Editor's Note:  Yuri Kochiyama turns 82 today. 

See also: Marching in Step with Dr. King

By Akemi Kochiyama-Ladson
A. Magazine
December 1, 1994

One of the earliest memories I have of my grandmother was Hiroshima Day, August 6, 1978. I was six years old and she took me along to a demonstration she was attending. On the train ride downtown, she explained to me that we were going to the Riverside Research Institute, a "think tank" for building weapons, including nuclear ones. This was the place where they made the bombs they used against the people of Vietnam. This was a place in which they thought up new ways to kill people. Despite my youth, I understood the importance of the cause.

I remember that the moment we got to the demonstration site, it seemed like she knew everyone: these people were her extended family. She was in her element, greeting, embracing, and introducing her colleagues to one another, all the while handing out leaflets to every person she encountered. Meanwhile, she quickly obtained a sign from someone and hung it around my neck. The sign was about as tall as I was, and twice as wide. It read "MEET HUMAN NEEDS."

As I grew older and accompanied Yuri to other demonstrations, rallies, protests, and meetings, I realized that this was business as usual for a woman with incredible energy and a vast political network.

Yuri, born Mary Yuriko Nakahara, marks 1942 as the year she came into political consciousness. Yuri was 20 years old, and even then displayed a deep concern for her community. A volunteer for the YWCA, the Girl Scouts, and the Homer Toberman Settlement House, which served the Mexican community in her home town of San Pedro, California, Yuri also taught first aid at the Red Cross and Sunday School at the local Presbyterian church.

But on the day Pearl Harbor was bombed, December 7, 1941, three FBI men came to her home and took her father -- who had returned from the hospital only the day before -- away with them. No explanation was given. And it was not until six weeks later that he was brought home, visibly weakened, and disoriented to the point that he could no longer recognize his family. He died that night.

Yuri later learned that her father had been under surveillance for 20 years, and that the FBI had been holding him in the state penitentiary under suspicion of being a spy for the Japanese government. This came as a shock to the Nakaharas, who, as did most Japanese Americans of the time, saw themselves as a patriotic, law-abiding family. Soon after, in compliance with Executive Order 9066, the government removed 110,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry from their homes and communities and interned them in "relocation" camps. The Nakaharas found themselves uprooted from their comfortable home and sent to a camp in Jerome, Arkansas.

"I had no hard feelings against the United States," Yuri says of this period. "I was so American, so steeped in the 'red, white, and blue.' But I did slowly start to look at America with different eyes."

Like many other Japanese Americans, Yuri tried to make her life in the relocation camp as normal as possible. She taught Sunday School there and worked with children and teens, much as she had in San Pedro. In 1944, she left the camp to work for a USO in Mississippi specifically created for Japanese American soldiers, since Asians were not welcome in white USOs. It was there that she met and fell in love with a dashing young soldier named Bill Kochiyama -- a member of the all-Japanese American 442nd regimental combat team, one of the most decorated battalions in U.S. history.

After the war ended and the camps closed, Yuri was reunited with Bill in New York, and they were married. In 1960, they and their six children moved by subway from the Amsterdam Projects midtown to the uptown Manhattanville Housing Projects. This was a major change for Yuri and the whole Kochiyama family, as they were swept up in the world of Harlem in the '60s -- a hotbed of political activity. Through their involvement with the Harlem Parents' Committee, Bill and Yuri learned of the Freedom Schools organized by the concerned community in an attempt to supplement the deficiencies of the public education system. The Schools taught black children to have pride in their heritage, and Yuri became committed to the project. "Both my husband and I felt we didn't know anything about black history, black thinking, or black culture, and in order to understand the black community and and its people, we thought we'd better sign up. So we enrolled, along with our three eldest children, Billy, Audee, and Aichi. The education we received was priceless."

As Yuri's involvement grew, so did her political awareness. "I began going down to 125th Street and Seventh Avenue where nationalist and Leftist activists would hang out and speak. I started to see that Harlem's politics ran a wide gamut. There were also the Garveyites, the Yoruba, and the Nation of Islam. Everything to me was new, exciting, and mind-boggling," she remembers. "Several days a week I would take the four youngest children and ride the subway to Brooklyn to participate in protests. I also joined Malcolm's Organization of Afro-American Unity and his Liberation School, and later Amiri Baraka's Black Arts School. Harlem was truly a 'university without walls."'

Most significant for Yuri during this period was her encounter with Malcolm X. His politics and philosophy would radically change her understanding of racism in America. "Before I met Malcolm, I had no understanding of the two trends in the black movement. I was involved only with the civil rights movement, represented by Martin Luther King and his vision of harmonious integration of people to make a greater America through nonviolence. But after listening to Malcolm, I strongly felt that his position of total liberation from the jurisdiction of the United States was the only way that black people in this country would be able to empower themselves, to determine their own destiny. His position of self-determination, self-reliance, self-defense, and a sovereign nation was integral to realizing one's own potentials, humanity, and dignity. It is impossible to attain justice in a racist country. Malcolm helped me to see, more clearly, the true essence of the United States in all its negative reality."

In 1964, Yuri invited Malcolm X to her home, to meet with reporters from the Hiroshima/Nagasaki World Peace Study Mission. Some in the group were actual bomb victims, and others were antiwar activists. More than any other political leader in the U.S., they wanted to meet Malcolm X. "They were curious to know why the United States government feared one black man, who seemingly had no wealth, power, or status in America," she recalls. "They wanted to know what made him different from other black leaders. They were also probably curious to know how he would react to Japanese people."

This was a risky time for Malcolm X, because he had just split with the Nation of Islam and knew that he was in serious danger of assassination. Still, he came, and surprised all present with his graciousness and openness. "Black, white or Asian, he showed no partiality. He thanked the Japanese hibakusha [bomb victims] for coming to Harlem's 'World's Worst Fair,' rather than attending the much-publicized 1964 World's Fair at Flushing Meadow Park in Queens. He then spoke of European colonization of Asia, and spoke admiringly of Mao Tse Tung for what he was able to accomplish, fighting against feudalism, corruption, and foreign domination. Then he spoke of Vietnam. I remember he said, 'The struggle of the people of Vietnam is the struggle of the Third World -- a struggle against imperialism and neocolonialism.' All were deeply impressed," Yuri says.

It was easy for Yuri to connect the Asian movement with the black movement, because many of the issues they were fighting for were the same. "Blacks, Asians, Latinos, and Native Americans were fighting separately and together for basic needs like food, housing, education, health care, and jobs. They also fought side by side for ethnic studies, open enrollment, increased student voice, more ethnic faculty, more loans for minority students, and many other issues pertaining to education. And we cannot forget that Asians and blacks and others fought for China's inclusion in the United Nations. They marched together to support the Attica Brothers, rallied behind the Black Panthers, and Young Lords, and joined in efforts against nuclear proliferation, against the possibility of more Hiroshimas or Nagasakis. They also joined generally in the massive demonstrations of the '60s and '70s against the Vietnam War, and likewise dealt with similar issues within their own groups like communism, socialism, nationalism, united fronts, identity crises, and the future of the Left."

Through her political organizing and community activity, Yuri my grandmother has done her best to encourage different communities to work with one another. It is her belief that ethnic minorities like blacks, Latinos, Asians and Native Americans need to recognize the similar oppression they have suffered as people of color in the United States -- and that unity is our best hope for true and lasting change. And Asian Americans should be setting an example. "Asians must go beyond the Asian American border," she says, "and engage in joint ventures or programs with other communities."