Black
Belt EssayBlack
Belt EssayI have been in a quandary over what to write for my 3rd Dan essay until my
recent visit to my Chiropractor, Dr. Cameron Snelling ( III Dan at Nibun Mt.
Albert), suggested that I write about myself, telling me how much of a “legend” I
am in ITFNZ. I felt embarrassed of his high thoughts of me, but it had me thinking
that maybe he was right, not that I’m a “legend” but why
I do what I do to get me through life in general. In the conclusion I’ll
give you some anecdotes that I tend to live by.
So let me start by introducing myself.
I was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii on the 31st of March 1949. I am
56 years young now and attempting to grade for my 3rd Dan in May 2005. I have
always been a late starter in my life, not by choice but by what has been drawn
to my attention at the time.
In my formative years, I would guess about 7 (just because it’s been
a few years back, Alzheimer’s), my mom decided that I should ‘toughen
up” and take the martial art of Judo. To me it was a way of getting me
out of the house for a couple of hours. You have to understand that there was
no television till about 1955 so there was no such thing as electronic babysitters
like we have in this day and age. I learned how to break fall, albeit very
clumsily in the beginning, but soon became pretty proficient because I was
always getting thrown. I had some non-memorable grading moments basically moving
slowly up the ranks because my interest level was low. I tended to skip a few
weeks of training sessions and upon returning to the next training session
the sensei (instructor) had a “sparring” lesson with the slackers.
As I was now becoming a real “expert” at break falling by being
thrown on the tatami’s (mats) with relative ease by my sensei I noticed
he was about to do a right hip throw. At this point I thought “yeah!
I could stop this throw by bracing my right leg between his legs and leaning
back!” Next thing I heard was my knee “popping” and a big
slam on the tatami’s.
Lesson number one: If my opponent has got more weight and much stronger than
me there’s no way a scrawny kid like me is going to stop him from throwing
me. It would be better to “go with the flow”. I came out of that
lesson with a sprained knee that took about three months to get better. And
so ended my Judo career. I never went back to training much to my relief.
Another thing my mom got me doing was joining the Boy Scouts of America. Another
way to keep me busy for a few hours, weekly camps, etc., etc. I did the Boy
Scout thing for a few years, going for merit badges, learning how to survive
in the outdoors, competitions, working as a team, etc., etc.
But this was not enough for my mom. There was this karate dojo starting up
at the community center where the judo and Boy Scouts halls were. Guess who
was in his new, crispy karate-gi in the new dojo now? This scrawny kid who
had no real interest in being the next Bruce Lee. Déjà vu! Like
the Judo lessons, struggled through the colored belt ranks, not really wanting
to get hurt during sparring sessions (still don’t), basically scared.
I guess I continued the training for more than a year when during a sparring
session I ended up with a broken left arm. How? I just can’t figure but
I remember it being very painful. So ended my karate career. But I always recall
how I learned my ‘kiai” (ki-hap for you TKD enthusiasts).
Lesson number two: Show your spirit and inner strength through a strong Kiai
(Ki-hap).
It happened during a training session on fast forefist punches and I was yelling
after every punch. I sounded like a machine gun that got jammed in fire mode, ….ei,ei,ei,ei,ei,ei,ei,ei,ei,ei…..Well,
the sensei walked over to me with a grin on his face trying not to laugh and
held his palm out telling me to stop. In his awkward English he said “one
kiai!” I was a bit confused because I thought a kiai was to yell. Oh
how I was wrong. I would like to elaborate a little on this particular subject
because it is dear to my heart.
While I was searching the net, I had found this website that defined Ki-hap
(http://www.kuksuldo.com/handbook/handbook15.htm). It states that Ki-hap is
a method of controlled breathing used by martial artists. Ki-Hap means Ki =
Internal energy, Hap = Combine so Ki-Hap = Internal energy combined.
I tend to use vowels to sound my Ki-Hap like ‘ei’ or ‘ta’.
I release all my energy, driving a short burst of air from my diaphragm with
a strong ‘ei’! You must understand that these ‘sounds’ are
very personal. You should learn to develop your own type of ‘sound/ki-hap’ that
gives you that strong energy.
Thanks to my mother, by design or pure luck, trying to “toughen” me
up helped me through the next stages of my life.
I graduated from high school in 1967 and not really interested in continuing
my education through university. It was also the time when the Vietnam War
was going strong. While most of my school friends tried to avoid the draft
by going to university (this delayed the inevitable for at least four years),
I decided to work for a while before my number came up. In March of 1968 the
U.S. Army were drafting about 200 men from Hawaii. My number was 120. So it
was a definite. When you’re drafted into the U.S. Army you have to serve
two years on active duty and four years of inactive duty with no choice of
the job you’ll do, which pretty much guaranteed you to front line duty.
