americans tried to make the most out of their situation and made furniture from what pieces of wood lied around, planted flowers to brighten up the landscape, and sewed bed sheets, tablecloths, and curtains to improve what little privacy they had.

Yuri said that, “we learned soon enough that our strongest weapons to sustain ourselves were teamwork, a cooperative spirit, ingenuity, and concern for others.”

One of the things that came out of this camp experience for Yuri was that she began to learn more about her Japanese American community and identify herself as Japanese American. “I feel like going to camp actually is where for the first time I came to know my own people … I was really proud to be Japanese.”

What Yuri felt echoed many of the same thoughts as other second generation Japanese Americans who had grown up “All-American” and did not identify themselves with their Japanese heritage. Feeling betrayed by their country, some Nisei started to learn more about their Japanese culture and embrace their Japanese identity, even opting to “return” to Japan, a country that they had never even seen.

In the 1980s, she and her husband pushed for reparations and a formal government apology for Japanese American internees through the Civil Liberties Act, which President Ronald Reagan signed into law in 1988.

Diane Fujino, an associate professor of Asian American studies at UC Santa Barbara and the author of a book about this amazing women is quoted at SF Gate:

She operated on two levels simultaneously.  She cared very much for the person in front of her, and she also worked to fight against the structural racism and imperialism in society.

Most people make life; some people make history.  Yuri organized her life around making history. I think of her as a very ordinary person, who’s done extraordinary things.

The parallels she saw between the treatment of African Americans in the Jim Crow South and Japanese Americans during World War II inspired her to become one of the few Asian Americans who, early on, forged deep bonds with blacks in the struggle for liberation.

Hansi Lo Wang writing for NPR reports,

 Living in housing projects among black and Puerto Rican neighbors inspired her interest in the civil rights movement. Kochiyama held weekly open houses for activists in the family's apartment, where she taped newspaper clippings to the walls and kept piles of leaflets on the kitchen table. "Our house felt like it was the movement 24/7," said her eldest daughter, Audee Kochiyama-Holman.

THE RAFU SHIMPO adds:

As the Civil Rights Movement grew, the Kochiyamas began inviting activists to speak at their open houses. After moving to Harlem in 1960, they worked with the Harlem Parent’s Committee, organizing school boycotts to demand quality education for inner-city children. Yuri Kochiyama was among 600 arrested for blocking the entrance of a construction site to demand jobs for African American and Puerto Rican workers....

Kochiyama was soon working with the most militant black nationalist organizations in Harlem, including the Republic of New Africa. When the police and FBI intensified their repression of black activists, she immersed herself in the struggles to support political prisoners, providing non-stop letter-writing, prison visits, and activist mobilizations. She linked her support for incarcerated activists to her own wartime imprisonment, denouncing the unfairness of U.S. laws and practices.

Her connections with Black Power made Kochiyama a leader of the emerging Asian American Movement in the late 1960s. In New York City, she joined Asian Americans for Action and was a featured speaker at Hiroshima Day events, denouncing U.S. imperialism in Vietnam, Okinawa, and elsewhere. She supported ethnic studies at City College of New York and the hiring of Chinese construction workers at Confucius Plaza.

Indeed, Kochiyama was more that merely an advocate of civil rights and social justice, she was a revolutionary.

Fight Back News on Yuri and the Vietnam War:

Yuri also spoke out against the U.S. war in Vietnam. She pointed out the connection between the racism in U.S. imperialist wars in the Third World and the national oppression that African Americans, Puerto Ricans and others were facing here in the U.S. This perspective had broad appeal among oppressed nationalities here, leading to protests such as the 1970 Chicano Moratorium against the war in Los Angeles in 1970, as well as the African Liberation Support Committee and solidarity work among African Americans to support the national liberation movements in Africa in the 1970s.

  From a 1998 interview in Revolutionary Worker, Yuri discussed her work with prisoners:

RW: You've been active in the movement to free political prisoners for many years, including the fight to free Mumia Abu-Jamal. And you have gone out to talk to different groups about Mumia. What response do you get?

