 How did you get involved in
this project of making a portrait of Yuri Kochiyama? Why did you decide to
do it?
 Well, I've known Yuri since the early 1960s, when we were both
activists in the civil rights movement. Since that time we've been in
touch, and when I decided that I wanted to try my hand at making a
documentary, Yuri was the first person that I thought of. I wanted to
portray her life because it had not been documented before. I met Rea
Tajiri at a workshop and presented the idea to her. She was interested but
she didn't really know Yuri, although she had met her in the past. So we
approached Yuri and her husband, Bill, with the idea. It started
out as an audio history project. We just recorded audio for
several weeks until Yuri became comfortable with us and comfortable
speaking. And then we approached her about videotaping.
Was she resistant to the videotaping?
At first, she was kind of reluctant but she and her husband talked
about it and she discussed it with the children. Eventually, she agreed to
do it. And then we started writing grants, trying to find money. So,
that's basically how we got started. I was interested in capturing Yuri's
life on film because of her contributions over the years: her
contributions around the issues of political prisoners; her contributions
during the civil rights movement and certainly, the Black Liberation
movement; and the fact that, as an Asian-American woman, she has been
instrumental in bringing people together that would not necessarily work
together around common issues. I wanted to document that, which is why I
decided I wanted to do it.
I think what comes across the strongest in this portrait of Yuri is the way that she works across so many different communities and, as you said, brings these different communities together. Could you talk a little about the different types of projects that Yuri has been involved in? It's really astounding how diverse all the different types of groups are that she's worked with. I wonder if you would list some of those?
Well, initially, she became involved when her family moved to
Harlem, which was in the early 1960s. At that point, one of the big issues
here in New York City was the public school system and how it really did
not relate to African-American and Latino students. The whole issue was
around community control of the schools. I think that was one of the first
issues that Yuri became involved in within the Harlem community. The parents
decided to boycott the schools until their demands were met. So there was
a lengthy boycott of many of the schools in New York City, and
particularly the schools in Harlem. So, she was involved in that.
Yuri was also involved in some of the issues around
employment. Specifically, there was a lengthy struggle, here in New York,
around employment in the construction industry for African-Americans and
Latinos and getting African-Americans and Latinos into the trade unions.
There was a lengthy demonstration at what is now Downstate Medical Center
in Brooklyn about the issue. Eventually, it resulted in the unions having
to devise a plan to bring people of color into the union as apprentices.
So, she was involved in those issues.
And then, of course, Yuri met Malcolm X and that started her
thinking in a totally different direction. At the time she met him, he was
embroiled in trying to make a decision about leaving the Nation of Islam
and so, of course, he eventually did. And Yuri joined the organization
that he formed, which was the Organization of African-American Unity, the
OAAU. And she was the only Asian-American member in that
organization.
Over the years she has been involved in the politics of
Black Liberation, the politics of independence for Puerto Rico, and also Native
American struggles, especially around the time of Wounded Knee and the
emergence of AIM, the American Indian Movement. And then she was also very
much involved in the Asian-American movement, which came out of the whole
demand for ethnic studies and against the Vietnam War. Through the years,
she has been very much involved in the issue of political prisoners here in
this country, which has been going on over 25-30 years, beginning with the
whole FBI/CIA COINTELPRO conspiracy against the Black Panther party
and then the Young Lords party and certainly the American Indian Movement
and the movement for independence for Puerto Rico. So she has been really
involved in calling attention to these political prisoners, some of whom
have been in jail over 25 years now. The political prisoners who are
in incarceration were a direct result of COINTELPRO, and the
conspiracy to disperse these organizations and to get these activists off
the street. Now she travels a lot and speaks all over the country on
college campuses about these issues, the issue of pluralism and
talking about what similarities there are -- especially similarities --
among people of color in this country, and the need to coalesce around
issues of mutual concern. So, that is basically what Yuri has been doing
over the last several years.
It's interesting that you put out this portrait as a model for
people to follow. I think it's really quite inspiring in terms of how much
one person can accomplish, and also how a lot of these issues do affect
different groups of color, but how people need to think about ways of
working together. You knew Yuri and had been working with her, so you could have gone into this project alone, and I was just curious
why you and Rea decided to work together, and if you could expound on that
a little bit. How did the working relationship divide up, and did you end
up finding this collaboration an extension of some of these works?
Well, as I said, I met Rea at a seminar in Washington, DC. And we
got into this conversation and, at some point I mentioned Yuri and she said
that she had met Yuri. In fact, it's interesting . . . during
World War II her mother and Yuri lived in the same boarding house in
Mississippi, but they never met each other. Their husbands were in
training during World War II at Camp Shelby, which is in Mississippi.
As I said, this was my first project, so I really didn't have any
experience in producing or directing a documentary and it was clear to me
that it would be good to have somebody else on board. So Rea and I
discussed it. She had, by that time, produced and directed HISTORY AND
MEMORY, and she was very interested in the whole idea of doing something
around Yuri. So that's basically how it started.
That's interesting. When you were making the piece, you can see
from the documentary itself that you interviewed many of Yuri's family
members. And you collected some wonderful testimony from them on
historical events that had happened to the family. I remember the grandson
talking about reading postcards from Malcolm X that had been written to
Yuri. Did you spend a lot of time with the family? Were there other
stories that didn't get into the final project that you'd like to share
with us? How did that process evolve?
