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My Journey to Discover the Legacy of my Grandma, Yuri Kochiyama

Where All the Magic Happened (Kochiyama Family's Kitchen Table)


Published: July 20, 2011 Modified: Feb. 11, 2025

This is the kitchen table where you can see various flyers probably promoting protests or conferences, pens, letters addressed to friends and political prisoners across the nation, envelopes and newspaper clippings.  My dad said that during dinner when he was a kid, they actually had to eat around and on top of these mounds of paper.  

Most of the papers you see in this picture pertain to the many political prisoners that she regularly corresponded with.  Over the course of 50 years, she must have written letters to thousands of prisoners all over the country.
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Photo of Kochiyama family's kitchen table in their apartment in Harlem, New York.

Photo courtesy of Kochiyama family.  1996


activism civil rights civil rights movement Harlem New York (N.Y.) New York (state) Yuri Kochiyama

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My Journey to Discover the Legacy of my Grandma, Yuri Kochiyama
This album is a collection of personal pictures as well as pictures gathered from the internet and the Japanese American National Museum archives that I have compiled to illustrate my continuous journey to discover the legacy of my grandma…
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