Hand to Hand during WWII

[knotwell]

Hmmm, the stars must be aligned correctly.

It's VJ day and I finished Iris Chang's "The Rape of Nanking" about 10 minutes ago (in fact, I logged on to write a positive review for it on Amazon and got sidetracked by e-budo).

While there are few bright spots in the book (it's an atrocity catalog), one of the more fascinating parts of the book was the part about John Rabe. Uniquely relevant to our current discussion, he was an unlikely hero since he was a high-ranking (highest?) National Socialist party member living in Nanking. He spearheaded the effort to create a "safe zone" to blunt the atrocities committed by the advancing Japanese army. Ms. Chang estimates his and others' efforts saved the lives of *250,000* Chinese people.

As a half-joking aside, after reading Ms. Chang's book, it occurs to me that it might be healthier to criticize Scientologists on Usenet than mentioning this topic in a forum dedicated to Japanese budo.

If only the Seattle Public Library could find its loanable copy of Joe Svinth's book, I could read uplifting tales about old-school Northwest judokas instead.

Guten nacht alle.

[Joseph Svinth]

Dang. Somebody liked that well enough to swipe it?

But not to fear -- what is missing from the library is a copy of the unpublished manuscript. Besides the text, the manuscript contains scads of footnotes. However, it contains no photos. The actual book is in press. The book has minimal footnoting, but has around 60 photos. It has also been updated, which means various errors were corrected and details added. With luck (the layout guy is cheap, but slooooow), the book (a 6x9 trade paper, about 350 pages) should be available for purchase during late 2002 or early 2003. When it is, I guarantee I'll be spamming ya.

Meanwhile, a couple chapters are available online.

* "Professor Yamashita Goes to Washington." 1998. Aikido Journal, 25:2: 37-42. An updated version appears online at http://ejmas.com/jcs/jcsart_svinth1_1000.htm .
* "Pacific Northwest Judo: First Generation." 1997. Serialized in the North American Post on November 26 and December 5, 1997. An intermediate version appears online at http://www.concentric.net/~Budokai/articles/seattle.htm . (I say intermediate because the version in the book contains more stories.)
* "Pacific Northwest Judo: The Seattle Dojo, 1924-1953." 2000. Michi Online, http://www.michionline.org/fall00/page14.html .

Earlier versions of two more chapters are available in back issues of Journal of Asian Martial Arts. These are

* "Masato Tamura, Ryoichi Iwakiri, and the Fife Judo Dojo." 1999. Journal of Asian Martial Arts, 8:1: 30-43.
* "The School of Hard Knocks: Seattle’s Kurosaka/Tentoku Kan Judo Dojo 1928-1942." 1998. Journal of Asian Martial Arts, 7:1: 28-47.

See also "Carving Out a Place: Japanese Americans in Eatonville, 1904-1942." 2002. Columbia: The Magazine of Northwest History, Spring: 24-28.

[JamesF]

Hello All

This one has been at the bottom for a long while now and a good friend asked me a question relating to WW2 Combatives in Japan so I thought I would resurrect it.

We know a lot about the people and the methodology of what was being taught to/by the Allied forces in WW2. We have books by people like Fairbairn, Applegate, Brown, Styers, Biddle. We also have a lot of the military paperwork for the Brits and the Americans. I've seen a few bits that cover what the Germans and the Italian's were doing.

So back to the Japanese - do we have any idea of the instructors? Did they have their own equivalents of Fairbairn & Sykes or Applegate? Did they produce any standard training material for use by the army (equivalent to the FM's in the USA, the HMSO publication's in the UK etc)?

Look forward to reading some more on a very interesting topic!

[Joseph Svinth]

Since you've resurrected a long-dead thread, a small update -- the Pacific NW judo book is available for purchase via the EJMAS website.

Meanwhile, regarding James' recent inquiry, Graham Noble is probably your best one-stop shopping source in UK for that sort of stuff. But, short answer -- the Japanese military had no use whatsoever for kyudo, and not much more for kendo and judo as taught and practiced in the public schools. It liked sumo, though, along with Western boxing -- Piston Horiguchi used to give demos all the time. Toyama Ryu battojutsu was also practiced. And, FWIW, Morihei Ueshiba taught aikido at the Nakano School (for spies) from 1938-1942, at which time he was replaced by a Shotokan karate teacher. By 1945, karate was being taught to special operations units throughout the Japanese military. According to a Wado-ryu teacher named NISHIZONO Takatoshi, this training involved little more than teaching highly fit young men to punch to the face and kick to the testicles.

Guy Power's web site discusses Toyama Ryu. Piston Horiguchi is featured in an article at EJMAS. (NOTE: You may need to go to the archives for that one, as it was an early one. Also, for an update to Horiguchi's career record, see also Boxrec.com.) Nishizono is quoted in an unpublished manuscript by Graham Noble. (NOTE: See also Mas Oyama's books, as he was a member of one of those Special Attack Squadrons.) The Butokukai and the Japanese military attitudes are discussed in the EJMAS article on the Budo Ban.