54 Facts About Yuri Kochiyama

Yuri Kochiyama was an American civil rights activist born in San Pedro, California.

Yuri Kochiyama was interned at the Jerome War Relocation Center in Arkansas during World War II, an experience that influenced her later views on racism in the United States.

Yuri Kochiyama was an advocate for political prisoners, including imprisoned members of the civil rights movement, the Puerto Rican independence movement, and others, helping to found the National Committee to Defend Political Prisoners in the early 1970s.

Yuri Kochiyama is credited with playing an influential role in the Asian American movement and was a member of the organization Asian Americans for Action.

Yuri Kochiyama is noted for her revolutionary nationalist views and her opposition to imperialism.

Yuri Kochiyama drew controversy in 2003 by praising Osama bin Laden, comparing him to Malcolm, Che Guevara, Patrice Lumumba, and Fidel Castro.

Yuri Kochiyama has been the subject of several biographies, children's books, and documentaries and was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 alongside 1,000 other women.

Yuri Kochiyama was born Mary Yuriko Nakahara on May 19,1921, in the San Pedro neighborhood of Los Angeles, California.

Yuri Kochiyama arrived in the United States in 1907, working first as an orange picker and then as a fish canner before opening a fish market and starting a business called The Pacific Coast Fish Company.

Yuri Kochiyama's mother was an English teacher and piano instructor.

Yuri Kochiyama was raised Christian, with her family attending the St Mary's Episcopal Church in Los Angeles.

Yuri Kochiyama attended several nearby Christian Science and Presbyterian churches on her own initiative, working as a Sunday school teacher.

Yuri Kochiyama attended Japanese language school; became the school's first female student body officer; wrote articles for the local San Pedro News-Pilot; played tennis; and served as a counselor for the Bluebirds, the Girl Scouts, and the YWCA Girl Reserves.

Yuri Kochiyama graduated in June 1941 with an arts degree, after which she struggled to find employment due to racial discrimination.

The Jerome War Relocation Center closed on June 30,1944, and Yuri Kochiyama's family returned to San Pedro in 1945.

Yuri Kochiyama moved to New York on January 23,1946, and married Bill on February 9 of the same year.

The couple's first two children were born in 1947, while Bill was attending college at Long Island University and Yuri Kochiyama was working as a waitress.

Yuri Kochiyama joined both CORE and the Harlem Parents Committee, an organization advocating for improved education for inner-city children, in 1963.

Also in 1963, Yuri Kochiyama participated in a series of protests organized by CORE in Brooklyn.

Yuri Kochiyama attended the protests with her children and was at one point arrested alongside her son Billy for disorderly conduct, spending half a day in jail before her release.

Malcolm invited Yuri Kochiyama to meet with him at his office to discuss his stance on integration further, but was unable to do so initially due to fears for his personal safety arising from his public conflict with Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad.

Malcolm and Yuri Kochiyama continued to correspond after this event as Malcolm traveled throughout Africa, Asia, and Europe.

Yuri Kochiyama began attending lectures given by the Organization of Afro-American Unity, a political advocacy organization created by Malcolm to further the civil rights movement, in 1964.

Yuri Kochiyama was present at Malcolm's assassination at the Audubon Ballroom, where Malcolm was holding an OAAU rally, on February 21,1965.

However, eventually, Yuri Kochiyama went onstage to try to render aid to Malcolm, resting his head on her lap.

Yuri Kochiyama took an oath of citizenship to the RNA on September 13,1969, and, in accordance with the practice adopted by many Black activists of adopting Muslim names, she began to go by her Japanese name, Yuri.

Yuri Kochiyama supported various political prisoners and people who she saw as victims of suppression by law enforcement throughout her life.

Yuri Kochiyama's support began in the mid-1960s, when she began advocating on behalf of Mae Mallory, who had been arrested for allegedly kidnapping a white couple in retaliation for an attack by the Ku Klux Klan on Freedom Riders in Monroe, North Carolina.

Yuri Kochiyama corresponded with imprisoned members of the Black Panther Party ; acted as a point of contact for many political prisoners affiliated with the RNA; and advocated on behalf of the Harlem Six, Martin Sostre, Mutulu Shakur, and various other imprisoned political activists.

