Yuri Kochiyama

     

Yuri Kochiyama, the first time I heard her name was in BlueScholar’s song which gives tribute to her legacy. After last week’s loss due to the death of Dr. Maya Angleou, losing another courageous heroine of our time has reignited my passion for social justice and the dedication to dignifying every human being.

      It seems like the articles published about Yuri throughout the day have done a good job at summarizing her biographical information. She was born in 1921 and spent most of her life in San Pedro, California. However, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and fear overwhelmed logic in the United States, Yuri, her family, and about 100,000 Japanese-Americans were forced to relocate to internment camps. Yuri’s family’s experience was particularly traumatic because her father was jailed by the FBI and was so sick when he was returned to his family that he died the very next day. While in the internment camp, Yuri met her husband who eventually served in the 442^nd Regimental Combat Team (worth reading about).

     The young couple was married after WWII and started their family in NYC in the projects surrounded by other low-income families (and most minorities as well). There, she began holding weekly open houses for activists to engage and contribute to social justice. Her advocacy became even more radical as she became involved in the Black Panthers where she fought for the Civil Rights Movement. And perhaps the achievement she is most known for was when her and her husband pushed for reparations and a formal government apology for Japanese-American internees through the Civil Liberties Act.

     So here we have a woman that fought for what she knew was right and waited for the rest of the world to catch up with her. The majority of reports I have read today have been quick to acknowledge her involvement with Malcom X, and her time at the internment camp, but I would argue that by focusing on these small pieces of the person that made her the heroine she was, they’ve missed the mark.

     To me, Yuri Kochiyama’s legacy will live on because not only was she a minority woman that was treated inhumanely and with cruelty but also the simple truth that she was a woman and still knew she had a voice. Not only that, she was a mother that taught her children that they had a voice. She was energized by the hope for the future and she didn’t ruminate on the hatred that surrounded her and those she supported. In short, despite being at the bottom of the totem pole, she was resilient and her resiliency was able to be the torch that lit the fire for millions of others to follow in lighting their candle toward racial and gender equality.

     A piece of our history has been missing from the text books since the time history began. Minority populations, the  marginalized, the women, the “other”. To me, Yuri took that history book and exposed its faults. Her living example is proof that one person with compassion, a critical understanding of the systems that most accept, and a zest for life can change the world in incredible ways. So today I pay tribute to a woman that regardless of her involvement with the Black Panthers, or having been in an internment camp, was courageous, radical, and did the world good in her own right. I hope her and Dr. Angelou are looking down on the future activists of our world with kind eyes and hope for our future.