A Combative and Compassionate “Lily”: The Life of Yuri Kochiyama

Rarely am I moved to tears while watching a movie, but recently seeing Come See the Paradise (1990) brought tears to my eyes, especially when the Kawamura family, including their lovely daughter Lily (who was married to an Irish American), was sent to an internment camp.

I couldn’t help but think about that touching movie when reflecting on the life of Yuri Kochiyama, the real-life woman who, like Lily, was born in California to immigrants from Japan—and yuri is the Japanese word for lily. 

The Crux of “Lily’s” Life

Perhaps few of you have heard of Yuri, the remarkable Japanese American “Lily” born 100 years ago, but hers is an interesting story and one worthy of thoughtful consideration.

On May 19, 1921, Seiichi and Tsuyako Nakahara became the parents of twins, a boy and a girl they named Mary Yuriko. They lived in a relatively affluent White neighborhood, and as a youth Mary attended a Christian church and taught Sunday school classes.

But things drastically changed on December 7 when Mary was 20. Her father, just home from the hospital, was arrested by FBI agents. He died the next month. Shortly after that, Pres. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 and Mary and her family were sent to an internment camp in Arkansas.

Max Garrott, my friend and esteemed missionary sempai (older colleague) was forced to leave Japan in 1942 and served for a time as a chaplain at the Japanese internment camps in Arkansas. During Passion Week and Easter in 1944, Dr. Garrott preached at the camp where Mary Yuriko was interned.

Perhaps she heard him preach or lead Bible study that week as she continued to be an active Christian even while incarcerated in the Jerome, Arkansas, camp.

While there, she met her future husband, Bill Kochiyama, a nisei (second-generation Japanese American) soldier fighting for the United States. The couple married in 1946 and moved to New York City two years later. There she became widely known as Yuri Kochiyama.

Yuri (“Lily”) died seven years ago, on June 1, 2014, at the age of 93.

The Combative “Lily”

After moving to New York and into public housing there, for the rest of her life Yuri Kochiyama was an activist. She became an outspoken and combative critic of the mistreatment not only of Japanese Americans but of other mistreated minorities living in the U.S.

In 1963 she met Malcomb X and became a combative supporter of his work for racial justice and human rights. When he was assassinated in 1965, the picture of the fallen Black leader in Life magazine shows Yuri crouched in the background, cradling his head.

During the 1960s, Yuri also became a contentious critic of the war in Vietnam and then for decades of what she saw as American “imperialism.”

The Compassionate “Lily”

Five days after her death in June 2014, the White House honored Kochiyama on its website:

Today, we honor the legacy of Yuri Kochiyama, a Japanese American activist who dedicated her life to the pursuit of social justice, not only for the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community, but all communities of color.

That was an appropriate recognition for the combative and compassionate “Lily.”

Five years ago on what would have been her 95^th birthday, a Google Doodle, which was both praised and criticized, said this about Yuri:

Kochiyama left a legacy of advocacy: for peace, U.S. political prisoners, nuclear disarmament, and reparations for Japanese Americans interned during the war. She was known for her tireless intensity and compassion, and remained committed to speaking out, consciousness-raising, and taking action until her death in 2014.

Here is one of “Lily” Kochiyama’s most quoted statements: 

While we may not agree with all the people and causes Yuri Kochiyama supported, can’t we at least appreciate these words of hers?

_______

** Yuri Kochiyama’s contentious and compassionate life’s work seems to be getting more and more recognition. 

A children’s book titled Rad American Women A – Z was published in 2015, and Yuri was the Y for the 26 women written about in that book.

In 2019 a book was published under the title Can I Get a Witness?: Thirteen Peacemakers, Community-Builders, and Agitators for Faith and Justice. The third chapter, following essays about Cesar Chavez and Howard Thurman, is titled “Setting the Captives Free: Yuri Kochiyama and Her Lifelong Fight against Unjust Imprisonment.”

In Honor of Fred Korematsu: A Civil Rights Hero

While not exactly a household name, Fred T. Korematsu (born 100 years ago today, on January 30, 1919) is becoming increasingly recognized as the civil rights hero he was.

Born an American Citizen

Kakusaburo Korematsu emigrated from Japan to California in 1905. In 1914 a young woman named Kotsui Aoki came from Japan to become his wife. Five years later their third son was born; they named him Toyosaburo.

Since all the Korematsu children were born in the U.S., they were American citizens. When Toyosaburo started to school, though, his teacher also wanted him to have an easier-to-pronounce American name—so she started calling him Fred, and the name stuck.

Fred went to a public high school in Oakland and was a regular American student. Things began to change for him, however, in the years shortly afterward.

Born with a Japanese Face

As the war clouds began to grow darker in 1941, Fred and three of his good friends, all patriotic Americans, went to enlist in the U.S. military service. His three white friends were given the necessary papers, but Fred was refused. Even before Pearl Harbor there was strong prejudice in California against people with a Japanese face like Fred’s.

And things got worse, of course, after December 7. On Feb. 20, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which resulted in about 117,000 ethnic Japanese people, the majority of whom were American citizens, being forced to live in internment camps.

Fred didn’t leave for the internment camp with his parents, though; he was going to try to “beat the system.” He failed. On May 30 he was arrested and put in jail. Angry about being treated like a criminal, he vowed to fight his arrest.

Help expectantly came from Ernest Besig, a lawyer named who worked with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Besig paid the bail to get Fred out of jail—but then Fred was forcefully taken away to the internment camp where he was a prisoner again.

Born with a Sense of Justice

Fred had a strong sense of justice—and a strong sense that he and other Japanese-Americans were being treated unjustly. He cooperated with the ACLU, which took his case all the way to the Supreme Court. In Dec. 1944, Fred learned with great sadness that Besig had lost his case before the Supreme Court.

Forty years later, Fred received a telephone call from Peter Irons, a law professor. Irons said he had found new evidence related to Fred’s case and wanted to take it to the courts again. Fred agreed.

In 1983, Fred’s 1942 conviction was overturned. Five years later, Congress passed a law giving $20,000 in reparations to each surviving detainee in the Japanese internment camps.

Happily for all those involved, in 1998 President Clinton awarded Korematsu the Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor given in the U.S.

And Now after His Death (in 2005)

On January 30, 2011, California celebrated the first Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution. Now Fred Korematsu Day is being celebrated “in perpetuity” by Hawaii, Virginia, and Florida in addition to California. 

Most recently, in June 2018 the SCOTUS finally reputed Korematsu v. United States; Chief Justice Roberts called that 1944 decision “morally repugnant.’

Unfortunately, however, in that decision the high court upheld President Trump’s Muslim ban. That was a painful irony for many people, including Karen Korematsu, Fred’s daughter.

Karen, who founded the Fred T. Korematsu Institute in 2009, lamented in a June 27, 2018, Washington Post article, “Racial profiling was wrong in 1942 and racial profiling is wrong in 2018. The Supreme Court traded one injustice for another 74 years later.”

On this special day honoring civil rights hero Fred Korematsu, let’s make sure that we realize—and that we help those within our circle of influence realize—that prejudicial attitudes and/or actions against racial and religious minorities are just as wrong now as they were in 1942.