Yuri Kochiyama is considered an important figure in the Asian American movement, which, drawing upon anti-imperialist and antiracist ethics, adopted a pan-Asian focus, with members of the Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, South Asian, and Southeast Asian communities all participating.

In 1971, Yuri Kochiyama, influenced by Malcolm's teachings and by imprisoned imam Rasul Suleiman, converted to Sunni Islam, attending the Sankore mosque in Greenhaven Prison in Stormville, New York to study with Suleiman.

Yuri Kochiyama began to experience marital difficulties during the early 1970s as her movement activities interfered with her home life.

Yuri Kochiyama reasoned that the would have preferred nonviolent tactics, but since the US government had not responded to their peaceful requests, they viewed armed struggle as a legitimate form of struggle, as sanctioned under international law.

Yuri Kochiyama participated in an occupation of the Statue of Liberty on behalf of Lebron and her fellow imprisoned activists on October 25,1977, seizing it for nine hours before she and the other participants were arrested and released the next day.

Yuri Kochiyama taught international students English, volunteered at homeless shelters and soup kitchens, and continued her support for prisoners, including Mumia Abu-Jamal, a Black activist sentenced to death in 1982 for the murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner.

Yuri Kochiyama helped form the David Wong Support Committee in 1987 on behalf of prisoner David Wong, who had been sentenced to twenty-five years to life in prison by an all-white jury for the murder of a fellow inmate.

Yuri Kochiyama wrote letters to, fund-raised for, and visited Wong in prison.

Yuri Kochiyama formed a similar support committee for Yu Kikumura, an alleged member of the Japanese Red Army convicted of planning to bomb a United States Navy recruitment office in the Veterans Administration building in 1988.

Yuri Kochiyama believed that Kikumura's sentence was an example of political persecution and organized in his defense.

Yuri Kochiyama was originally skeptical of working with Shining Path, which had been criticized by some members of the American left-wing movement for its use of violence.

Yuri Kochiyama died in Berkeley, California on June 1,2014, at the age of 93.

Journalist Elaine Woo, writing for the Los Angeles Times, describes Yuri Kochiyama as "straddl[ing] black revolutionary politics and Asian American empowerment movements".

Fujino claims that Yuri Kochiyama was influenced by the Black Arts Repertory Theater and School, which was founded in 1965 by poet, educator, and activist LeRoi Jones "for black people, and only black people".

Later in life, Kochiyama tied the Black freedom struggle with the Asian American movement, praising civil rights activist Robert F Williams for his overtures to Mao Zedong and drawing connections between the redress movement and the movement for reparations for Black Americans.

Yuri Kochiyama was a strong critic of what she saw as American imperialism.

Yuri Kochiyama opposed the Vietnam War, questioning the democratic motives of the United States government and claiming that the United States had actually invaded Vietnam for its natural resources.

Yuri Kochiyama praised Vietnamese revolutionary Nguyen Van Troi, who had attempted to assassinate United States Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on May 2,1964, by planting a mine under a bridge that he was set to travel over.

Yuri Kochiyama called Van Troi a "hero" and claimed that "many Movement people named their children after him".

Yuri Kochiyama opposed American military presence in Okinawa, calling American military installations there "invasion bases" whose purpose was to "attack, supply military arms and ammunitions, and to transport supplies, and to train and entertain US soldiers".

Yuri Kochiyama drew comparisons between the targeting of Arabs and Muslims after the attacks and the targeting of Japanese Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbor, claiming that both led to "racial profiling".

In 1992, an oral history Yuri Kochiyama recounted to Joann Faung Jean Lee was published in Lee's book Asian Americans: Oral Histories of First to Fourth Generation Americans from China, the Philippines, Japan, India, the Pacific Islands, Vietnam, and Cambodia.

In 2005, Yuri Kochiyama was one of 1,000 women collectively nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize through the "1,000 Women for the Nobel Peace Prize 2005" project, though the prize ultimately went to the International Atomic Energy Agency and its director general, Mohamed ElBaradei.

In 2010, she received an honorary doctorate from California State University, East Bay, and in 2011, a song titled "Yuri Kochiyama" was released on the Blue Scholars album Cinemetropolis.

Kochiyama is the subject of the 2024 book The Bridges Yuri Built: How Yuri Kochiyama Marched Across Movement, which was written by her great-granddaughter Kai Naima Williams and illustrated by Anastasia Magloire Williams.