Long story short, I needed to beat the draft so I joined the Army for three
years of active duty, which gives me a choice of jobs (called data processing,
the first type of computer jobs in its era). My rational was that if I lived
to fifty, one extra year of my life in the service would not make a difference.
What happened at basic training camp for the next eight weeks really set me
up to use all those lessons I had learned in my mom’s “toughening
up” process.
Lesson one: go with the flow
Lesson two: show your spirit, your tenacity
Boy Scouts: how to survive, marching, teamwork, knowing your right from your
left, etc.
These were just great tools that I never understood at the time how important
it mattered to me from this point on. Upon finishing basic training in eight
weeks I ended up with an expert badge for grenade throwing (Boy Scout’s
training), expert badge for the bayonet (strong kihaps), and tied for highest
score in marksmanship with the Company that I had trained with.
Now on to advanced training to learn how to work these new computers. You have
to understand the computer era in1968. There was no such thing as a PC, not
even an electronic digital calculator was invented then. It was cardboard cards
that were manually punched with information and machines that had to be manually
wired to process this information. I actually ended my training 2nd highest
in my class.
I received my orders to go to Vietnam and arrived in Saigon (Ho Chi Minn City
now) on December 8, 1968. A few days in transit and received my orders to report
to the Americal Division Headquarters in Chu Lai. Chu Lai is located on the
east coast, about fifty miles south of Da Nang, which was close to the DMZ.
About three months in country and I finally met most of the “local boys” from
Hawaii in our camp. Here I met Archie Hapai III. A smooth talking guy that
became a politician back home in Hawaii. But it was through him that I was
first introduced to this Korean martial art called Taekwon Do. Archie invited
me to attend their training sessions and I showed up one night. I was introduced
to the instructor Mr.Oh Da Yang (4th Dan) (not quite sure about his name because
it’s been a while) and immediately joined the training session. As I
understood, Mr. Oh was a civilian contractor working on base. Never got to
know him personally because there was a war on. Trainings were five days a
week, three to four hours a night. We trained in Quonset huts, helicopter hangers,
any open space became our dojang. The Quonset huts proved very useful for jumping
because of their springy floors. Our exercise consisted of jumping over two
guys touching their fingertips with outstretched arms at shoulder height. The
helicopter hangers gave us room to run and jump over five guys standing shoulder
to shoulder, bent at the waist, through two guys making a circle with their
arms, and one last guy standing behind all this as a target. Man, I could fly
back then, but now I drop like a ton of bricks! I moved up the ranks quite
rapidly because now I really wanted to be like Bruce Lee. I had reached the
rank of red which meant at that time black was next.
I recall a training session where we each had a turn sparring our instructor.
As I watched my fellow classmate spar, at one point there was a deafening silence
with no one moving. Then with a huge yell from my instructor, my classmate
froze for what might have been an eternity for him but just a few seconds in
reality. Mr. Oh then attacked my classmate with hand and foot techniques which
he never saw coming. Another example of how powerful the kihap can be.
There was a favorite sparring routine I enjoyed using. I would start with a
left front snap kick, as soon as I put my left foot to the ground I would launch
myself into the air and continue with a flying right side kick to the head.
This routine worked really well until one night I was free sparring a fellow
classmate and used it on him. As I jumped and executed this beautiful side
kick in the air I watched my classmate step to his left and scoop my right
leg. Needless to say I landed flat on my back.
Lesson number three: No matter how good your techniques are, if you continually
use the same favorite ones, somebody out there is going to figure out a way
to defend against it. Add variety to your sparring so your opponent has a hard
time “reading” you.
This next lesson was literally an eye opener. Let me explain. I had six months
left on my tour of duty. It was another sparring session (we really did have
patterns, breaking, and self-defense sessions too!) and I attacked my classmate
with a right skipping side kick. I executed the kick before he could reverse
back and my supporting foot landed on his front foot as he shifted backwards
which had me reeling backwards. I extended my left hand down to break my fall
(after all that practice breakfalling you’d think I’d use it).
After x-rays were done the doctor showed me a hairline fracture in the ball
of my left wrist socket. I got excited because he said that with a fracture
like that, it took six months to heal and you got sent to Japan to recuperate.
Halleluiah! I get to leave! Then I asked, “ so, what do you do now?” The
doc replied “ oh, we cast you up and send you back to duty.” I
was devastated! But you know how you can get some positives out of negatives… Well,
I got a big bonus having that cast, with my sparring. In my earlier years I
hated getting hurt during sparring. I used to close my eyes when I was attacked
and I still did it at this time. No more, now with my mighty cast as a fabulous
blocking tool! I just laid this beautiful, heavy, unyielding mass of plaster
in front of me to parry any attack that my classmates could muster. Hand and
feet went reeling back with agonizing pain with just a flick of my arm. This
was just the shot in the arm I needed to improve my sparring.