YK: Once people learn about Mumia, they can't help but love Mumia because not only was he such a radical and such a courageous kind of guy and his support for the MOVE group has been contagious. He has supported everyone, all the underdogs and the marginalized. And when you think of it, there has been no political prisoner who has been able to galvanize so many people the way Mumia has--and not just here in this country, but all over the world. And I'm amazed that 26 members of the Diet [top government body] in Japan are supporting Mumia, too.

But people won't believe how Mumia and I got started corresponding. It had nothing to do with the movement. It had nothing to do with political prisoners. I couldn't believe it but one day I got a letter from him and he wrote in Japanese--Hiragana, which is one of the forms of writing Japanese. There's Katakana, the simplest. Then there's Hiragana and then there's the regular Chinese calligraphy. But he was using the Japanese Hiragana and I couldn't believe it. And I said how did you learn? And he said he was studying Japanese just by himself in prison.

But how this came about was that I had just read something by Velina Houston, the famous Black/Asian/Indian playwright. She wrote about a Black samurai in the sixth or eighth century. And so I wrote to Mumia about him and he said, "You won't believe it but I've just been reading about him myself." But just before that he wrote in Japanese, and that's how we got started to know each other.

The other day we had a four-way conversation with Assata Shakur, thanks to Susan Burnett. Assata expressed her admiration for Mumia. She said he is extraordinary, bringing people together. I think that's maybe his calling. But it's just that he has so much courage to come out with the kind of issues he has supported, especially his support for the MOVE people. I think the police department can't forget that. But his contribution to the struggle will be forever remembered. And he has already left a mark in the struggle.

There's a question of what makes Mumia different from other political prisoners. And I just say, well he has the same quality of leadership and courage and yet his humbleness gives him another dimension.

She was once arrested along with some of her children during a spirited demonstration and occupation of the Statue of Liberty highlighting the struggle for Puerto Rican independence.

She fought against the racial profiling of Arab and Muslim Americans after 9/11 and opposed the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. She said at the time, 

We have got to stop this war in Iraq … America’s whole history has been about war, taking over other people’s land, resources, annihilating people. “We’ve all got to stop this war. And those of us of Japanese background, because of what we’ve experienced, more so must become active. Even if you don’t have time to go on marches or rallies or demonstrations, just talk about it among your friends. I mean, whatever you can do. Write letters to newspapers. Do whatever. Talk about it to your own family members.

Asked once by Angela Davis what helped sustain her decades of activism, Kochiyama responded, “People in the movement sustain each other. It’s because their spirit is so contagious.”

In her own words, from Legacy to Liberation:

I’ve spoken to kids as young as second and third graders. A school here in Harlem – the teachers were both Black and white, but the students were all Black – asked if I would come and speak to them about Malcolm X. And I couldn’t believe how much these second and third grade students already knew about Malcolm. But it was because their parents knew about Malcolm. And I’ve spoken to junior high schools, one in Greenwich Village. I’ve spoken to about six high schools and to colleges all over the country, and the enthusiasm and interest of the students, regardless of what age, has amazed me. And it’s been very, very heartening. They really are interested. They really want to change society. They want it to become a better society than they are living in now.

What I would say to students or young people today. I just want to give a quote by Frantz Fanon. And the quote is “Each generation must, out of its relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it.”

And I think today part of the missions would be to fight against racism and polarization, learn from each others’ struggle, but also understand national liberation struggles — that ethnic groups need their own space and they need their own leaders. They need their own privacy. But there are enough issues that we could all work together on. And certainly support for political prisoners is one of them. We could all fight together and we must not forget our battle cry is that “They fought for us. Now we must fight for them!”

She and Bill Kochiyama, her husband and a veteran of WWII  had two girls and four boys; most of them would become actively involved in black liberation struggles, the anti-war movement, and the Asian-American movement.

I could go on and on about Yuri Kochiyama, but I have to stop somewhere.   All I can add is, "What an incredible life."

Rather than do my normal post I am going to share with you the following exchange from an interview with Amy Goodman in 2008, concerning her relationship with Malcolm X. You see, it was Kochiyama who cradled the head of a dying Malcolm X as he lay mortally wounded.  That was no accident of history.  The following is borrowed from Democracy Now.

YURI KOCHIYAMA AND MALCOLM X

AMY GOODMAN: Forty-three years ago tomorrow, on February 21, 1965, Malcolm X was shot dead as he spoke at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. He had just taken the stage, when shots rang out, riddling his body with bullets. He was thirty-nine years old. We continue now with our interview with Yuri Kochiyama. She was Malcolm X’s friend. She was in the Audubon Ballroom the day he was killed. After he was shot, she rushed to the stage, cradled his head in her arms as he lay dying. Yuri Kochiyama talked about that fateful day.

YURI KOCHIYAMA: The date was February 21st. It was a Sunday. Well, prior to that date, I think that whole week there was a lot of rumors going on in Harlem that something might happen to Malcolm. But I think Malcolm showed all along, especially around that time, that there were rumors going on. He was aware, because there were things even in the newspaper, that there was some, I think — I don’t know if it was a misunderstanding or just disagreeing about some things that Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm were talking about. They were personal things. But Malcolm was aware that Elijah seemed to be feeling a little — what would be — oh, I’m so sorry that I’m messing this up — but on some very personal issues, there was disagreement between Elijah and Malcolm, and I think there was even talk that was going on, and after the assassination, however, many black people felt it could have been by people who had infiltrated or that the police department and FBI may have actually planted in the Nation of Islam.
AMY GOODMAN:
Describe that day. Malcolm came out on the stage, but first he was introduced by someone else. You were sitting in the audience? Where were you?
YURI KOCHIYAMA:
No. He was sitting in the little room right next to the stage. And Brother Benjamin was doing the speaking. But everyone noticed that even the guards seemed a little upset, and it was because they said that those who were invited to speak that day, that none of them showed up. And, of course, the crowd in there, about 400 people, realizing something was amiss, did feel that something was going wrong.
AMY GOODMAN:
You mean that speakers were invited who didn’t show?
YURI KOCHIYAMA:
Mm-hmm.
AMY GOODMAN:
Where were you sitting?
YURI KOCHIYAMA: I think about the tenth — equivalent to about the tenth row from the podium and almost right across — well, in the middle, where the two guys got up and said — one of them yelled, “Take your hands out of my pocket!” When everybody started just looking at them, the two guys. They were, like, fighting.
AMY GOODMAN:
They had stood up as Malcolm X was speaking, very close to the beginning of his speech.
YURI KOCHIYAMA:
Yes, he was just going to speak. And Malcolm just said, “OK, brothers, let’s just break it up.” But what happened was, it seemed to suck in all his guards closer to what was happening. And then —
AMY GOODMAN:
A kind of diversion.
YURI KOCHIYAMA:
The diversion, right. Everybody was looking there. When — because we were all watching the two guys in the audience, and everybody was watching, and the guards themselves moved from their post. They’re supposed to be protecting Malcolm. Well, Malcolm first said, “OK, now, let’s break it up.” But because Malcolm had left the podium, he was just a perfect target to be shot. And I don’t know if it was two or three men, right in front, went up and started shooting. Well, by that time, the whole place was chaotic. I mean, people were chasing — some of them chasing after those two guys, and people were yelling and screaming and others — because they let women and children in at the very end, the decision. The kids were — could be crying or just running to get near their mother, and mothers were trying to shield the kids. And I guess the two guys who did the — what was the word you said?
AMY GOODMAN:
The diversion?
YURI KOCHIYAMA:
Diversion. They shot a few times, you know, not to hit anyone, but just, I think, to make the place look even more chaotic there. And Malcolm had told his men, especially the very close Muslims, not to bring any arms, that they didn’t want to frighten the women and children. And so, no one was supposed to bring anything, but one Muslim, and I think thank goodness that one did have a gun, and he’s the only one that shot one of the people who came to assassinate. If he wasn’t there with a gun, I think they would have all fled. And then, anyway, you know the three men who were charged, none of them were even there, and they proved it at the end. 
AMY GOODMAN: So when Malcolm was shot and he was laying on the stage, you ran up?
YURI KOCHIYAMA:
