REFLECTIONS ON MY GRANDMA YURI,
MALCOLM X, AND THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE OF BLACK-ASIAN SOLIDARITY

BY AKEMI KOCHIYAMA

“The only way we’ll get freedom for ourselves is to identify ourselves with every oppressed people in the world.” — Malcolm X

“Keep expanding your horizon, decolonize your mind and cross borders.” — Yuri Kochiyama

On September 27, 2020, Tadataka Unno, a 40-year-old jazz pianist and composer, was attacked and brutally beaten by a group of Black teenagers while exiting the subway station at W 135th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue near his home. They yelled racial slurs while beating him about his face and body. His injuries were so severe that he was unable to hold his newborn child. Tadataka no longer leaves his home unless absolutely necessary for fear of being attacked. A devoted student of jazz since childhood, he is not certain if he will be able to play professionally again.

As a New Yorker and Harlemite, I know that people are randomly attacked on or near the subway all the time. As a Black Nikkei (a person of African and Japanese descent) whose Japanese American family has lived, worked, organized, protested, and built community in Harlem for four generations and who has met many Japanese and Japanese American jazz musicians visiting, living, and performing in Harlem over the years, reading this story felt frustrating, painful, and personal.

It made me think about the history of Black-Asian violence and conflict in the United States and how disturbingly successful the intentional, continual exportation of anti-Blackness, internationally, and the power of the Asian model minority myth, domestically, have been in exacerbating conflict, disinformation, and distrust while simultaneously disrupting and suppressing opportunities for and evidence of Black-Asian solidarities. It made me think about Trump and the intentional promotion of anti-Chinese/Asian (Americans don’t know the difference) fear and violence amidst a global health pandemic. It made me think about how all of this strengthens and empowers white supremacy and how a longer historical perspective (that predates Korean grocery store conflicts and the “Asian Flu”) might be useful for understanding all of this.

My maternal grandmother, Yuri Kochiyama, was born and raised in Southern California. The children of first-generation Japanese Americans, she and her two brothers enjoyed a relatively comfortable and normal American childhood and adolescence until their father, a successful commercial fisherman, was arrested at the onset of World War II. Along with many other Japanese American community and business leaders residing on the West Coast, Yuri’s father, my great-grandfather, was unjustly accused of being a spy and incarcerated as a prisoner of war immediately after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Having no evidence to charge him, he was released a few weeks later, emaciated and unable to speak. He died the next day. A few weeks later, Yuri’s family was suddenly uprooted from their home and incarcerated in a detention center, along with 120,000 Japanese American citizens, under Executive Order 9066, issued on February 19, 1942.

Yuri met her husband, my Grandpa Bill, a native New Yorker, during World War II at an all-Japanese USO in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where he was training at a segregated army base for Black and Japanese soldiers. Like many other young Japanese Americans at the time, my grandfather was stunned by the American government’s distrust of Japanese American citizens following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He enlisted in the army largely to prove his loyalty to America.

Although my grandparents would not fully comprehend the racist implications of Executive Order 9066 until years later (it was in Hattiesburg that my grandparents first encountered Jim Crow), their experiences during the war significantly impacted and informed a new sense of themselves as people of color in America as they began to build family and community in post-World War II Harlem.

It was in Harlem that my grandparents first got involved in the civil rights movement. They became members of the Harlem Parents Committee and enrolled themselves and their six children in the Harlem Freedom School. Their education and involvement in these organizations led them and their children to participate in and support a wide range of community organizations as well as African American, Asian American, and Third World movements for civil and human rights and ethnic studies, and against the war in Vietnam.

So when I think about the history of encounters and relationships between Japanese Americans and Black people in Harlem, I could refer to many family stories and personal anecdotes. However, one particular story and relationship seems important to describe here. I wasn’t born yet when this meeting happened. But it’s a family story that is so ingrained in our family’s collective memory that it’s almost like I was there.

On June 6, 1964, Malcolm X visited my grandparents’ apartment in the Manhattanville Projects on West 126th Street. My grandmother invited him there to meet with three writers and reporters from the Hiroshima/Nagasaki World Peace Study Mission who were on a world tour speaking against the proliferation of nuclear arms. They were also Hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors) and wanted to meet Malcolm X more than any other person in America.

Malcolm was greeted by an international assembly of activists, artists, journalists, friends and neighbors organized with the help of the Harlem Parents Committee. He was gracious and warm toward everyone who approached him. Malcolm began to speak, and the room quickly quieted. He talked about his time in prison, the history of colonialism in Asia and Africa, the People’s Republic of China, and his admiration for Mao Tse-tung. He then spoke about Vietnam:

“If America sends troops to Vietnam, you progressives should protest...The struggle of Vietnam is the struggle of the whole Third World: the struggle against colonialism, neo-colonialism, and imperialism.”

Shortly after this visit, Malcolm embarked on hajj to Mecca. He sent my grandparents 11 postcards from nine countries over the course of that journey.

“Greetings from Oxford University! I read all of your wonderful cards and letters of encouragement and think you are the most beautiful family in Harlem.”

“Greetings from another ancient land that is fast leaping out of the past into the future.”

“Still trying to travel and broaden my scope since I’ve learned what a mess can be made by narrow-minded people.”

Until her death, my grandmother always referred to meeting Malcolm X in 1963 as her “political awakening.” His friendship and influence radically changed her life and political perspective. She was honored and excited to join his group, the Organization for Afro-American Unity, to work for racial and human rights. Through her lessons at the OAAU’s Liberation School and exchanges with Malcolm, Yuri’s perspective became more radicalized and international in scope. She became passionately committed to Black nationalist struggles (in Africa and the United States), to supporting Puerto Rican struggles for independence, to solidarity with Cuba, and to countless other international liberation struggles. Though my grandmother had only known Malcolm for 18 months by the time of his death, his friendship, example, and guidance had a profound influence on her, transforming her from a liberal civil rights activist to a revolutionary anti-imperialist.

It’s not terribly surprising that it was at a multicultural, anti-imperialist, anti-war demonstration that my parents—my mom, a sansei (third-generation Japanese American) from the Manhattanville Houses in Harlem, and my dad, a Muslim African American Black Panther from the Queensbridge Houses in Long Island City—met. In addition to Black nationalism and anti-war politics, they had a lot in common. Both were the product of large, close-knit, working-class families led by powerful, energetic, loving matriarchs raising those families in predominantly Black public housing projects. Both grew up witnesses to and beneficiaries of extraordinary generosity, support, and mutual aid from their extended families and multicultural communities that existed within a larger context of rampant systematic oppression, economic disparity, and racial inequity. Both were committed to radical change.

“The example provided by my grandparents and their extended communities showed me that by coalescing and uniting around experiences of oppression, exploitation, and discrimination, we can forge friendships and beautiful, empowering connections, as individuals and as communities.”

Although I usually describe myself as a Harlemite, I was born and raised in a community that included people of different nationalities, racial and socioeconomic backgrounds, religious affiliations, fields of employment, sexual orientations, and identities. The example provided by my grandparents and their extended communities showed me that by coalescing and uniting through experiences of oppression, exploitation, and discrimination, we can forge friendships and beautiful, empowering connections as individuals and as communities. These friendships and connections strengthen the struggle against the persistent forces of imperialism and white supremacy in profound ways that extend beyond allyship.

In June 2014, at the age of 93, my Grandma Yuri became an ancestor. Holding three public memorials for her in Oakland, Los Angeles and Harlem enabled our family to meet and connect with thousands of Yuri’s friends, including many of the people she worked with and the young students and activists that she inspired throughout her 60 years of activism. Not long after Yuri passed, I was approached by a small group of young Black and Asian community activists, artists, youth organizers, and educators who wanted to do a mural in honor of Yuri and Malcolm somewhere in Harlem.

After a brief initial meeting with a few group members, I agreed to be involved with what we all thought would be a three- to six-month project. Two years, seven public community workshops/events, numerous planning meetings, and several community painting days later, we completed the community-designed and -produced mural titled “From Harlem with Love” (also known as the “YK-MX mural”) in the summer of 2016. It is located on Old Broadway between 125th and 126th streets.

A profoundly affirming experience for me personally, our little mural project led us to organize, educate, and lead numerous multicultural community-building events all over the city, from the Brooklyn Museum to the Manhattanville Projects to Hamilton Heights. We even participated in a Know Your Rights event with Colin Kaepernick at the Audubon Ballroom. The project’s lead group of organizers engaged in public outreach; coordinated with community non-profits, arts, and youth-serving organizations; and developed a project budget and a GoFundMe campaign to support the endeavor. They created social media pages, a Yuri-Malcolm curriculum, and links to resources and materials that could be shared electronically and in printed form. They intentionally avoided creating an organizational hierarchy and worked collaboratively on all aspects of the project, including sharing the responsibilities of providing food and facilitating workshops and panel discussions. Every member invested their time and talent to create positive change throughout our organizing effort.

