The brief friendship of Malcolm X and Yuri Kochiyama began close to 50 years ago with a handshake.
Diane Fujino, chair of the
University of California, Santa Barbara's Asian American studies department, details the moment in October of 1963 in her biography
Heartbeat of Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Yuri Kochiyama.
Kochiyama and her eldest son, 16-year-old Billy, were arrested during a protest in Brooklyn, N.Y., along with hundreds of others, mainly African Americans.
"[They were] in this packed courthouse," Fujino says. "[There were] a lot of activists who [were] waiting their hearing on the civil disobedience charges."
And in walks Malcolm X, who was quickly mobbed by adoring activists.
Kochiyama described the scene in a
Democracy Now! interview in 2008. "I felt so bad that I wasn't black, that this should be just a black thing," she recalled. "But the more I see them all so happily shaking his hands and Malcolm so happy, I said, 'Gosh, darn it! I'm going to try to meet him somehow.' "
Eventually, Kochiyama called out to Malcolm X, "Can I shake your hand?"
"What for?" he demanded.
To congratulate you for giving direction to your people, she finally mustered.
Malcolm X smiled and extended his hand. Kochiyama remembered how she could hardly believe she was meeting the most prominent black nationalist leader of the time.
'A Nail That Sticks Out'
Kochiyama's friendship with Malcolm X fascinated playwright Tim Toyama, who wrote a one-act play called
Yuri and Malcolm X.
Enlarge image
Yuri Kochiyama looks at a memorial for World War II Japanese-American internees at the Rohwer Relocation Center in Rohwer, Ark., in 2004.
Mike Wintroath/AP
Audee Kochiyama-Holman, Yuri's eldest daughter, remembers feeling shy around the constant flow of visitors in their home, where her mother taped newspaper clippings to the walls and dinner plates often shared space on the kitchen table with piles of leaflets.
"Our house felt like it was the movement 24/7," Kochiyama-Holman recalls.
In the summer of 1963, a Kochiyama
family vacation included a visit to Birmingham, Ala., to see charred houses and storefronts left behind by racial protests. The Kochiyamas also visited the
16th Street Baptist Church weeks before a bombing there killed four black girls.
"It was one of the first news stories in the civil rights movement that our mother sat us down to talk about," Kochiyama-Holman says.
The growing momentum of the civil rights movement and meeting Malcolm X in 1963 radicalized Yuri Kochiyama, who became more interested in black nationalism. FBI files later described her as a "ring leader" of black nationalists and a "Red Chinese agent."
The Final Meeting
Kochiyama and Malcolm X stayed in touch through postcards and even a visit to the Kochiyama's apartment. Their last meeting was on February 21, 1965 — just 16 months after their first handshake — in New York City's Audubon Ballroom.
That Sunday afternoon, gunmen killed Malcolm X moments after he approached the podium to address a weekly meeting of the Organization of Afro-American Unity, which Malcolm X founded after he was expelled from the Nation of Islam.
Most of the audience in the ballroom fell to the ground after the gunfire, crawling away for safety. But Kochiyama headed towards the injured Malcolm X, who was lying on the floor.
"I just picked up his head and just put it on my lap," Kochiyama said in the
Democracy Now! interview. "I said, 'Please, Malcolm! Please, Malcolm! Stay alive!' "
photo in Life magazine in 1965. She's the unidentified Asian woman peering worriedly through horn-rimmed glasses at a soon-to-be lifeless Malcolm X. His blood-soaked shirt open, exposing his bullet-riddled body.
Today at age 92, illness and age have slowed Kochiyama down drastically over the past couple of years, says her eldest daughter.
But for decades after her brief friendship with Malcolm X, Kochiyama remained committed to causes in the black, Latino and Asian-American communities.
In 1988, she and other Japanese-American internees, including her late husband Bill, celebrated the
signing of the Civil Liberties Act. It was a formal government apology that provided reparations to World War II internees — and a milestone Kochiyama helped to achieve 25 years ago this month.
