Kochiyama, Yuri

KOCHIYAMA, YURI (1921-2014). One of the most renowned Asian American activists of the twentieth century, Yuri Kochiyama worked with Malcolm X in Harlem and for decades in struggles for Black, Asian American, and Puerto Rican liberation.

Mary Yuriko Nakahara was born in San Pedro, California, to Japanese immigrants of some means. On December 7, 1941, her father was among the 736 Japanese Americans detained in the first twenty-four hours after the Pearl Harbor attack, despite lack of any evidence of national security threats. Her father died after six weeks in detention. In April 1942, Yuri and her family were forcibly displaced as part of the 110,000 Japanese Americans sent to US concentration camps, in her case to Jerome, Arkansas.

After World War II, Nakahara moved to New York City to marry Bill Kochiyama, a Japanese American soldier whom she met at the Jerome USO. They had six children. Yuri Kochiyama continued her active community service while following the news of the growing Civil Rights Movement. In 1960, she and her family moved to the Manhattanville housing project in Harlem, and she became involved in local civil rights struggles. She met Malcolm X in October 1963 at the Brooklyn Courthouse, where Kochiyama and her son Billy were among the 600 arrested for civil disobedience demonstrating for jobs for Black and Puerto Rican construction workers.

At Malcolm X’s invitation, Kochiyama began attending his Organization of Afro-American Unity’s weekly Liberation School classes. The lessons about structural racism that she learned moved her to embrace radical analyses of White supremacy, capitalism, and imperialism. After Malcolm X’s assassination on February 21, 1965 (Life magazine captured an image of Kochiyama on stage trying to comfort Malcolm), she began working closely with Malcolm X’s people. She joined Amiri Baraka’s short-lived Black Arts Repertory Theater and School and then for years was a member of the Republic of New Africa, which promoted Black liberation through a land base in the US South.

Kochiyama began her most important work—supporting political prisoners. She took up this campaign after her friends and comrades --beginning with her mentor, Mae Mallory, the founder of the “Harlem 9” civil rights group-- were arrested and imprisoned for their political involvements. She became the first person many political prisoners called when leaving prison. She wrote endless letters and organized others to do so; helped arrange legal defense; and kept a steady focus on political prisoners, primarily Black radicals, but also Puerto Rican and White revolutionaries and later Asian American prisoners.

Kochiyama was a coveted mentor to Asian American activists of the 1960s-1970s and to later generations. She worked with Asian Americans for Action, speaking, writing, and organizing to protest the Vietnam War, the US military in Okinawa, and the bombings of Hiroshima/Nagasaki, and ongoing nuclear testing in the Third World. She struggled for ethnic studies and Japanese American redress and reparations.

Since death at age 93, Yuri Kochiyama has become an iconic figure to generations of activists known for her intense commitments to Afro-Asian radicalism and internationalism and to far-reaching struggles for liberation.

Fujino, Diane C. Heartbeat of Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Yuri Kochiyama. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2005.

Fujino, Diane C., “Grassroots Leadership and Afro-Asian Solidarities: Yuri Kochiyama’s Humanizing Radicalism,” in Want to Start a Revolution: Radical Women in the Black Freedom Struggle, ed. Dayo F. Gore, Jeanne Theoharis, and Komozi Woodard. New York: New York University Press, 2009, 294-316.

Griffith, C.A. and H.L.T. Quan. Mountains that Take Wing: Angela Davis and Yuri Kochiyama: A Conversation on Life, Struggle and Liberation (documentary, 2009).

Kochiyama, Yuri. Passing It On—A Memoir. Los Angeles: UCLA Asian American Studies Center, 2004.

Tajiri, Rea and Pat Saunders. Yuri Kochiyama: Passion for Justice (documentary, 1993).

Mary Kao, ed., “Salute to Yuri Kochiyama” and “Tributes to Yuri Kochiyama,” Amerasia Journal 35 (2014).