Yuri Kochiyama: Civil Rights All Star
This weeks’ Fabulous Forgotten American is a brave Asian woman who took on discrimination of ALL races. A pioneer in the protest movement !
Yuri Kochiyama
Interned Japanes American boys
Young Japanese Americans learning about what being “interned” behind barbed wire and what the limits of their life would be for the next few years.
Born in 1921 in San Pedro, CA to Japanese immigrants, Kockiyama became a civil rights hero after her two year internment in the Jerome, Arkansas “Relocation” Camp during WWII. The Japanese Americans placed in these camps, who were often American Citizens, lost everything: their homes, their businesses, and all possessions that would not fit in a single suitcase. Even after being released, when the war ended, racism against Asian appearing people continued: “Searching for work, she began to see racism—some stores did not let her fill out an application because she was Asian—” https://exhibits.stanford.edu/riseup/feature/yuri-kochiyama
Kochiyama and her husband, whom she met at the internment camp, were active in civil rights marches, sit-ins and protests for black, Latinx and Indigenous people after they moved to Harlem. They demonstrated against the Vietnam war, for nuclear disarmament and for the release of prisoners of conscience. They were Freedom Riders in the South - an integrated group traveling across state lines together to end segregation on interstate buses.
She befriended Malcom X in the 1960’s and they worked together until his death. In fact, she was the one to cradle his head when he was assassinated. “Most of the audience in the ballroom fell to the ground after the gunfire, crawling away for safety. But Kochiyama headed toward the injured Malcolm X, who was lying on the floor.
"I just picked up his head and just put it on my lap," Kochiyama said in the Democracy Now! interview. "I said, 'Please, Malcolm! Please, Malcolm! Stay alive!'"
Kochiyama and her husband worked during the 1980’s for reparations to the Japanese Americans who lost so much during their internment in World War II, “… and in 1988, The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 made an official apology and authorized payments to former internees.”
https://exhibits.stanford.edu/riseup/feature/yuri-kochiyamat
Called a Chinese Agent by the American government, she nevertheless held weekly organizing meetings in her Oakland, CA home and her children, especially her daughter Audee, followed in her footsteps.
During the 1990’s she formed a prison support group for Asians. “Kochiyama strongly condemned the rise in Islamophobia after the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001. At a peace vigil and rally in San Francisco’s Japantown, she drew from her experience with incarceration after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in her speech. She cautioned people not to give into fear and hate and to stand in solidarity with Arabs, Muslims, and South Asian people who were being victimized. She declared:
“In war, they say that the first casualty is truth. America forgot that we are American citizens. We Japanese Americans should feel a kinship with the Arab and Muslim people who are the newest targets of racism, hysteria, and jingoism—something that we have experienced too.”
She worked for 60 years for Civil Rights. Her family said that she was ahead of her time and they had to catch up.After a long, successful life, she died in Berkley, CA in 2014.
Link to Freedom Riders National Monument in Alabama
NPR Morning Edition: “Not just a Black Thing: An Asian-Americans’ bond with Malcolm X