Coincidentally, I was with the YK-MX mural organizers and Malcolm X’s eldest daughter, Attalah Shabazz, on the night of the election in November 2016. Auntie Attalah met up with the group and some members of my family at the mural to take some pics, and then we all went to have dinner at an Italian restaurant on Broadway just a few blocks away from the mural and the Manhattanville Projects. From where I was sitting in the restaurant, I could see my grandparents’ kitchen window, a sight that caused me to envision my favorite image of Malcolm in my grandparents’ kitchen that night in 1964, standing alone with a dazzling smile, looking as if he had just cracked a good joke. I thought about our proximity to so much history and beautiful struggle in that kitchen as I listened to the familiar sound of the train rolling by on the El and watched Auntie Attalah sitting next to me with that same dazzling smile, holding court. The group remained captivated in conversation as Donald Trump’s electoral vote count began to ascend on the flat screens above the restaurant bar throughout our meal. We shared our work, our passions, and our stories. We seeded new friendships, connections, and ideas and reaffirmed existing ones. We listened to Auntie Attalah talk about her lifelong commitment to multicultural community-building and her excitement about our project as we ate pizza.

Through our work and engagement together, we were deeply affected by Malcolm and Yuri’s solidarity and friendship. It became a source of inspiration and power and love, not just for us but for the people and communities we engaged with. This group of organizers has become friends and part of my community. I continue to be inspired by and learn from their steady commitment, passion, and imagination in supporting prison abolition and political prisoners, food justice and educational equity, community-based arts organizations and other movements committed to building community, empowering young people, and fighting injustice.

In October 2020, and in the wake of continued Black-Asian violence, I was invited to participate in a virtual panel discussion hosted by Tsuru for Solidarity, a direct action project of Japanese American social justice advocates. The panel, which was composed of a group of mostly older Japanese Americans, several of whom were interned as young children, focused on the history and future of Black and Japanese American solidarity. Through meetings and conversations with the other panelists at and leading up to this event, I learned about other people’s family stories and shared my own. I talked about my Grandpa Bill, who served in the 442nd Infantry Regiment and trained in the segregated army barracks in Mississippi with the Black troops and experienced the same discriminations of the GI Bill as Black soldiers upon his return. I described how he spent most of his life—before and after World War II—living on W 126th street in Harlem, first in an orphanage and then in public housing. I learned that many Japanese American families, when released from internment camps with only the clothes on their backs, moved into low-income, predominantly black communities—in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Detroit, and Chicago—as a result of their encounters with severe discrimination, prejudice, and the inability to find housing, employment, and economic mobility. Some Black families and communities supported Japanese Americans as they re-entered a viciously anti-Japanese America following World War II. Together, they formed relationships and communities of mutual aid. We talked about the experience of economic disenfranchisement and strategies for mobilizing the broader Japanese American community in support of reparations for Black people.

From Malcolm X to Angela Davis to Yuri Kochiyama to Mutulu Shakur, the idea of an internationalist, radical, anti-imperialist approach to understanding oppression and its relationship with larger systems, such as capitalism, racism, and sexism, has powerful potential for understanding history and achieving justice for all. As we bear witness to continued Black-Asian violence and conflict, persistent government-sanctioned violence against people of color, and an outright assault on American democracy, we can draw lessons from past experiences. We can also draw inspiration from the new generation of activists, artists, educators, and civil and human rights advocates who are purposeful in practicing a broader, more multicultural, internationalist vision for solidarity and coalition building in their work.

I am grateful for organizations like Tsuru for Solidarity for advocating and mobilizing support for the rights of immigrants in detention at the borders and Muslims banned from entering the United States. I also want to recognize Japanese Americans for Justice for their efforts to address the anti-Black racism that is still present in Japan and in the Japanese American community. There is so much work and learning and unlearning to do. I’ve learned from Malcolm and Yuri that this work begins with knowing our own histories and the histories of others so we can be more compassionate and understanding of where and how our experiences intersect, overlap, and connect.

“Abstract explanations rarely elucidate how political collectivities striving for radical change can provide the kind of sustenance that enables human beings to remake themselves so that their individual consciousness is always in dialogue with a collective consciousness.” — Angela Davis

“Political philosophy is not just something you obtain, it’s something that you develop through your lifetime. And of course, as different events happen to you and different people you meet and writings that you read, your philosophy is going to change.” — Yuri Kochiyama