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 95th 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.”
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