This Week in American History: Yuri Kochiyama was born on May 19, 1921. She was a political activist. She dedicated her life to fighting for social change by participating in social justice and human rights movements.
Yuri Kochiyama’s Early Life
Kochiyama was born and raised in San Pedro, California. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Kochiyama saw her father arrested and detained in a hospital. Unfortunately, he passed away shortly afterwards. In addition, under President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, Kochiyama and her family experienced forced internment in a camp in Jerome, Arkansas. They remained at the internment camp for two years. Unsurprisingly, these traumatic experiences made Kochiyama aware of governmental abuses. Furthermore, they inspired her engagement in political struggles.
Yuri Kochiyama’s Life After the Arkansas Internment Camp
In 1945 Kochiyama moved to New York. While there she met and married Bill Kochiyama. Bill Kochiyama served in the all-Japanese American 442nd combat unit of the U.S. Army.
Yuri Kochiyama’s Activism of the 1960s
Kochiyama’s activism didn’t begin until the early 1960s in Harlem. She started to participate in the Asian American, Black, and Third World movements for civil and human rights, ethnic studies, and against the war in Vietnam. Kochiyama founded Asian Americans for Action. Simultaneously, she sought to build a more political Asian American movement. Kochiyama also wanted the Asian American movement to link itself to the struggle for Black liberation. In 1963, Kochiyama met Malcolm X. In addition to forming a political alliance, they became friends. Tragically, Kochiyama was with Malcolm X the day he passed away in 1965.
Yuri Kochiyama’s Activism of the 1980s and Beyond
Kochiyama and her husband Bill worked together in the redress and reparations movement for Japanese-Americans in the 1980s.
Throughout her life, a consistent thread in Kochiyama’s work was support for political prisoners. Kochiyama felt passionately about this as a result of what she went through in the 1940s.
Kochiyama passed away on June 1, 2014.
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Info Source: ZinnedProject.org
Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons
