Photo of Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Heart Mountain, Wyoming, taken September 18, 1942. Courtesy the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration via Wikimedia Commons.

Clipping from the Monrovia, CA Daily News-Post (December 3, 1960) on Kuromiya winning a high school contest. Clipping via Newspapers.com.

Photo of a map of WWII Japanese internment camps, including Heart Mountain, in the Oregon Nikkei Legacy Center, in Portland, OR. Photo courtesy of flickr user thekirbster.

1943: Kuromiya is born on May 9 at the Heart Mountain Internment Camp in Wyoming.

The Kuromiyas had been forcibly relocated to Heart Mountain from their home of Monrovia, CA. They remained there for the first three years of his life, until they returned to Monrovia in 1946. Though Kuromiya had no memory of his time there, in an interview with Marc Stein, he said he was "sure it affected my own activism and my own attitudes toward our government, war, racial issues." Going by the name Steve (which he dropped for Kiyoshi sometime in the late 1960s), Kuromiya graduated from Monrovia High School in 1961 and subsequently enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania. 

Clipping from The Sheboygan Press (March 26, 1965) discussing the violence in Montgomery, including Kuromiya describing being attacked. Clipping via Newspapers.com.

Advertisement for Kurmiya's poster from the April 12-18, 1968 issue of the Berkeley Barb (vol.6, no. 16).

1961: Kuromiya enrolls at the University of Pennsylvania and becomes involved in the Civil Rights and anti-war movements.

As part of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), he organized sit-ins and other protest actions, as well as meeting Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1965, he was beaten by the Montgomery, AL sheriff's volunteer posse while leading a group of black high school students to the state capital building.

In 1965, Kuromiya also planned the largest antiwar demonstration in the history of the University of Pennsylvania. Using his basement printing press, he produced a leaflet for a fake anti-napalm protest, where he (writing as the "Americong") threatened to burn a dog alive with homemade napalm to protest its use in the Vietnam War. When the day of the demonstration arrived, he and a small group of friends handed out leaflets to attendees "Congratulations, you've saved the life of an innocent dog. How about the hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese that have been burned alive? What are you going to do about it?"

In 1968, Kuomiya, under the name "Dirty Linen Corporation," published the "Fuck the Draft" poster (see attached advertisement). Though Kuromiya tried to sell copies via mail, he was arrested for "using U.S. mails for a crime of inciting with lewd and indecent materials." However, he later distributed 2000 copies of the poster at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

A manifesto for the recently formed GLF was first published in the Temple University radical student paper Free Press. Sourced from the Philadelphia LGBT Mapping Project.

Photo of Kiyoshi Kuromiya and an unnamed friend originally published in the Gay Dealer. Sourced from OutHistory.net.

Report in Gay Flames #2 (September 1970) on the GLF's presence at the Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia (author unnamed, but attributed to Kuromiya). A full copy of the issue is available in the Independent Voices collection.

A photo of Kuromiya in 1972, after the GLF's disbandment. Sourced from the Philadelphia LGBT Mapping Project.

1969: Philadelphia's Gay Liberation Front founded.

Though Kuromiya had been aware of his sexuality earlier in life, he did not formally come out until 1965, after which he became involved in homophile organizing on the East Coast. However, he found the movement's whiteness and emphasis on respectability stifling. At a Homophile Action League meeting in 1969, he and another attendee, Basil O'Brien, simultaneously submitted separate announcements about forming a local GLF. The GLF met at a variety of locations around Philadelphia, published one issue of an underground newspaper, the Gay Dealer, and sent a delegation to the Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention in 1970. By mid-April 1971, however, changing attitudes in gay organizing led to diminishing funds and shifting interests amongst members, and the GLF subsequently disbanded. However, Kuromiya remained involved in local gay social groups around Philadelphia.

Photo of Buckmister Fuller and Kuromiya outside a bookstore holding a copy of Critical Path. Courtesy of the John J. Wilcox Jr. Archive at the William Way LGBT Community Center, via First Monday.

1981: Critical Path published.

While recuperating from treatment for lung cancer in the mid-1970s, Kuromiya began reading the work of R. Buckmister Fuller, beginning with Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking. As someone who'd begun his time at the University of Pennsylvania as an architecture major, Kuromiya began cultivating a relationship with the Philadelphia-based Fuller. Kuromiya would go on tour with Fuller, as well as assisting him with both Critical Path (1981), where he's credited as "Adjuvant" (a term for a catalyst) and Grunch of Giants (1983).

Cover for the October 1991 issue of the Critical Path Newsletter, which discusses the launch of the BBS, sourced from Bolerium Books.

Photograph of Kuromiya in 1992, originally published in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Part 1 of a profile of Kuromiya in the Philadelphia Inquirer (June 09, 1994). Clipping via Newspapers.com.

Part 2 of a profile of Kuromiya in the Philadelphia Inquirer (June 09, 1994). Clipping via Newspapers.com.

1989: The first issue of the Critical Path Newsletter is published.

Kuromiya was officially diagnosed with AIDS in 1989, though he suspected he'd been positive for several years prior to his diagnosis. Using the slogan "information is power," he would eventually expand the newsletter into the non-profit Critical Path AIDS Project, whose services included a 24-hour hotline, bulletin board system (BBS), email mailing list, web site, and acting as a free Internet Service Provider. Beyond Critical Path, Kuromiya was a founder of the Philadelphia chapter of ACT UP (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power).

Associated Press photo of ACLU senior staff counsel Chris Hansen (left), ACLU of Pennsylvania legal director Stefan Presser (center), and Kuromiya at the February 8, 1996 announcement of the lawsuit challenging the Communications Decency Act. Sourced via Wired Magazine.

Critical Path news release from February 9, 1996 on Kuromiya's involvement in ACLU V. Reno.

1997: The Supreme Court rules in favor of the ACLU in ACLU V. Reno, finding the Communication Decency Act's indecency provisions unconstitutional.

Critical Path, represented by Kuromiya, was one of several plaintiffs in the case, which directly impacted Critical Path's work trying to reach PWAs and other vulnerable populations. As a plaintiff, on June 12, 1996 he testified in front of a panel of federal judges in Philadelphia on the law's possible impacts. Following the initial decision, Stephan Presser, the ACLU's Pennsylvania legal director, said Kuromiya "may have been the single most persuasive voice to the court."

For more information the Communciation Decency Act's history and legacy, see the Indecency, Obscenity, and Queer Voices Online.

Text of the final decision in Kuromiya vs. The United States of America.

1999: The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania rules against the plaintiffs in Kuromiya vs. The United States of America.

Though Kuromiya had recreationally smoked marijuana since the 1960s, he became a medical marijuana user and activist in the latter decades of his life. He also ran a cannabis buyer's club that provided free medical marijuana for people with AIDS and other chronic conditions in the Philadelphia area. In 1999 he served as the lead plaintiff in the unsuccessful class-action suit, Kuromiya vs. The United States of America, which argued for the legalization of medical marijuana for people with AIDS.