Feminist to Know: Yuri Kochiyama

Yuri Kochiyama was a prominent and controversial activist who played a vital role in connecting liberation movements across American communities and the world. Born in 1921 in San Pedro, California to middle-class Japanese immigrants, Kochiyama's early life was shaped by the injustices she and her family faced during World War II.

In the same year that Kochiyama graduated from a public community college in Compton, CA, her father was unjustly detained following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Due to a prior ailment and the harsh conditions of his months of detainment, her father’s health suffered and he died a day after he was released.

The month following his passing, President Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 was enforced, leading to the internment of Japanese and other Asian Americans. Kochiyama and her family were forced from their home and interned at the Santa Anita Assembly Center for a few months before being relocated to a concentration camp in Arkansas where they remained for two years.

Kochiyama met her husband at the concentration camp and they moved to New York upon release, settling in Harlem and becoming active members of the Congress for Racial Equity (CORE). In Harlem, she played a pivotal role in aligning Asian-American civil rights with the Black liberation movement, developing a profound understanding of the interconnectedness of various civil rights struggles.

During the civil rights era, Kochiyama was involved in significant protests and demonstrations. It was at a 1963 protest that she forged a close friendship with Malcolm X, working alongside him until his assassination in 1965 where he died in her arms. Kochiyama also joined the Revolutionary Action Movement, a Black nationalist group that merged the ideologies of Malcolm X, Marx, Lenin, and Mao Zedong. Additionally, she converted to Islam and became associated with the Republic of New Africa (a Black separatist organization), becoming one of their few non-Black citizens. In 1977, she participated in the protest occupation of the Statue of Liberty led by Puerto Rican activists advocating for independence and the release of political prisoners.

Kochiyama passed away in 2014 at the age of 93. Her political ideology has faced criticism and she controversially aligned herself with Osama bin Laden, maintaining that U.S. imperialism and militarism was more of a threat than bin Laden’s actions. However, her unwavering commitment to intersectional solidarity makes her a key figure in 20th-Century liberation movements.