[For this year’s
installment in my annual
series of holiday
wishes for those mischievous AmericanStudies
Elves, I’ll be expressing wishes for figures from American history whom we
should better remember. Share your nominees in comments and happy holidays!]
On a few of the
many reasons why we should better remember the influential activist.
Again, I’ve
written previously in this space about
Yuri Kochiyama, and wanted to keep this first paragraph short so you can check
those posts out if you would.
Welcome back! Since
I wrote those posts I researched Kochiyama more deeply in order to include her
in the Japanese Internment chapter of We
the People, and would now argue that she can help us better remember at
least two important sides to the internment era. For one thing, she exemplifies
multiple complex realities of the internment camps: not just their
unconstitutional and horrific imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of Americans
(a majority of them American citizens like the California-born Kochiyama), but
also the stories of Japanese American soldiers who volunteered to serve while
interned with their families (a roster that includes both Kochiyama’s twin brother Peter
and her future husband
Bill) and the complementary activism that took place within the camps. Kochiyama,
for example, built on her college English degree to edit a newspaper at her
Jerome, Arkansas camp, and within that newspaper published letters from and
testimonials about Japanese American soldiers for her “Nisei in Khaki” column. Every
interned individual deserves a place in our collective memories, but Kochiyama in
particular illustrates those multi-layered histories quite strikingly.
Her lifelong
activism after the war, about which I did write more fully in those prior posts
(and which was often undertaken in partnership Bill, particularly their shared
advocacy for collective memory of and reparations for
internment), likewise helps us better remember the lives and legacies of
interned Japanese Americans. But Kochiyama’s activism extended far beyond
Japanese American causes, and included extensive experience with the Civil
Rights Movement (including a friendship
with Malcolm X that culminated in her presence in a
famous photograph [CW for graphic imagery] of the aftermath of his assassination)
and her
participation in the October
1977 takeover of the Statue of Liberty by Puerto Rican nationalists. Better
remembering that lifelong activism thus helps us engage both with the
interconnected nature of many 20th century social movements and with
the complex but crucial concept of intersectionality, of how different identities
and communities can pull together toward the common causes of equality and social
justice. That’s a lesson we sorely still need, Elves.
Next wish
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Figures (or
stories, histories, texts, etc.) you wish we’d better remember?
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