Bill and Yuri’s wedding day, February 9, 1946, New York City. Photo Credits
Eating birthday cake with Grandpa (circa 1959). (From left) Jimmy, Aichi, Tommy, Billy, Audee, Grandpa Kochiyama, and Eddie. Photo Credit: Yuri Kochiyama
A rare gathering of all the Nakahara/Kochiyama families in San Pedro, 1955, visiting Mom/Grandma for Mother’s Day. Photo Credits
Jimmy, Tommy and Eddie in baseball uniforms, 1963. Photo Credit: Yuri Kochiyama
Bill and Yuri’s wedding day, February 9, 1946, New York City Photo Credits
When her fiancé Bill Kochiyama returned from the warfront in Europe, Yuri excitedly traveled to meet him in New York City, where he had grown up. They married on February 9, 1946.
Yuri and Bill would go on to have six children: Billy, Audee, Aichi, Eddie, Jimmy, and Tommy. They provided an active life for their children, who participated in sports, especially their beloved baseball, Boys Scouts, Girls Scouts, and the Presbyterian Christian church. Her children also had opportunities to dance and model professionally or serve as extras in television shows.
In the 1950s, Yuri and Bill were active in community service. They worked to support Nisei veterans as well as Japanese and Chinese American soldiers being sent to the Korean War.
They also opened their home for social gatherings, often with a hundred people crammed into their apartment every weekend, including the Nisei-Sino Service Organization (NSSO), pictured here.
The Kochiyama family opened its home to the Nisei-Sino Service Organization on Friday nights (early 1950s). Photo Credit: Yuri Kochiyama
The Kochiyama family opened its home to the Nisei-Sino Service Organization on Friday nights (early 1950s). Photo Credit: Yuri Kochiyama
The NSSO visited and organized dances for the “Hiroshima Maidens.” These young women spent a year in New York undergoing reconstructive surgeries and recovering from the disfiguring and painful impact of the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
The Kochiyamas published an eight-page family newsletter, Christmas Cheer, every year from 1950 to 1968. Here is a page featuring a story on the Hiroshima Maidens.
Kochiyama family Christmas Cheer article, “The Hiroshima Sequel: Scars Diminish as Love Mushrooms.” Photo Credits
17 May 1961, Manhattan, New York, New York, USA — 5/17/1961-New York, NY: James Peck (R) marches in a picket line outside the Trailways Bus Station, in the Port Authority Terminal. Image by © Bettmann/CORBIS. Photo Credits
17 May 1961, Manhattan, New York, New York, USA — 5/17/1961-New York, NY: James Peck (R) marches in a picket line outside the Trailways Bus Station, in the Port Authority Terminal. Image by © Bettmann/CORBIS. Photo Credits
As the Civil Rights Movement grew, Yuri began inviting activists to speak at the Kochiyama’s weekend open houses.
One particularly moving visitor was James Peck, who in 1961, traveled as part of interracial Black-White teams to protest the non-enforcement of desegregation laws.
White mobs violently beat the Freedom Riders at many stops. James Peck himself was beaten so badly, he required 57 stitches.
17 May 1961, Manhattan, New York, New York, USA — 5/17/1961-New York, NY: James Peck (R) marches in a picket line outside the Trailways Bus Station, in the Port Authority Terminal. Peck was severely beaten on May 14th in Birmingham, AL, when a mob assaulted passengers of a bus containing “Freedom Riders,” a group trying to break down segregation barriers in inter-state bus terminals as decreeed by the Supreme Court. — Image by © Bettmann/CORBIS. Photo Credits
In 1960, the Kochiyamas moved to Harlem. Harlem was a Black community steeped in a tradition of fervent Black political and cultural resistance.
Yuri and her family worked with the Harlem Parent’s Committee, organizing school boycotts to demand quality education for inner-city children. Hundreds of thousands of students and more than 3,500 teachers supported the boycott.
