Working Outside the System

Yuri Kochiyama’s life has taken her from Japanese-American internment camps to Malcolm X’s side in his last moments.

By Lydia Lum

Every January, the nation pauses to celebrate the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Holding just as much meaning for many is Feb. 21, the anniversary of Malcolm X’s untimely death. Among those who last saw him alive is a Japanese woman who cradled his head as he lay dying from gunshot wounds in New York City’s Audubon Ballroom in 1965.

That woman, Yuri Kochiyama, is one of many whose social, political and civil rights activism was inspired by Malcolm X. She is one of the few non-Blacks often associated with him and has forged multi-ethnic coalitions, especially between Asian Americans and Blacks. An 84-year-old Nisei — American-born child of immigrant parents — Kochiyama is one of the most prominent Asian American activists who emerged from the 1960s. She has championed human rights, protested racial inequality and supported political prisoners worldwide, often doing mundane but important behind-the-scenes work. Interned during World War II, Kochiyama has likened the ordeal to the segregation of Blacks.

Kochiyama is so well known for her warmth and sincerity that Dr. Diane C. Fujino refers to her by first name in Heartbeat of Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Yuri Kochiyama, a biography of the activist published last year. A University of California, Santa Barbara associate professor of Asian American studies, Fujino says she is glad Kochiyama has diverse supporters.

“Every Black radical and nationalist I’ve met embraces Yuri,” Fujino says. “And in Yuri, young Asian Americans learn about someone who looks like them, but has worked completely outside the system.”

Lessons in Discrimination
Born Mary Nakahara in 1922, Yuri was raised in a small port town near Los Angeles. Her youth was a sheltered, middle-class existence in a White neighborhood that included sports and teaching Sunday school.
But that suburban life was shattered after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. FBI agents arrested her father at home in a mass roundup of “suspects” whom they believed threatened national security. Held at a federal prison, her father was denied medical care. By the time he was sent home the following January, he could no longer speak. He died the next day.