Chris Iijima


Chris Kando Iijima was an American folksinger, educator and legal scholar. He, Joanne Nobuko Miyamoto, and Charlie Chin, were the members of the group Yellow Pearl; their 1973 album, A Grain of Sand: Music for the Struggle by Asians in America (originally recorded on Paredon Records now Smithsonian Folkways was an important part of the development of Asian American identity in the early 1970s.
AsianWeek columnist Phil Tajitsu Nash stated that when hearing the album or Yellow Pearl perform live, "From Boston to Chicago to San Francisco to Honolulu, Asian-derived people who had been classified in the Census as "Other" suddenly realized that they had an identity, a history, and a place at the table." Iijima sang a song from the album on the Mike Douglas Show, co-hosted with John Lennon and Yoko Ono on February 15, 1972.
Iijima was a founder of Asian Americans for Action, one of the first Asian American-focused civil rights organizations of the 1960s. Iijima later became a law professor and wrote about discrimination against Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and members of other racial groups.
A documentary on Iijima's life, A Song for Ourselves, by Tadashi Nakamura premieres on February 28, 2009 in Los Angeles. The Chris Iijima Fund is an endowed fund supporting cultural and economic diversity at the Manhattan Country School where Iijima taught for ten years.

Biography

Iijima was born in New York City in 1948 to Takeru and Kazuko Iijima. His parents, both Nisei, or second-generation Japanese Americans, were active in promoting Asian American and general civil rights issues, helping to form Asian Americans for Action and the United Asian Communities Center.
Iijima earned a B.A. from Columbia University in 1969. As a student, he was involved in the Columbia University protests of 1968 against the Vietnam War; he is wearing a hat, immediately to the left of Mark Rudd, in a famous Life Magazine in the office of president Grayson Kirk. He was a teacher at the Manhattan Country School from 1974-84.
In 1988, he received a J.D. from New York Law School. He served on the faculties of New York University School of Law, Western New England College School of Law, and the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa.

Death

Iijima died of a rare blood disease at age 57, on December 31, 2005.

Scholarship

Iijima authored or co-authored many legal articles, including: