martial journey -- return to states

Upon return to the States from Okinawa in 1960, I found the women to be large and noisy and everyone moving at a rapid pace as if they were going somewhere, never arriving, but by gosh they were never going to get there quickly! I settled in Atlanta, where I resumed a job for Western Electric, manufacturer of Bell Telephones.

I followed up on some vague rumor I heard in the Corps that I would, as a black belt in karate, have to register my hands. I called various law enforcement agencies including the Georgia Bureau of Investigation about this and consistently got the reply: "Kah-rah-teh! What's that?"

I began working out at the downtown Atlanta YMCA and in response to guys asking me "Will you teach me that stuff you are doing?" soon found myself teaching Isshinryu to quite a group.

There was also a black belt and a brown belt in Jujutsu (a brutal form of throws and locks from which Judo sprang) who worked out quite vigorously. We eventually teamed up and I learned their moves, throws, choke holds, etc. while I taught them how to wreak havoc through the devastatingly simple moves of Isshinryu (including bo and sai). We merged our styles and began teaching what we called KaJutsu (karate and jujutsu combined).

Ron L. (Jujutsu) and I would put our students through their paces until we wore them out, then he and I would work out together for another couple of hours. We had great fun.

Ron was pretty vicious with his bo, striking with great power, sometimes cracking my upraised bo protecting my head from one of his downward swings. I had to disarm him as quickly as possible, once parrying one of his thrusts with a quick circular movement of my bo and sending his bo rotating like a helicopter blade across the gym, narrowly missing a person coming through a door.

Eventually we were asked not to kick the body bag in the gym because we were destroying it. I began to find the States to be a lot more tame than Okinawa and the Agena dojo.