Well, we spent some time with the family. Three of Yuri's
children live on the West Coast, so we made two trips out to California to
accompany Yuri for a family gathering. One trip she was honored -- she and
Bill were honored for their work. So we made two trips out to California
and interviewed out there. And then, of course, we interviewed her son who
lived here and her two oldest grandchildren who were here. Overall, we were only able to use just about 50% of the material, so we have still, at least, 50% of footage that we haven't used. So, only half of the people that we interviewed really got into the piece, and so there were a lot of stories there that didn't make it into the piece, unfortunately -- just because of editing decisions and time constraints.
What made it really interesting was that initially we asked Yuri
and her children for suggestions of people that we could talk to, and then
once we started talking to one person, that person led to another person to
another person . . . Someone would say, "Well, you really should talk to this
person because this person has a story to tell." That kind of
thing. So, that's basically how it evolved, and there were some stories
that were really compelling that we really wanted to use and it was just an
editing decision. Sometimes we just couldn't get footage to cover those
stories. You don't want talking heads, so that entered into it also.
Do you remember any of them? Are any of them sticking out in your
mind?
Well, there's one story . . . one young woman that we interviewed
talked about knowing Yuri in the 1970s, when the two of them went to
different prisons to visit political prisoners. At one point, several of
the prisoners that they wanted to visit in one particular prison had
converted to Islam. They decided that if they wanted to visit those
prisoners, then they would also "convert" to Islam. So that was a whole
other story of trying to get into the prison itself. In other words, what
I'm assuming is that the prisoners could only have certain visitors and
those certain visitors either had to be family members or, maybe, members
of the religious community. And so, this person talked about she and Yuri
changing their clothes into Muslim dress to get into the prison. In fact,
I think we had a photo of that, but we didn't use that in the piece. That
was a funny story that we had hoped we could use, but we ended up not using
it.
There were a couple of people that we interviewed in
California that had really interesting stories -- one was an Asian-American
woman, and one an African-American woman, both of whom had been friends
with Yuri for years and years. Both had different takes on Yuri. But what
came out of those interviews was that these two women were very inspired by
the relationship between Yuri and her husband Bill. Most people see Yuri
as the one who is really out there on the front lines, but Bill, when he
was alive, was very supportive and helped Yuri maintain the household.
After all, they had six children. And because she had the support of her
husband, she was able to do the kind of work that she did. And that was
very important.
Yeah, I could imagine.
And when we interviewed Malcolm X's daughter, that was
what she said also. Over the years, she was really impressed with the
relationship between Yuri and Bill, and how they complemented each other,
and how Bill made the decision not to be on the forefront much, but to
really help on the homefront so that Yuri would be able to do what she did.
It's an impressive relationship. One of the things that
is interesting is the support that Yuri lends to the more militant and
separatist politics of, say, the Black Panthers, the revolutionary
nationalism. And I'm wondering what your thoughts were in terms of
including this section in the tape and if you had thoughts about the
importance of this inclusion.
I felt that it's part of who she is, and that if we really wanted
to tell the truth and wanted to give a complete picture, then that had to
be part of it. I come out of the civil rights movement and, somewhat, out of
the Black Liberation Movement, so I think I was very aware or cognizant of the
messages that the piece would ultimately give. And I felt that that's one
part of who Yuri is. It's not everything that she is. That is one part of
who she is, and it's an important part of who she is, and she makes a
statement in the piece that she has no problems working with groups,
whether they're civil rights groups or whether they're more revolutionary
groups. She has no problem working with either one. The feeling
was that we needed to show both sides then, to tell both sides of her.
That's how that decision was made.
I see what you mean, and I think it's a very interesting inclusion. The way that you gave her the space to express in
the tape is really important in terms of understanding the different
ways that people have adopted different political actions. I was really
glad to see that you had included it in the piece, so that it becomes
really rounded and it is clear that Yuri does have all these different
beliefs.
One other thing I wanted just to say is that we made a
conscious decision early on not to have a voice-over in it. Because my
feeling was and still is that people should really speak for themselves,
and there shouldn't be this voice of authority coming over, trying to
explain what it is that people are saying. Yuri and others in the tape
were perfectly capable of explaining themselves. So that was a conscious
decision. It made it more difficult, I think, because we didn't have a
voice-over. It was more challenging to edit when we were trying to
match sequences and interviews and footage without having this voice to
narrate and smooth things over. But we both felt that that was important
as part of an oral history, that people should really be allowed to speak for
themselves.
Well, this is really an important document in terms of oral
history, and I'm really glad that you guys made it. Because it introduced me to the kind of range that Yuri has been involved in and how
many different activities she has participated in. And that kind of
breadth of commitment is really inspirational.
Yes. I think so, too.
YURI KOCHIYAMA: PASSION FOR JUSTICE, by Pat Saunders and Rea Tajiri, can be purchased from the following distributors:
Women Make Movies
462 Broadway, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10013
212-925-0606
Fax: 212-925-2052
National Asian American Telecommunications Association (NAATA)
346 Ninth Street, 2nd Floor
San Francisco, CA 94103
415-863-0814
Fax: 415-863-7428
E-Mail: naata@sirius.com
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