Koji Ariyoshi

Koji Ariyoshi
Born	1914 Hawaii, United States
Died	1976 Hawaii, United States
Occupation	Nisei, labor activist, sergeant

Koji Ariyoshi
Service/branch	United States Army
Rank	Sergeant

Koji Ariyoshi (有吉幸治) (1914–1976) was a Nisei, labor activist, and a Sergeant in the United States Army during the Second World War.

Ariyoshi was born in Hawaii in 1914 to Japanese immigrant parents. Ariyoshi grew up helping his family make a living on a small eight-acre coffee plantation. He attended Konawaena High School before working for six years to help pay off the family debt. Ariyoshi became interested in labor politics around this time. He attended the University of Hawaii, but became alienated by his perception of institutional bias against labor unions and liberal thought. He transferred to the University of Georgia on scholarship. In Georgia, where he was befriended by the parents of novelist Erskine Caldwell, Ariyoshi became determined to ease the plight of the sharecroppers he met, and to improve labor conditions for the working class.

In 1941, Ariyoshi graduated from the University of Georgia with a Bachelor of Arts in journalism (A.B.J.) from the Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. After graduation, Ariyoshi traveled to San Francisco where he befriended Karl Yoneda, a founder of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. On December 7th, 1941, the Japanese navy attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii; and soon after, Ariyoshi was placed in the Manzanar War Relocation Center, a Japanese American internment camp.