yuri kochiyama rules
Passing It On - A Memoir
UCLA's Asian American Studies Center Publishes Memoirs of
Yuri Kochiyama, Renowned Human Rights Activist
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
speaking of yuri kochiyama, this is an excellent documentary of her life. if you are affiliated with a university, check the media library for it. she is awesome. you can see a clip of the movie here. while you are at the media library, you should also check out "a hero for daisy". (not really related, though both movies are about great women). watch the clip :)