MY FIRST KARATE LESSONS

My first actual karate lessons, other than those seen on TV, in magazines, or read about in 'how-to-do' books at the time, actually began at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, while I was in the Army. At the base field house, which I frequented to lift weights and exercise,etc. there were several people doing both wrestling and judo and since I had taken lessons in Judo in Morristown, New Jersey,before being drafted into the Army, I naturally gravitated towards this activity. Eventually, I met a like-minded fellow there who decided to form a club and some judo and wrestling persons also joined up as well as others, and then along came a karate instructor from Arizona. He was only a 'brown belt' and belonged to the USKA and talked about Robert Trias and has his book, 'THE HAND IS MY SWORD', and began teachings us the very rudiments involved. Later my friend, whose name I can't recall at the moment, but I think it is among some clippings I have from the Post Paper about the club, became told me of NISHIYAMA & BROWN'S book on KARATE, I bought or ordered at the Post Book Store and began reading. Later, again, my friend, told me of AIKIDO which he had seen somewhere and somehow and revealed to me that he felt it was really a coming art and also superior to karate and judo! There were several Japanese-Americans and perhaps Hawaiian -Japanese Americans or even Japanese doing judo there and I watched a wrestler work with some of them and later asked him what he thought about judo,because he seemed to pin all of them and maneuver them easily more so than they did him. He told me that he didn't think much of judo for the reasons I have described and then I told him that he was perhaps lucky since none of them used strangleholds on him and then I explained what they might well have done to him. I didn't offer to show him exactly but I hoped that he 'listened to reason' and to 'the still small voice of his conscience' ever afterwards.