H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-1960s@h-net.msu.edu (May 2006)

Diane C. Fujino. _Heartbeat of Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of
Yuri Kochiyama_.  Critical American Studies Series. Minneapolis:
University
of Minnesota Press, 2005.  xxxviiii + 396 pp. Illustration, photographs,
notes, index. $59.95 (cloth), ISBN 0-8166-4592-2; $19.95 (paper), ISBN
0-8166-4593-0.

Reviewed for H-1960s by Yasuhiro Katagiri, Department of American
Civilization, Tokai University, Kanagawa, Japan

A Passion for Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

In 1969, Bill Hosokawa published a landmark book on the history of
Japanese Americans.  Entitled _Nisei:  The Quiet Americans_, it told
the important story of a relatively small but nevertheless significant
component of the American population--the Issei ("first generation"
Japanese immigrants) and Nisei ("second generation" American-born
children of those Japanese immigrant parents) who encountered
formidable racial
prejudice and discrimination, particularly after the outbreak of the
Second World War.

When Hosokawa's book came out, some within the Japanese-American
community, most of whom were younger Sansei ("third generation"
Japanese Americans), vigorously protested that the Nisei--Hosokawa's
generation--had by no means been "quiet" and that the book's very
characterization of Nisei as such was offensive, for it would
perpetuate "an undesirable stereotype" of the entire Japanese-American
population.[1] As Hosokawa has contended, however, the majority of
Nisei, who were
interned during the war years in spite of their American citizenship,
endured their hardships quietly, believing that the best and surest
way to show loyalty was to support the nation's war effort--even its
misguided and racist relocation program.

In 2005, another landmark book in the field of Japanese-American
studies appeared.  Authored by Diane C. Fujino, a Japanese American,
_Heartbeat of Struggle_ traces the eventful life of Yuri Kochiyama, a
Nisei woman
who was transformed from a relatively "quiet" American into "the most
prominent Asian American [civil and human rights] activist to emerge
during the 1960s" (p. xxii).  _Heartbeat of Struggle_ is not in fact
the first biography of Kochiyama.  In 1998, a Japanese journalist
profiled
Kochiyama, and in 2004 she wrote her own memoir, which received an
"Outstanding Book Award" from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study
of Bigotry and Human Rights in Boston.[2]

But these works do not diminish the value of _Heartbeat of Struggle_.
The extraordinary life of Kochiyama had remained largely unknown and
unattended by scholars until Fujino, an associate professor of Asian
American studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara,
produced what is believed to be "the first U.S. biography of an Asian
American woman activist" (p. xxxi).  Fujino's book is a much enlarged
and more complete version of her earlier work entitled "Revolutions from
the Heart:  The Making of an Asian American Woman Activist, Yuri
Kochiyama," which was included in a 1997 anthology entitled _Dragon
Ladies_.[3]
Based on this earlier publication, extensive archival research, and
interviews with Kochiyama, immediate family members, and long-time
friends from
the full spectrum of her life, Fujino passionately recounts and
reconstructs the "political life" of Kochiyama, who has spoken out
and fought
shoulder-to-shoulder with blacks, Native Americans, Asian Americans,
Hispanic Americans as well as whites for civil rights and social
justice over the past four decades (pp. xxvii-xxviii).

Yuri Kochiyama was born Mary Yuriko Nakahara on May 19, 1921, in San
Pedro, California, a small coastal town south of Los Angeles.  Her
immigrant parents were both well-educated, and her father owned and
operated a successful store, selling fresh fish, meat, fruits,
vegetables, and other daily commodities to the U.S. Navy and Japanese
passenger
liners, which operated between the West Coast of the United States and
Japan.  Raised in a comfortable, custom-built Spanish-style house in
the white section of the town and surrounded by her loving parents
and two
brothers, Kochiyama spent her youth being "apolitical, provincial,
naive, and ultrapatriotic" (p. xxii).  "Our home life was traditional
in that
we spoke Japanese and ate Japanese food and were expected to behave as
proper Japanese children," she reminisced in her memoir, "but
"outside our
home ... I was very much an 'all-American' girl."[4]

On December 7, 1941, Kochiyama's cozy life was suddenly shattered when
the Japanese Imperial Forces bombed Pearl Harbor.  Within a few hours
after the bombing, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) apprehended
Kochiyama's father, a severe diabetic, who was viewed as a subversive.
In the end, the FBI was unable to substantiate its suspicions and
eventually released him several weeks later.  But deprived of proper
medical
attention while in detention, Kochiyama's father passed away in late
January 1942.

For thousands of Japanese Americans, the ensuing mass hysteria, fear,
racial antagonism, and eventual incarceration literally represented
"shattered dreams."  At the same time, the outbreak of the war also
"inaugurated ... [a] racial awakening" of twenty-year-old Kochiyama
(p. xxii).  Before the war, she saw "America with American eyes."  But
what happened to Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor made her "see the
world and America with entirely new eyes--Japanese American eyes."[5]
Her
traumatic experiences had awakened her to the existence of racial and
social injustice in the United States.  Kochiyama could no longer
naively profess that she was "a color-blind patriot" (p. 1).

In April 1942, only a few months after her father's untimely death,
she and her family were ordered to leave their well-appointed house
in San
Pedro and were sent to the Santa Anita Assembly Center in California,
where they were billeted in horse stalls at a former racetrack.  Six
months later, Kochiyama, along with her mother and older brother, were
moved by train from California to a more permanent incarceration
camp--the War Relocation Authority (WRA)'s Jerome Relocation Center
in Arkansas.

The Jerome and Rohwer Relocation Centers in Arkansas were the only two
Japanese-American internment camps located in the South, which the
Office of War Information (OWI) had once hypocritically termed "new
pioneer
communities" for those evacuees.[6] Nearly 8,500 Japanese and Japanese
Americans were incarcerated at Jerome, located in the midst of a
dismal swampland in southeastern Arkansas and surrounded by barbed-wire
entanglements.[7]

A few months after Kochiyama arrived at Jerome, by which time 122,000
men, women, and children (including 70,000 "American citizens") were
interned at ten war relocation centers, the Department of War began
to form the
U.S. Army's 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a segregated unit composed
of all Nisei soldiers.  When the recruitment plan for the 442nd was
announced, many Nisei, in both the Hawaiian Islands and the relocation
centers, responded enthusiastically.  Eventually, in April 1943, the
unit began to train at Camp Shelby, located near Hattiesburg,
Mississippi.[8]

Soon, however, the young Nisei women at Jerome learned that the Nisei
soldiers at Camp Shelby were not welcome at the United Service
Organization (USO) in Hattiesburg.  In response, they quickly
organized their own USO, where Kochiyama met and fell in love with
her future
husband and "comrade"--Masayoshi William "Bill" Kochiyama, a Nisei
soldier from New York City.  When the war broke out, Bill Kochiyama
happened
to live in California, and he was interned at the Tanforan Assembly
Center in San Bruno before being sent to the Topaz Relocation Center
in Utah.[9]
Having spent one year at the camp, he volunteered to join the
newly-organized Japanese American combat unit.

In the spring of 1944, Yuri and Bill planned to marry at Camp Shelby,
but a conflict with their families prevented their exchanging vows at
that
time.  They decided to postpone their marriage until Bill could return
from his overseas military duty.  As the 442nd demonstrated its
military prowess on the battlefronts in Italy and France, even the
WRA began to
praise the Nisei soldiers.  "[The] devotion to America and gallantry
in action," according to the WRA's booklet entitled _Nisei in Uniform_,
should not be "determined by the slant of the eyes or the color of the
skin."[10] The 442nd eventually became the most decorated combat unit
in the history of the U.S. Army.[11]

While waiting for Bill's safe return from Europe, Kochiyama decided to
remain in Hattiesburg and work with the "Aloha USO" for Japanese
Americans.[12] Her main duties included taking care of the families of
the Japanese-American soldiers, finding them adequate housing, and doing
"anything else to help them settle and feel at home" in Mississippi's
racially segregated society.[13] These experiences also helped
transform Kochiyama's "colorblind worldview."  As Fujino notes, "For
the first
time, she was being forced to recognize her own racial identity, to see
herself not just as an individual but as a member of a targeted
group" (pp.
50-51).  Furthermore, what Kochiyama witnessed and encountered on a
daily basis in Mississippi--the citadel of racial segregation and
discrimination in the South--made it "increasingly difficult [for
her] to deny"
unfair and discriminatory treatment toward not only her own race but
also
blacks (p. 51).

After the war came to an end, Kochiyama moved to New York City in
January 1946 and married Bill.  The newlywed couple moved into a low-
income
housing project--the Amsterdam Houses in central Manhattan--which were
predominantly occupied by blacks and Puerto Ricans.  As Kochiyama got
to know her neighbors, she began to understand more clearly the parallel
between the way blacks were treated in the segregated South and the
way Japanese Americans were evacuated and incarcerated.  The connecting
factors, Kochiyama recognized, were "senseless degradation, brutality,
and hatred wrought by fear and ignorance" which was ultimately
"caused by
racism."[14] That conviction was reinforced in 1958, when Daisy Bates,
the president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP)'s Arkansas branch and the mentor of the "Little Rock
Nine," visited New York.  Kochiyama had an opportunity to meet her and
started to "take a serious interest in the civil rights movement."[15]

In late 1960, the Kochiyama family, now with six children, moved to a
new housing project in Harlem--the Manhattanville Houses--which was
intended to accommodate low-income black and Hispanic families.  The
move to
Harlem--a "university-without-walls" as Kochiyama has described
it--put her and her family in the political, social, and cultural
brew of the
1960s, including an incipient black nationalist movement, to which
Kochiyama would soon be drawn (p. 134).  It was under these
circumstances that Kochiyama, at the age of forty, developed her
political activism.

While holding a series of community gatherings in their new home with
guest speakers such as James Peck, a white leader of the Congress of
Racial Equality (CORE) who had participated in the 1961 Freedom Ride,
Yuri and Bill joined the Harlem Parents Committee in 1963.  Working with
the NAACP, CORE, and other civil rights organizations, the grassroots
committee demanded a better and integrated public school system in
Harlem. In so doing, they initiated school boycotts and even opened
their own
"Freedom School" in October 1963.

Until the end of 1963, Kochiyama's activism, as Fujino observes,
"could be described as liberal-progressive," reflecting her belief
that the best
way for racial minorities to advance their political, social, and
economic
status would be "integration into White America" (p. 123).  But her
faith in the teachings of Martin Luther King Jr. was altered when she
met
and became friends with Malcolm X, then with the Nation of Islam, who
"revolutionize[d] her political vision" (p. 135).  Inspired by his
vision of black self-determination, Kochiyama soon joined the
Organization of
Afro-American Unity (OAAU).[16]

Then tragedy struck.  On February 21, 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated
at the Audubon Ballroom.  Kochiyama was in the audience, and it was she
who cradled the dying OAAU leader's head in her arms.  Fujino contends
that by the time of Malcolm X's death, Kochiyama's politics and
activism had
undergone a significant shift, "moving from integration and
nonviolence to self-determination and self-defense" (p. 162).
Kochiyama's
ideological transformation had certainly been influenced by Malcolm
X.  But it
also reflected the emergence of radical politics espoused by those
blacks
who began to reject the traditional and moderate goals of the civil
rights
movement.[17]

As Kochiyama's immersion in the broadly defined "Black Power" movement
deepened in the latter half of the 1960s, her visibility as a
Japanese-American woman prompted the FBI--which Kochiyama believed had
shortened her father's life--to place her under surveillance.  One FBI
agent even claimed in late 1966 that Kochiyama might be a "Red Chinese
agent" (p. 174).  Her children also came under state surveillance.  In
April 1965, only a few days after fifteen-year-old Audee Kochiyama
arrived at McComb, Mississippi, with eight other student volunteers to
register black voters, the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission--the
state's "segregation watchdog agency"--dispatched one of its
investigators to
ascertain whether Audee, who "appear[ed] to be of Chinese extraction,"
was "subversive or communist."[18]

In the 1970s, Kochiyama remained a political activist.  In 1977, she
participated in and was arrested during the take-over of the Statue of
Liberty by Puerto Rican nationalists who demanded independence for the
Caribbean island, an end to discrimination against Puerto Ricans in
the United States, and freedom for their compatriots in prison.[19] She
regarded her fellow political prisoners as "the heartbeat of the
struggle."[20] But as Fujino's book title suggests, it was Kochiyama
herself whom many have regarded as "the heartbeat," "pumping life and
energy into the Movement and sustaining the struggle" (p. xxiv).

As Fujino reveals, Kochiyama's activism has encompassed "revolutionary
and reformist, nationalist and internationalist, and separatist and
integrationist elements" (p. xxvi).  Yet her core and primary belief
is that civil and human rights activism in the United States should
forge
unity among racially and ethnically diverse communities.  "My priority
would be to fight against polarization," she explained in a 1993
documentary film on her life, and, "I think there are so many issues
that all people of color should come together on."[21]

Despite its great significance, _Heartbeat of Struggle_ unfortunately
has some minor flaws.  Fujino might, for instance, have offered a more
complete explanation and interpretation of Kochiyama's complicated
political beliefs, including how she was able to reconcile her belief
in both integration and separation.  At one point, Fujino explains that
Kochiyama's views were "profoundly shaped by the eclectic radicalism"
espoused by Malcolm X and Robert F. Williams, who, as the president of
the Monroe, North Carolina, branch of the NAACP, advocated armed
self-defense (p. 188).  Readers of Fujino's book would naturally like
to know
whether Kochiyama ever experienced any inner turmoil as result of
her--at
times--contradictory views.

Fujino might also have trimmed some of the many lengthy and sometimes
tedious block quotations, which hinder the book's readability and the
flow of the author's interpretations.  Finally, the lack of a
bibliography,
although perhaps due to the demands of the publisher, is regrettable
and diminishes the book's value as an academic work.

Yet _Heartbeat of Struggle_ is an extraordinary work which details the
life of a remarkable woman who has fought for racial and social
justice her entire life.  Regardless of whether readers sympathize with
Kochiyama's political views, she is undoubtedly an intriguing,
inspiring, and instructive individual and truly one of the "most
incessant" civil
and human rights activists in the United States (p. 275).

Notes

[1].  Bill Hosokawa, _Nisei:  The Quiet Americans_ (New York: William
Morrow, 1969; reprint, Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1992), p.
502.

[2].  Mayumi Nakazawa, _The Life and Times of Yuri Kochiyama_ [in
Japanese] (Tokyo: Bungei-Shunju, 1998); Yuri Nakahara Kochiyama,
_Passing It On:  A Memoir_ (Los Angeles:  UCLA Asian American Studies
Center
Press, 2004); Annie Nakao, "Oakland: Inspired by Malcolm X, Asian
American
Activist Makes Her Own Story," _San Francisco Chronicle_, September 9,
2005, p. F3; (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/
2005/09/09/EBGIBE
G0QU1.DTL); and, "2004 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award Winners
Advancing
Human Rights," Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human
Rights, Boston (http://www.myerscenter.org/pages/04winners.htm).

[3].  Diane C. Fujino, "Revolutions from the Heart:  The Making of an
Asian American Woman Activist, Yuri Kochiyama," in _Dragon Ladies:
Asian American Feminists Breathe Fire_, ed. Sonia Shah (Boston: South
End,
1997), pp. 169-181.

[4].  Kochiyama, _Passing It On_, p. xxiii.

[5].  Ibid., p. xxiii.

[6].  _Japanese Relocation_, prod. Bureau of Motion Pictures, Office
of War Information, Washington, D.C., 1943, MPEG1 movie, Internet
Archive, San Francisco
(http://www.archive.org/download/Japanese1943/Japanese1943.mpg).

[7].  Roger Daniels, _Prisoners without Trial:  Japanese Americans in
World War II_ (New York:  Hill and Wang, 1993), p. 131; and Alice Yang
Murray, ed., _What Did the Internment of Japanese Americans Mean?_,
Historians at Work Series (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2000), pp.
9-20. _Japanese American Relocation Digital Archives (JARDA)_ at
(http://jarda.cdlib.org) is an excellent
online educational resource
created and maintained by the California Digital Library.

[8].  Yasuhiro Katagiri, "Fighting against the Southern Way of Life:
The 442nd Japanese-American Regimental Combat Team in Mississippi" [in
Japanese with an English abstract], _Journal of Kyoritsu Area
Studies_,11 (Spring 1997): pp. 17-36; and Thelma Chang, _"I Can Never
Forget":
Men of the 100th/442nd_ (Honolulu: Sigi Productions, 1991).

[9].  U.S. Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of
Civilians, _Personal Justice Denied:  Report of the Commission on
Wartime
Relocation and Internment of Civilians_ (Seattle:  University of
Washington
Press, 1997), p. 136.

[10].  War Relocation Authority, _Nisei in Uniform_ (Washington, D.C.:
GPO, n.d. [1945]), n.p., vertical file:  "Camp Shelby, Undated,
1943-1958," Mississippiana Collection, William D. McCain Library and
Archives, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg.

[11].  _Most Decorated: The Nisei Soldiers_, prod. Peter Kenney, dir.
Robert Lihani, A & E Networks, New York, 1994.

[12].  Herbert M. Sasaki, "An Oral History with Mr. Herbert M.
Sasaki," recorded interview by Yasuhiro Katagiri, September 2, 1993,
transcript, pp. 50-51, Mississippi Oral History Program, Center for
Oral History
and Cultural Heritage, University of Southern Mississippi; William T.
Schmidt, "The Impact of Camp Shelby in World War II on Hattiesburg,
Mississippi," _Journal of Mississippi History_ 39 (February 1977): p.
46; and Ronald
Smothers, "Japanese-Americans Recall War Service," _New York Times_,
June 19, 1995, p. A8.

[13].  Kochiyama, _Passing It On_, p. 17.

[14].  Ibid., p. 7.

[15].  Ibid., p. 45.

[16].  Yuri Kochiyama, "A History of Linkage:  African and Asian,
African American and Asian American," _Shades of Power:  Newsletter
of the
Institute for Multiracial Justice_ 1 (Spring 1998): p. 3;
(http://modelminority.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=156>;
and Norimitsu Onishi, "Harlem's Japanese Sister:  Immigrants'
Daughter Who
Embraced Malcolm X Keeps a Radical Flame Alive," _New York Times_,
September 22, 1996, sec. 1, p. 41.

[17].  Yasuhiro Katagiri, "Tough Enough to Take It and Big Enough to
Hit Back:  Beyond the Backlash Thesis?," review of Lance Hill, _The
Deacons for Defense:  Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights
Movement_, online
posting, January 7, 2005, H-1960s discussion list
(http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-1960s&month=ã
€€0501&week=a&msg=W19cvLe2DCxwueNs0n2XcA&user=&pw=).

[18].  Yasuhiro Katagiri, _The Mississippi State Sovereignty
Commission: Civil Rights and States' Rights_ (Jackson:  University
Press of
Mississippi, 2001), p. 6; A. L. Hopkins, "Investigation in Pike
County," investigative report, April 20, 1965, record nos.
2-36-2-48-1-1-1 to
2-1-1, p. 1-1-1, Records of the Mississippi State Sovereignty
Commission, Archives and Library Division, Mississippi Department of
Archives and
History, Jackson.

[19].  Miguel Melendez, _We Took the Streets:  Fighting for Latino
Rights with the Young Lords_ (New York:  St. Martin's, 2003), pp.
199-212.

[20].  Kochiyama, _Passing It On_, p. 187.

[21].  _Yuri Kochiyama: Passion for Justice_, produced and directed by
Rea Tajiri and Pat Saunders, National Asian American Telecommunications
Association, San Francisco, 1993.


Copyright (c) 2006 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net
permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit,
educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to
the author, web location, date of publication, originating list,
and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For other uses contact
the Reviews editorial staff: hbooks@mail.h-net.msu.edu.

Humanities & Social
Sciences Online

Copyright © 1995-2006 - Contact Us
RSS | Validate: XHTML | CSS