Yes, because I saw a young brother pass me, and he seemed to know just where to go or how to get up on the stage. And he acted just like — what do you call it? You call it, not a guard. Well, like one of Malcolm’s security anyway. And he went up, and I followed him. And he went to the back, and he pulled the curtains to see if there was anyone in the back. And at that time, I mean, Malcolm had fallen straight back, and he was on his back, lying on the floor. And so I just went there and picked up his head and just put it on my lap. People ask, “What did he say?” He didn’t say anything. He was just having a difficult time breathing.
AMY GOODMAN:
What did you say to him?
YURI KOCHIYAMA:
I said, “Please, Malcolm, please, Malcolm, stay alive.” But he was hit so many times. Then a lot of people came on stage. They tore his shirt so they could see how many times he was hit. People said it was like about thirteen times. I mean, the most visible is the one here on his chin. He was hit somewhere else in the face, and then he was just peppered all over on his chest.
AMY GOODMAN:
Betty, his wife Betty Shabazz, was there with the children.
YURI KOCHIYAMA:
Yes. At the very end, he called her. He had told her before not to come, because he was afraid something was going to happen. Then at the end, he changed his mind and called her and said, “Come, right away. They’re almost starting.” And he said, “Please bring the children. There’s nothing to worry about.” And so, she brought them. They had four children, and she was pregnant. And, you know, shortly after, she had two more.
AMY GOODMAN:
She also came up on the stage, as Malcolm lay there dying?
YURI KOCHIYAMA:
Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: And what did you do then?
YURI KOCHIYAMA:
When someone told me to go to the side room, and they handed me, you know, a milk bottle and the youngest child, and so they just said, “Feed the baby.” Betty was right there with Malcolm.
AMY GOODMAN: You had met Malcolm years before in a Brooklyn courtroom.
YURI KOCHIYAMA: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you describe the scene there? 
YURI KOCHIYAMA: Oh, yes. Well, I’ll never forget that day. I mean, it was unexpected. Even though Malcolm could show up anywhere, you know, at any time and wherever his people are. And, well, all of a sudden, someone walked into the foyer, the first floor of the courthouse in Brooklyn. And all of the young kids — they were all black — they were all running downstairs to the foyer, and here was Malcolm coming in through the front door. No guards. He was there just by himself. I was quite surprised, because it was a dangerous time for him. And all of the kids, they were maybe between seventeen and twenty-five, that age, and they were such energetic kids who — they really, like, mobbed him with admiration. Everybody wanted to shake his hands.
And as I watched, about twenty-five yards away, I felt so bad that I wasn’t black, that this should be just a black thing. But the more I see them all so happily shaking his hands and Malcolm so happy, I said, “Gosh darn it, I’m going to try to meet him somehow.” And so, I kept getting closer, and I said, “If he looks up once, I’m going to run over there and see if I could shake his hand.” And so, that’s what I did.
There was a time where — maybe he didn’t look up, but I may have just thought he did or wished he did. And so, then I yelled and said, “Malcolm, can I shake your hands, too?” because all these young people were. And he said “What for?” And I didn’t know at first what to say. “What for?” I said, “Because what you’re doing for your people.” And he said, “And what am I doing for my people?” Now, I thought, “What would I say to that?” And so I said, “You’re giving directions.” And then, he just changed and said — he came out of the center of that, you know, where everybody was there, came out and he stuck his hands out. So I ran and grabbed it. I couldn’t believe that I was shaking Malcolm X’s hand. And I was just so sorry that my son, who was sixteen, who wanted to come so much, but he had an exam in high school and he didn’t think he could miss that exam, so he missed seeing Malcolm then. He met him later.
AMY GOODMAN:
You were there because people — you were among hundreds who were arrested, protesting for jobs for Puerto Rican and black construction workers?
YURI KOCHIYAMA:
Yes.
AMY GOODMAN:
So that started your relationship with Malcolm X. It was just really a month before John F. Kennedy was assassinated —- would be assassinated in Dallas. October 16, 1963 -—
YURI KOCHIYAMA:
Right.
AMY GOODMAN:— was the day that you met him.
YURI KOCHIYAMA:
Right. October 16 is when I met Malcolm. And —
AMY GOODMAN:
And JFK was killed on November 22.
