Yuri Kochiyama Remembers Her Life: From Internment Camps in the U.S. to the Assassination

Forty-one years ago today - on February 21, 1965 - Malcolm X was shot dead as he spoke at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. He had just taken the stage when shots rang out riddling his body with bullets. He was 39 years old.

Malcolm X’s longtime friend, activist Yuri Kochiyama was in the Audobon Ballroom the day he was assassinated. After he was shot, she rushed to the stage and cradled Malcolm’s head in her arms as he lay dying. Today we’ll hear Yuri Kochiyama talk about that fateful day and speak with the longtime activist about her life.

For over sixty years, Yuri Kochiyama has championed civil rights, protested racial inequality and fought for causes of social justice. Her story begins during World War II. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Yuri’s parents were forcibly removed from their home by the U.S. government and held in an internment camp along with 120,000 other Japanese Americans. While at a camp in Arkansas, Yuri came face-to-face with the segregation of the Jim Crow south. She immediately saw the parallels between the oppression of Black people and the treatment of Japanese Americans. In 1960, Yuri and her husband Bill Kochiyama moved into a housing project in Harlem. Yuri became involved in the Civil Rights Movement and was part of the major struggles of the 1960s and 70’s. She especially supported the Black liberation struggle and the work of the Black Panther party. In 1977, she took part in the takeover of the Statue of Liberty to bring attention to the struggle for Puerto Rican independence. In the 1980s, she and her husband led the successful fight to gain reparations for people of Japanese descent who were imprisoned during World War II.

* Yuri Kochiyama, longtime civil rights activist, interned at a U.S. concentration camp during World War II, friend of Malcolm X and with him as he died. Yuri Kochiyama is the author of "Passing It On", a memoir.

LISTEN ONLINE:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/21/1442218