Yuri Kochiyama’s activism against racism, war, and hatred was conceived in the incarceration camp, nurtured in the Jim Crow South, and ignited at the Harlem Freedom School. Mary Yuriko Nakahara was born in San Pedro, California, to first-generation Japanese immigrant parents. The Nakahara family was forced to relocate to an incarceration camp in Jerome, Arkansas, shortly after the American naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawai‘i, was bombed on Dec. 7, 1941.
To escape the camp, in 1944, Yuri volunteered to work at an all-Japanese, segregated United Service Organizations center in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. There, she met William “Bill” Kochiyama, a Japanese American who had enlisted in the U.S. Army to prove his patriotism. It was at the USO in Hattiesburg that Yuri first witnessed Jim Crow.
In 1960, Yuri and Bill moved into the Manhattanville Housing Projects in Harlem, where they witnessed firsthand the struggles of their Black and Latino neighbors. She became a vocal civil rights activist, often holding meetings in her apartment. After meeting Malcolm X in October 1963 and connecting the freedom struggles of Black Americans with those of people of African and Asian descent around the world, Kochiyama’s focus broadened to a fight for human rights.
For more than 50 years, Kochiyama remained dedicated to her fight against racism, hatred and war. She became a pioneer of the Asian American movement; advocated for Puerto Rican independence; and fought against Islamophobia after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. She died on June 1, 2014, at the age of 93.
NYSUT is proud to celebrate the contributions of individuals of Asian and Pacific Islander descent. Downloadable PDF versions and printed copies of this poster are free, in limited quantities, to NYSUT members. For a free download of this poster, visit nysut.org/publications.