Yuri Kochiyama

Human rights activist

• Born: May 19, 1921
• Birthplace: San Pedro, California
• Died: June 1, 2014
• Place of death: Berkeley, California

Human rights activist Yuri Kochiyama was best known for her work with African American nationalists, most notably Malcolm X. Kochiyama made her career working for minority rights. She was a strong proponent of women’s rights, freedom for political prisoners, and nuclear disarmament.

Full name: Mary Yuriko Kochiyama (YOO-rih-koh KOH-chee-YAH-muh)

Birth name: Mary Yuriko Nakahara

Areas of achievement: Human and civil rights

Early Life

Yuri Kochiyama was born Mary Yuriko Nakahara in San Pedro, California, on May 19, 1921, to a Japanese American family. Her parents, Seiichi and Tsuyako Nakahara, were from north central Japan. Her father moved to the United States in 1907 and worked as a fisherman before opening a fish market in San Pedro. He returned to Japan in 1917 and married Tsuyako Sawaguchi. The couple returned to San Pedro in 1918. Later that year Kochiyama’s brother Arthur Masao was born. In May 1921, Kochiyama and her twin brother, Peter Minoru, were born.

Kochiyama grew up in an upper-middle-class family. Her father was a successful businessman and provided the family with a custom-built home. The family was able to travel to Japan. Kochiyama’s father was well-connected in both Japan and the Japanese community in the United States. As a child, Kochiyama attended and became active in the Catholic Church. As a high school student, she was an athlete and took part in many community service projects. Upon graduating high school in 1939, she began teaching Sunday school and was a sports writer for a local newspaper.

On December 7, 1941, the FBI arrived at the Nakaharas’ house and detained Kochiyama’s father as part of the process of interning Japanese Americans following the attack that day on Pearl Harbor. Seiichi Nakahara, who was recovering from surgery, died six weeks after being detained. Kochiyama, her brother Arthur, and her mother were subsequently sent to the Santa Anita assembly center and then to a relocation center in Jerome, Arkansas. At the Jerome Relocation Center, Kochiyama became active with the United Service Organizations (USO) and organized letter-writing campaigns to support Japanese Americans fighting for the United States in World War II (1939–45). Her twin brother enlisted.

It was in Jerome that Kochiyama met her future husband, Masayoshi William “Bill” Kochiyama, an Army soldier stationed in Camp Shelby, Mississippi. Kochiyama left Jerome and relocated to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, with the intention of marrying. However, the couple agreed to postpone their marriage until Bill Kochiyama returned from his service in the Army.

In the camps and in Hattiesburg, Kochiyama became more aware of racism, seeing the effects of bigotry on the lives of both Japanese Americans and African Americans. She eventually moved back to San Pedro with her mother and brother until Kochiyama returned from his Army service. In 1946, she and Kochiyama married and moved to Manhattan, where they lived in a predominantly African American and Puerto Rican neighborhood. The couple had six children, four boys and two girls, between 1947 and 1959. In 1960, the family moved to Harlem.

Life’s Work

The Kochiyamas were very socially engaged in New York, hosting numerous meetings of Japanese American community leaders. Around this time, Kochiyama met Daisy Bates, a Black civil rights activist who had been heavily involved in the 1957 school integration crisis in Little Rock, Arkansas. Kochiyama also became a close friend of James Peck, a white civil rights activist and pacifist. These encounters, along with her work on the Harlem Parents Committee, strengthened Kochiyama’s commitment to civil rights and social equality.

On October 16, 1963, Kochiyama met Black civil rights leader and activist Malcolm X at a courthouse in Brooklyn. Though the meeting was short, it proved influential in her thinking about civil rights for African Americans and inspired her support for Black nationalism. She wrote to Malcolm X in early 1964, inviting him to meet three hibakusha (survivors of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) who were staying at the Kochiyama home. Although Kochiyama did not expect Malcolm X to visit, he did. He spoke to Kochiyama and her guests about his life and his appreciation for Asian nationalism. Kochiyama felt connected to Malcolm X, attended many of his lectures, and began attending his lectures at the Organization of Afro-American Unity at the end of 1964. Kochiyama and her son Billy were also in the audience at the Audubon Ballroom on February 21, 1965, the day that Malcolm X was assassinated. After the gunshots, Kochiyama rushed to the stage and held Malcolm’s head in her lap, hoping he would speak, but he had already died. Inspired by Malcolm X’s life and example, the Kochiyamas started a newspaper, the North Star, dedicated to promoting human rights.

Kochiyama continued her involvement with the African American nationalist movement, becoming active with groups such as the Revolutionary Action Movement, the Black Arts Repertory School/Theatre, and the Republic of New Africa. As her political involvement increased, she also became aware of government investigations of her comrades and suspected government scrutiny of her own activities as well. Indeed, the FBI had the entire Kochiyama family under surveillance. She participated in antiwar demonstrations against the Vietnam War and in the early 1970s began to support the movement to free political prisoners in the United States, many of whom were close friends and political allies.

In the 1970s, the Kochiyamas became active with the group known as Asian Americans for Action. From 1970 to 1975, Kochiyama was a practicing Sunni Muslim. In 1977 she was arrested with a group of Puerto Rican nationalists who occupied the Statue of Liberty to draw attention to the cause of Puerto Rican independence. During the 1980s she and her husband were active in pressing the US government for a formal apology and reparations to Japanese Americans who had been interned in camps. They each testified at Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians hearings. Kochiyama, who opposed the War in Afghanistan, died in 2014 of natural causes.

Significance

Kochiyama was one of the most prominent Japanese American human rights activists. In 2005, she was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Her life and work have been the subject of several books and documentary films, including the 1999 film Yuri Kochiyama: Passion for Justice and in 2009 in Mountains That Take Wing. Her relationship with Malcolm X is explored by playwright Tim Toyama in his work Yuri and Malcolm X. A collection of Kochiyama’s speeches, entitled Discover Your Mission, was published in 1998. She published her memoir, Passing It On, in 2004, while her biography, Heartbeat of Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Yuri Kochiyama, was published in 2005.

Bibliography

Fujino, Diane. Heartbeat of Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Yuri Kochiyama. U of Minnesota P, 2005.

Ho, Fred. Legacy to Liberation: Politics and Culture of Revolutionary Asian Pacific America. AK, 2000.

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

Wang, Hansi Lo. "Yuri Kochiyama, Activist and Former World War II Internee, Dies at 93." National Public Radio, 2 June 2014, www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/06/02/318072652/japanese-american-activist-and-malcolm-x-ally-dies-at-93. Accessed 13 Sept. 2022.

"Yuri Kochiyama." Rise Up for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, Stanford Libraries, exhibits.stanford.edu/riseup/feature/yuri-kochiyama. Accessed 13 Sept. 2022.