Yuri Kochiyama

[sandra]

i guess our other thread on yuri kochiyama has been archived, so i'll start a new one.


i just met yuri kochiyama at a dinner tonight, and, not surprisingly, she is also very inspirational in person. she made a brief speech about the injustice of the current imperialistic war. almost close to 80 years of age, she still speaks with clarity and strength.

she also recently published a biography. please read below.

UCLA's Asian American Studies Center Publishes Memoirs of Yuri Kochiyama, Renowned Human Rights Activist

The UCLA Asian American Studies Center has published the memoirs of renowned human rights activist Yuri Kochiyama.

At age 77 and as a visiting scholar with UCLA's Asian American Studies Center, Kochiyama began to write her memoir for her family. "Passing It On - A Memoir" is the account of an extraordinary Asian American woman who spoke out and fought shoulder-to-shoulder with African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans and whites for social justice, civil rights, and prisoner and women's rights in the United States and internationally for more than half a century. A prolific writer and speaker on human rights, Kochiyama has spoken at more than 100 colleges, universities and high schools in the United States and Canada.

"Our center has been privileged to have had a long and meaningful relationship with Yuri throughout our 35-year history," said Don Nakanishi, the center's director, who first met Kochiyama when he was an undergraduate student at Yale University in 1969. "She has inspired generations of our students, who have gone on to become major leaders in the community, and provided insights and guidance for our faculty and researchers to tackle many of the most compelling and difficult issues of social justice, human rights and race relations facing our country."

The daughter of Japanese immigrants, Kochiyama was born in San Pedro in 1921. The FBI arrested her father during World War II and labeled him a "prisoner of war." After interrogating him for several weeks and finding no cause for his arrest, they released him. Seiichi Nakahara died several days after his arrest.

"As I reflect back on that traumatic event, I see the parallel between the way African Americans were treated in the segregated South and the way Japanese Americans were evacuated and relocated en masse to remote internment camps, across the U.S.," Kochiyama wrote. "In each instance, there was senseless degradation, brutality, and hatred wrought by fear and ignorance caused by racism."

In 1942 Kochiyama and her family, along with 120,000 others of Japanese ancestry, were forcibly removed from their homes and imprisoned in internment camps. Kochiyama notes that 70 percent of those removed were American citizens and the remaining 30 percent were Japanese immigrants who had been denied the possibility of citizenship. Kochiyama and her family were sent to the Jerome, Ark., internment camp.

In 1946 she married Bill Kochiyama, a World War II veteran she had met at the camp. The couple settled in New York City, Bill's hometown, and had six children. In 1960 the Kochiyamas moved to a new low-income housing project in Harlem, where many Latino and African American families lived. Yuri and Bill Kochiyama became active in the Harlem Parents Committee, which created its own school to protest the quality of public schools in Harlem.

The family supported numerous other political and social causes through protests, demonstrations and other organizing efforts. For instance, they picketed schools in Harlem to demand a better education. In another instance, they hosted a talk by the Freedom Riders, an interracial group of activists from throughout the United States who boarded buses headed for the South in order to protest the practice of segregated public transportation. On their way to visit relatives back in California, the couple took their children to visit the Baptist church in Birmingham, Ala., where four girls were killed in a bombing.
"I believe our children who grew up in Harlem had one advantage: they were in the circumference of the civil rights movement," Yuri Kochiyama wrote. "Harlem was a university without walls."

The political activism didn't stop there. In 1965 two of the couple's oldest children - Billy and Audee - went to Mississippi to register blacks to vote. The family also took part in numerous marches to commemorate the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and protested against the Vietnam War. In 1971 one of the couple's children, Eddie, visited China with the Progressive Student Delegation, which was only the second American group to be allowed to visit China after the country's Cultural Revolution. In 1977 Yuri Kochiyama took part in the take-over of the Statue of Liberty by Puerto Rican independence activists who were demanding the release of activist Andre Cordero, who was dying of cancer.

A chapter of the book is devoted to the family's association with Malcolm X. In 1964 the family was hosting three writers of the Hiroshima/Nagasaki World Peace Study Mission and the writers wanted to meet Malcolm X. The Kocihyamas wrote to Malcolm X months in advance, but they received no response from him. On the day of the event, Malcolm X showed up, spoke with the journalists, and took pictures with people who had gathered at the Kochiyamas' home. Malcolm X developed a friendship with the family and sent them 11 postcards from his travels abroad.

On Feb. 21, 1965, Yuri Kochiyama was in the audience when Malcolm X gave a speech at the Audubon Ballroom.

"I was in the audience when Malcolm X was assassinated and immediately ran on stage as soon as he fell to the floor," Kochiyama wrote. "Cradling his head in my hands, I was shocked."

In the book, Kochiyama also recalls the tragic deaths of her two children, Aichi and Billy, and her son-in-law, Alkamal. She devotes a chapter to her support of political prisoners, which includes writing letters to various prisoners and visiting them. Other chapters focus on Kochiyama's visits to Cuba and Peru, and the Asian American Movement.

The book includes 90 photographs and 31 historical documents, which are part of the Yuri Kochiyama Collection at UCLA. It was edited by Marjorie Lee, Audee Kochiyama-Holman and Akemi Kochiyama-Sardinha, and published by the UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press.

