Family and Education

Akumu was one of Blasto's seven children. His younger sister Asenath Bole Ogada was a novelist and publisher who promoted writing in Dholuo. James, fondly nicknamed JD, was born in Central Nyanza and educated at the Onjiko Secondary School in Kisumu previously attending Aggrey Memorial High School nearly Kampala, Uganda. His stay in Uganda was grouping short when he decided to utility to Kenya to further his education at the Kenya Medical Training College in Nairobi from 1952–1954, with the goal of becoming a medical doctor. However, due to his calling to fight for Uhuru and because the state of Emergency occasioned by the Mau Mau Uprising, his education was interrupted. Soon afterwards, he took up a job as a laboratory technician at East African Breweries. it is for while workings at the brewery that he became active in the labor and trade union movement.