Executive Director’s Message

Who Inspires You?

By Janlee Wong, MSW

There comes a time when you meet someone or learn about them that inspires you as a professional social worker. Not all great activist individuals are social workers, but we can still learn from them, be inspired by them. The social work profession is proud of these individuals as community organizers and activists, hence the Public Citizen of the Year Award both at the state and national level.

One such great is Yuri Kochiyama. Yuri is perhaps one of the greatest activists of the 20th century and recently passed away at the age of 93.

I first learned about Yuri from my wife, Mariko Yamada, MSW, when we were in New York City more than 30 years ago. She said, “Let’s go visit Yuri, she’s having an event at her home in Harlem.”                                                                          

I said “sure” but asked “who is this Yuri?” She explained that Yuri was a great civil rights activist, not only in the Asian-American community, but also in the African American community. Yuri was an internee during World War II in the infamous Japanese American relocation centers (Yuri would say concentration camps) and she fought hard for Japanese American redress in the 1980s.

Yuri was also a great supporter of social justice issues in the African American community and a supporter of Malcolm X. She was one of the first to cradle him as he lay dying after being assassinated in a theater in Harlem in 1965.

She also supported death row inmates including Mumia Abu-Jamal who some believe was wrongly convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer in 1981. Abu-Jamal was on death row until 2011. She also supported David Wong, a New York State prison inmate accused of murdering another inmate. Eventually Wong was released from prison but deported.

Social workers are seriously concerned about social justice and so was Yuri Kochiyama. While she was a young woman in the camps during World War II, Yuri’s father was taken away in ill health and when he returned, he died a day later. That event I believe led Yuri to take up a life of social activism and social justice. I was inspired by Yuri’s story and will continue to be.