Monday, April 12, 2010

belt promotion photo
















Clarence Ewing, Tatsuo Shimabuku (Founder of Isshinryu Karate), and George Breed, Agena, Okinawa, 1960
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7 comments:

  1. jbmooreApril 12, 2010 at 8:28 PM

    Quite a serious pose for the photo. No doubt you and Clarence were proud of your achievements then. It's rewarding to have an excellent mentor. The Three Stooges and the Three Musketeers came to mind very very briefly because of the number three in the photo. No disrespect. One is looking for humor in a somber photo or other honorable affiliations like brotherhood.

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  2. George BreedApril 13, 2010 at 3:12 AM

    No pose. Just the natural expressions of guys who worked out all day learning to kill, dismember, incapacitate with nothing but their own bodies. Nothing funny about it.

    I think you may have gotten the wrong impression from martial art movies and from American martial art clubs. This was a small group of Marines already trained to kill who refined and amplified their methods at the outdoor backyard arena and under the supervision of a man masterful in the hand to hand aspects of the killing arts.

    Your efforts to put a romantic and happy face on it are wasted.

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  3. AnonymousApril 13, 2010 at 4:52 AM

    Here-to-fore I thought Amanda was the image of her mother, I now know differently.

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  4. Charles JamesApril 13, 2010 at 8:57 AM

    Hi, George Sensei:

    So many today are misinformed as to the fighting arts. There are differences, i.e. sport, fighting, martial, etc.

    Then there is self-defense which is not the same and does not play out correctly in a fighting art such as Isshinryu again depending on which form you practice.

    Thanks,

    Charles

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  5. Gregory LeFeverApril 13, 2010 at 9:06 AM

    Talk about thought-provoking .... your response to jbmoore above puts such a different slant on things for me. Being familiar with the depth and breadth of your spiritual awareness, it's fascinating to contemplate your training as a potential killer. What it does for me, George, is finally shift my perspective of you from a "monk" orientation to a "samurai" one, with all of the intense zen-focused disciplines for which the samurai were noted.

    Now your book and blog titles dealing with "warrior" connect with me and carry much more import. You're coming at spiritual truths from quite a different direction than many of us, which is one reason you're so darn provocative.

    I'm so glad you posted the photo and elaborated on it, George. As I've said before, you're a rare man.

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  6. Kathy TrejoApril 16, 2010 at 10:33 AM

    I love photos. This is a wonderful one. Thank you for sharing. :-)

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  7. MattApril 23, 2010 at 2:12 PM

    A serious business to be certain, and a very honest one. No illusions of Samurai or Nth degree belts. Just accruing skills that might be used to save lives.

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