The Japanese-American Internee Who Met Malcolm X: Yuri Kochiyama

The brief friendship of Malcolm X and Yuri Kochiyama began close to 50 years ago with a handshake.

On February 12, 1965, in the Audubon Ballroom, Yuri Kochiyama cradled Malcolm X in her arms as he died

"Our house felt like it was the movement 24/7."
— Audee Kochiyama-Holman, daughter of Yuri Kochiyama

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.

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.

It was in the context of the vibrant Black movement in Harlem in the 1960s that she began her activist career. There, she met Malcolm X, who inspired her radical political development and the ensuing four decades of incessant work for Black liberation, Asian American equality, Puerto Rican independence, and political prisoner defense. Kochiyama is widely respected for her work in forging unity among diverse communities, especially between Asian and African Americans.
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