The paperback edition( ISBN: 0-934052-37-9) is available for $17, plus $4 shipping and handling, and a hardcover edition ( ISBN 0-934052-38-7 ) is available for $27, plus shipping and handling. California residents add 8.25% tax. Please make checks payable to "UC Regents" and send payment to UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press, 3230 Campbell Hall, Box 951546, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1546. We also accept VISA, MASTERCARD, and DISCOVER; include expiration date and phone number on correspondence. For order inquiries, or review copies for media or classroom use, email (thaocha@ucla.edu or aascpress@aasc.ucla.edu), or call (310) 825-2968 . Download order form from the website of the UCLA AASC PRESS: www.sscnet.ucla.edu/aasc/rdp2/pubsaafirsts.html

[Chu Chi]

That means in the mid 1940s she was in her 20s.

Did she give you any predictions for the future?

CC

[Faithless]

Passing It On.

Passing It On Wins Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award for 2004

Passing It On – A Memoir by renowned human rights activist Yuri Kochiyama recently received a Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award for 2004.

The award honors "authors and books that challenge ways of thinking and acting, that allow the many faces and facets of bigotry to replicate over and over again," according to Loretta J. Williams, director of the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights.

"Passing It On -- A Memoir" is the account of Kochiyama, 83, an extraordinary Japanese American woman who spoke out and fought shoulder-to-shoulder with African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans and whites for social justice, civil rights, and prisoner and women's rights in the United States and internationally for more than half a century. A prolific writer and speaker on human rights, Kochiyama has spoken at more than 100 colleges, universities and high schools in the United States and Canada.

The Gustavus Myers Center praised the book for offering "insight into social conditions for Japanese Americans, and into those alliance builders who chose to work for social justice for all who are oppressed."

"The reader learns about the experiences and consequences for families torn away by the government's internment processes and camps in the 40s, about love and perseverance in raising socially conscious children in the midst of progressive movements of the mid- and latter-20th century, and about a stalwart activist's decades of work for political empowerment, racial justice, Puerto Rican independence, Third World liberation, working class equity, reparations, freedom for political prisoners, ethnic studies and more," the Gustavus Myers Center stated.

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http://www.war-times.org/issues/4art11.html

"It's Time to Work Together"
Interview with Yuri Kochiyama * BY JOSINA MORITA

Yuri Kochiyama has been a racial justice and human rights activist for more than four decades.

She and her family were interned in 1942 with more than 120,000 other Japanese Americans during World War II. A close friend of Malcolm X, Kochiyama became politically active in the 1960s, while living in Harlem with her husband and six children.

She has spent much of her life working across racial lines to build multiracial support for the end of South African apartheid and the war in Vietnam, and for redress for Japanese Americans, Puerto Rican independence and Cuban solidarity. Kochiyama, who recently moved to Oakland, Calif. from Harlem, currently works on political prisoner issues and regularly speaks out against the “war on terrorism.”

Q: Do you think there are similarities between the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and the mass detention of Arabs and Muslims today?

There is great similarity. The United States has gained support for its wars by using media to whip up war hysteria. During World War II they demonized the Japanese; today they are demonizing Muslims and Arabs. And just as the war against Japan during World War II resulted in the racial profiling and internment of Japanese in America, the “war on terrorism” has resulted in the racial profiling and detainment of Arabs, Muslims, South Asians and all people of color living in the U.S. today.

The government arrested over 1,300 Japanese immigrants in the first 48 hours after Pearl Harbor. My father was picked up hours after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. We didn’t know where they took my father. Today I think a lot of families don’t know whether their husbands, brothers and fathers have been detained or deported. Because we had been victimized years ago, we should be the ones in the front supporting in whatever way possible Muslims, Arabs and South Asians.

Q: What do you think about the
“war on terrorism”?

The goal of the war is more than just getting oil and fuel. The United States is set on taking over the world. It’s important that we all understand that the main terrorist and the main enemy of the world’s people is the U.S. government. Racism has been a weakness of this country from the beginning. Throughout history, all people of color, and all people who don’t see eye to eye with the U.S. government have been subjected to American terror. U.S. intentions have been known for so long, but I feel that right now is a dangerous time for the whole world.

Q: Why should Asian Americans oppose the “war on terrorism”?

The “war on terrorism” has expanded into different areas including Asian countries. Already the U.S. has sent its military to the Philippines and it is threatening North Korea. And look what’s happening in South Asia, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Coalitions are very important. If you think about the Vietnam War, it was everybody working together that made that movement grow so fast and it was effective. More and more people are seeing that we have to work together. We must work together to define for ourselves what terrorism is and what resistance is. If ever there was a time when we needed to work together, now is the time. The future is certainly going to be challenging.

[Faithless]

My kid wanted to do a report on a woman minority.

The first person I could think of was Yuri.

[Faithless]

Ended up reading Yuri's autobiography and a biography done by an Asian that added a bunch of political context.

It's amazing how she was able to become a behind-the-scenes player in the civil rights movement, and then to branch off into her own projects.

Her theme had always been rights for "political prisoners", some more controversial than others.

She lives in Oakland, CA, I understand, and it appears that a few folks I know have some association with her.

[deez nuts]

In 1946 she married Bill Kochiyama, a World War II veteran she had met at the camp.

wow this might be the first japanese female asian-american activist that i've seen featured on yw that's not married to a black guy?

[Faithless]

Originally Posted by deez nuts

wow this might be the first japanese female asian-american activist that i've seen featured on yw that's not married to a black guy?

I think a couple of her kids did.

She used to drag her kids along to her political events.