Lesson number four: Keep your eyes open when you are attacked.
This was incredible. By parrying attacks from my opponents with my cast, I
actually could see many openings/targets. This ‘tool’ gave me the
confidence I needed to improve my counter attacks. I was out of my cast in
three months, my wrist fully healed and I continued to keep my eyes ‘open’ while
being attacked.
One Saturday night Mr. Oh had shown up at my living quarters. He asked me to get my dobok and come with him. I immediately obeyed his request but was very perplexed, as this was not a normal training night. As we were being driven to this huge hanger that I didn’t recognize, he mentioned to me about a tournament. I didn’t quite understand him because of his weak English until we entered this venue. It was filled with martial artists. I was dumbfounded. I had never seen so many practitioners in my life. I was told to change and warm up. As I was getting ready Mr. Oh told me to do something that was very odd. He said, “ tonight you hit!” as he smacked his right fist into his left palm. We never trained for heavy hitting, always close with an occasional ‘too close’. But for tonight he insisted that I ‘hit’.
My first match was against a white belt. I had watched his earlier fights and
he was no white belt. He possessed skills that I was not familiar with. I had
found out later that he was a brown belt in Okinawan-te. This was my first
introduction to a back kick. I wore a few of them in the gut that night. Now
I started thinking how to counter this move and I notice that he drops his
hands as he attacks. So I immediately formulated my counter. I made myself
available for his back kick. As he does so I shift to the right and immediately
do a high side tuning kick to where his head should be. Just like clockwork,
he recovers from his back kick, turns to face me and his hands are still down
by his sides. At this time my right instep meets the side of his head with
a tremendous slap that echoes through the hanger. There is dead silence from
the crowd as he staggers back and the referee jumps between us to stop the
match. As I look for Mr. Oh, I see him sitting with a whole lot of Brass (military
officers) at the head table. He gives me a grin to show me he’s pleased.
My next match was against a Black Belt 1st Dan from the Jhoon Rhee TKD school
back in the states. Like my earlier opponent, I also watched this guys’ earlier
match. I had noticed he was very quick with his style of attacks. We ended
up fighting in front of the head table with my instructor and all the brass
for this one. We started out throwing a few kicks to and fro trying to find
our range. And suddenly he turns his back to me. I immediately try a downward
knifehand strike and I got nailed by a back kick in the gut. So now he has
me on alert for back kicks. Another unusual technique he used was sliding forward,
grab my dobok sleeve and pull me in for a hand attack while I tried to pull
back. He did this a couple of times and I then engaged the brain. He attempted
to grab my left sleeve and I allowed him to pull me in. I slid forward to crowd
him and laid three successive flat fingertip thrusts to his philtrum. His mouth
was open and I had the back of my fingertips cut by his teeth. He again attempted
to grab my right sleeve and pull me in. I again slid forward and crowded his
back. Three successive upset punches to his kidney and he backed off. He never
attempted to grab my sleeve again. Match ended. Brass was rumbling. Mr. Oh
had me returned to my quarters, very pleased with my performance. Later I found
out the reason Mr. Oh had come for me. There was a lot of goings on with the
Brass about who had the best student, while my instructor sat quietly listening
to their discussions. He said he couldn’t sit quietly anymore and proceeded
to get me. I was very honored and humbled by his belief in me.
All those previous lessons that I had developed for myself made a strong bearing
at the tournament.
Lesson one: go with the flow
Lesson two: show your spirit, your strong inner strength
Lesson three: variety, mix it up, keep them guessing
Lesson four: even under pressure, keep your eyes open, keep looking for opportunities
At the end of my tour of duty in Vietnam December 8th, 1969, Mr. Oh awarded
me my 1st Dan Black Belt.
In conclusion all I would like to say is engage your brain! Know your strengths
and fix your weaknesses. Adjust, adapt yourself to the challenge.
I’ll leave you now with a few anecdotes that I try to live by;
Here’s a classic:
· Do unto others, as you would want them to do unto you.
Whatever you do it comes back tenfold, good or bad, you figure!
Bill Drake, a good friend, and business partner, body builder
· We all got to meet our maker
There’s always somebody bigger, meaner, stronger, faster, etc.
This one keeps me humble!
Boss Cecil, the current Eastern Tornados Rugby league coach
· In top competition, it’s not what the winner “does”,
but it’s what the loser “doesn’t do” that determines
the outcome.
This cartoon is pinned on my office wall at work. Imagine a long neck bird
trying to swallow a frog, but the frog has his hands sticking out of the birds’ beak
squeezing the birds’ neck preventing him to swallow. The caption is:
· You never, ever give up!
John T. Matsuoka
II Dan