She encountered Marxist critiques of racism through her older sister and the Young Communist League at Berkeley, and became involved in radical politics.
Ikeda was still living and working in the Bay Area when Japanese Americans on the west coast were subjected to incarceration under Executive Order 9066.
She married Tak Iijima in Utah (he had been drafted into the US Army just before Pearl Harbor), and was released to move to Mississippi with him soon after.
One of the first actions they took after forming in 1969 was to challenge the Japanese American Citizens League to take a stand against the Vietnam War.
[5] The group continued to evolve, changing its name in 1976 to Union of Activists to emphasize political struggle rather than identity, and finally breaking up in 1980 over irreconcilable internal differences.