Is Yuri Kochiyama still alive?
Deceased (1921–2014)
Yuri Kochiyama/Living or Deceased
What was Yuri Kochiyama most known for?
Yuri Kochiyama (May 19, 1921 – June 1, 2014) was a tireless political activist who dedicated her life to contributing to social change through her participation in social justice and human rights movements. She was born and raised in San Pedro, California.
How old was Yuri Kochiyama when she died?
93 years (1921–2014)
Yuri Kochiyama/Age at death
Where is Yuri Kochiyama from?
San Pedro, CA
Yuri Kochiyama/Place of birth
How were the Japanese treated in the camps?
The camps were surrounded by barbed-wire fences patrolled by armed guards who had instructions to shoot anyone who tried to leave. Although there were a few isolated incidents of internees’ being shot and killed, as well as more numerous examples of preventable suffering, the camps generally were run humanely.
How did Yuri Kochiyama meet her husband?
She met her late husband, Bill Kochiyama, who served with other Japanese-American soldiers in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, at the Jerome Relocation Center in Arkansas, where she spent two years. The couple married after World War II and moved to start their family in New York City.
What can we learn from Yuri Kochiyama?
Yuri Kochiyama taught me about imagination and about abolition. She seamlessly connected the struggles of seemingly-disparate peoples under the unabridged umbrella of human liberation: nuclear disarmament, prison abolition, loving-kindness to the oppressed, mass decolonization.
What did Yuri Kochiyama change?
As organizers of East Coast Japanese Americans for Redress and Reparations, Yuri and Bill advocated for reparations and a government apology for the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, and spearheaded the campaign to bring the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians to New York …
Did Yuri Kochiyama have siblings?
Arthur Nakahara
Peter Nakahara
Yuri Kochiyama/Siblings
What happened to the Japanese after Pearl Harbor?
Following the Pearl Harbor attack, however, a wave of antiJapanese suspicion and fear led the Roosevelt administration to adopt a drastic policy toward these residents, alien and citizen alike. Virtually all Japanese Americans were forced to leave their homes and property and live in camps for most of the war.
Why did Yuri Kochiyama change her name?
Kochiyama joined, and subsequently sided with, an RNA faction which felt that the need to build a separate black nation was even more important than the struggle for civil rights in Northern cities. After Kochiyama became a “citizen” of the RNA she decided to drop her “slave name” Mary and used only the name Yuri.
What was Yuri Kochiyama’s relationship with Malcolm X?
Kochiyama’s friendship with Malcolm X fascinated playwright Tim Toyama, who wrote a one-act play called Yuri and Malcolm X. Our house felt like it was the movement 24/7.” “Malcolm X’s movement was probably the last thing you would imagine a Japanese-American person, especially a woman, to be involved with,” he says.
What did Yuri Kochiyama do as an activist?
Radicalized by her association with Malcolm X, the fiery Nation of Islam leader, Kochiyama plunged into campaigns for Puerto Rican independence, nuclear disarmament and reparations for Japanese American internees. “I didn’t wake up and decide to become an activist,” she told the Dallas Morning News in 2004.
When did Yuri Kochiyama and her son get arrested?
Kochiyama and her eldest son, 16-year-old Billy, were arrested along with hundreds of other people, mainly African-Americans, during a protest in Brooklyn, N.Y., in October 1963. ” [They were] in this packed courthouse,” Fujino says.
How did Yuri Kochiyama die cause of death?
It was a formal government apology that provided reparations to World War II internees — and a milestone Kochiyama helped to achieve 25 years ago this month. EDITOR’S NOTE: Yuri Kochiyama died of natural causes on June 1, 2014. You can read more about her exceptional life here.