YURI KOCHIYAMA:
He was killed — yeah, John Kennedy was killed on November 22.
AMY GOODMAN:
But for the next two years, you would meet with Malcolm regularly. Can you talk about the meetings, the sessions that he had that you would attend?
YURI KOCHIYAMA:
Well, they had regular meetings, you know. But it seems like Elijah and Malcolm’s problems were getting a little more serious, and I think because FBI played a role in it, and, of course, they knew which ones of the people in NOI may have had some kind of ill feelings.
AMY GOODMAN:
Nation of Islam.
YURI KOCHIYAMA:
Mm-hmm. And things got more serious. There were more articles in the newspaper, and everyone knew that Malcolm’s life was in danger. But also, about that time, I didn’t realize until you said right now, that Kennedy was killed only two months?
AMY GOODMAN: Only a month after you and Malcolm X first met.
YURI KOCHIYAMA:
Only a month after. Oh, because it was November.
AMY GOODMAN:
Right. It was the last two years also of Malcolm X’s life. 1963 to 1965, when he was assassinated, as well. 
YURI KOCHIYAMA: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: You received — Malcolm X wrote you postcards through his trip through Africa and his journey to Mecca.
YURI KOCHIYAMA:
Yes.
AMY GOODMAN:
What did he write to you in these postcards?
YURI KOCHIYAMA:
Well, he sent eleven and from nine countries. There were two countries he went twice. But at the time that he went to Africa, all the major African conferences were happening. Two were even happening in England. And Malcolm went to all of these, and, of course, all the most progressive presidents of African nations were at these conferences. So he got to meet almost all the top ones. I mean, there was Ghana’s Nkrumah or Tanzania’s [Nyerere]. I can’t even think of all of them, but he met about eleven of them, and they were as excited to meet him.
He wanted to learn all about the different countries in Africa. And he — the Africans and he talked about the colonization that took place. Well, it could have happened from even as early as the 1600s, but it was mostly 1700, 1800. And the big day that we’ve got to remember is, I think, 1885. That was where all those European countries took over African countries. What was the name of that? Gosh, I would forget the name. Wait. It might come back to us.
AMY GOODMAN:
Well, let me ask you about this. When Malcolm came back, he was also talking about an expanded attitude about human rights, something he had talked about before, as well. Not so much civil rights, but the rights of African Americans to be fully equal was an issue of international human rights.
YURI KOCHIYAMA:
Oh, yes. And that’s why Malcolm thought that this civil rights thing was really nothing, because African people don’t have to wait until some president of another country, even United States, would give civil rights. I mean, Africans already have human rights. And he felt, too, that it was too narrowed down when they would be using words that they were just fighting for civil rights. And I think what was so wonderful is that Malcolm taught his group, American — well, black Americans here, about the history of Africa, where they became colonized, and then he told the people in Africa what was happening here, how blacks were treated, and that many of the African young people didn’t even know anything hardly about slavery, because this country never told them anything.
AMY GOODMAN:
Yuri Kochiyama, he also came to your house to meet with survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima/Nagasaki: Hibakusha, the survivors. 
YURI KOCHIYAMA: Yes, right.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about that?
YURI KOCHIYAMA:
Well, we were all so happy, I mean, especially Japanese Americans and even other Asian Americans, that Malcolm would be interested. But Malcolm was interested in every group, and especially when he would hear the kind of harassments and all the negative things that always seemed to be happening to people of color. And he knew about Asian history so well. We couldn’t believe it.

AMY GOODMAN: Yuri Kochiyama remembering Malcolm X. Forty-three years ago tomorrow, on February 21, 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated in the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. He had just taken the stage, when shots rang out, riddling his body with bullets. He was thirty-nine. Yuri Kochiyama ran to the stage. She had been there to listen to him that day, and she cradled his head. Yuri Kochiyama and her family also interned as a result of FDR’s executive order after Pearl Harbor bombing with over 100,000 other Japanese and Japanese Americans in this country.