Chris Iijima
Chris Kwando Iijima (1948–2005) was an American folksinger, educator and legal scholar. Iijima, Nobuko JoAnne 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, 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.
Also recorded as Chris Kwando Iijima · Chris K. Iijima
Chris Iijima
- Born
- 1948
- Died
- 2005
- Nationality
- United States
- Occupation
- musician · activist
- Education
- Columbia University · New York Law School
- Known for
- A Grain of Sand: Music for the Struggle of Asians in America
VALÉORINE Encyclopedia
VALÉORINE documentary reading
Documentary summary
Chris Kwando Iijima (1948–2005) was an American folksinger, educator and legal scholar. Iijima, Nobuko JoAnne 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, 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.
Admitted source layer · organised and presented by VALÉORINE
Note VALÉORINE
No house-authored Note is published until its assertions and sources pass the VALÉORINE evidence contract. The documentary article remains available in full while that enrichment is being consolidated.
Documentary enrichment in progress · no unsupported statement published
Reference Check
Propose documentary evidence for Chris Iijima. A contribution is never written directly as fact: identity, source, rights and evidence gates still decide.
Sign in to contribute
World of VALÉORINE
Documentary connections
Only confirmed graph relationships appear here. Images are shown only when their identity and reuse rights both pass the documentary gate.
Documentary evidence
Evidence Panel
identity unresolved · checked 25 September 2026
- Identity
- unresolved
- Independent source families
- 0
- Admitted assertions
- 0
- Open conflicts
- 0
Authority files
wikidata · Q5106965 · wikipedia · Chris Iijima
In this article
Biography
Biography
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 premiered 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.
Chris Iijima studied at Columbia University and New York Law School. Employment is recorded with New York University and University of Hawaiʻi System. Works named in the authority record are A Grain of Sand: Music for the Struggle of Asians in America.
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 (the first such organization on the East Coast) 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 photograph of students in the office of president Grayson Kirk. He was a teacher at the Manhattan Country School from 1975-85. In June 1988, he received a J.D. magna cum laude 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 Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
Death
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: • Shooting Justice Jackson‟s “Loaded Weapon” at Ysar Hamdi: Judicial Abdication at the Convergence of Korematsu and McCarthy, 54 SYRACUSE LAW REVIEW 109 (2004). • New Rice Recipes: The Legitimization of Continued Overthrow, (Rice v. Cayetano Symposium), 3 ASIAN-PACIFIC LAW AND POLICY JOURNAL 8 (2002) • Race Over Rice: Binary Analytical Boxes and a Twenty-First Century Endorsement of Nineteenth Center Imperialism in Rice v. Cayetano, 53 RUTGERS LAW REVIEW 91 (2000). • Separating Support from Betrayal: Examining the Intersections of Racialized Legal Pedagogy, Academic Support, and Subordination, 33 INDIANA LAW REVIEW 737 (2000). • "Make it Snappy!" What Rhymes with Soviet Social-Imperialism? The Line, The Music, and The Movement (with Fred Ho) in LEGACY TO LIBERATION: POLITICS & CULTURE OF REVOLUTIONARY ASIAN/PACIFIC AMERICA, Fred Ho ed. (Edinburgh, AK 2002) 243. • Race as Resistance: Racial Identity as More than Ancestral Heritage, 15 TOURO LAW REVIEW 497 (1999). • Reparations and the "Model Minority" Ideology of Acquiescence: The Necessity to Refuse the Return to Original Humiliation, (A Joint Symposium by the BOSTON COLLEGE THIRD WORLD LAW JOURNAL: The Long Shadow of Korematsu), 40 BOSTON COLLEGE LAW REVIEW 385 (1998) and 19 BOSTON COLLEGE THIRD WORLD LAW JOURNAL 385 (1998). • Political Accommodation and the Ideology of the “Model Minority”: Building a Bridge to White Minority Rule in the 21st Century, 7 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA INTERDISCIPLINARY LAW JOURNAL 1 (1998). • When Fiction Intrudes Upon Reality: A Brief Reply to Professor Chin, (Symposium: A Duty to Represent? Critical Reflection on Stropnicky v. Nathanson), 20 WESTERN NEW ENGLAND LAW REVIEW 73 (1998). • The Era of We-Construction: Reclaiming the Politics of Asian Pacific American Identity and Reflections on the Critique of the Black/White Paradigm, 29 COLUMBIA HUMAN RIGHTS LAW REVIEW 47 (1997). • Swimming from the Island of the Colorblind: Deserting an Ill-Conceived Constitutional Metaphor, (Symposium: Using Law and Identity to Script Cultural Production), 17 LOYOLA OF LOS ANGELES ENTERTAINMENT LAW JOURNAL 583 (1997). • Fictions, Fault, and Forgiveness: Jury Nullification in a New Context (with David N. Dorfman), 28 UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN JOURNAL OF LAW REFORM 861 (1995).
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
reference work
Partially resolvedreference work
Partially resolved
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 30 August 2026.
Elsewhere in Music memorabilia
42,307 published records in this field, each with its sources named.
- Chris HolmesPerson
- Chris HughesPerson
- Chris HülsbeckPerson
- Chris HustonPerson
- Chris ImpellitteriPerson
- Chris IsaakPerson
- Chris J. MillerPerson
- Chris JasperPerson
Best supported in this field
For owners
Own a work by Chris Iijima?
A specialist will read what you send and tell you what the house can establish, what it cannot, and whether the object is suited to sale. There is no charge and no obligation. The object stays with you throughout; nothing is shipped to us unless it is arranged in writing beforehand.