Texas – Part One
Late 1967-December 1968
Disciplines
After my teaching gig at the middle school, I continued to take my karate lessons. I had finally graduated from the cement buckets, and Sensei introduced me to the next series of katas. Finally, I thought, I’m able to do something other than grunt my way around ten eighty-foot round trips carrying cement-filled buckets. Thankfully, I had finally learned how to walk correctly.
The next kata was basically the same as the first, except now I was taught to hold my arms in front of me, hands formed in half-fists, and with each step rotate each arm in a half-moon rotation—then back to the start position with the next step. This was intended to block blows coming from the left, then coming from the right. Instead of spending the entire session carrying buckets, I was at least doing something else with another part of my body.
I also finally learned what those wooden posts, really two by fours, covered in heavy canvas were for. After an hour and a half of the kata I was told to stand in front of one of those and punch them as hard as I could, using the karate punch technique—straight from the shoulder hitting the board with knuckles only. Standing in kata position, knees slightly bent, left foot forward, body angled slightly left, and both arms up in a defensive position, I took my first punch at the canvas-wrapped board—making sure my punch ended on the other side of the board. Rotating my body to the left as I closed my right fist, I threw my left arm up, defending my head from a right cross, and flung my right arm—followed by my shoulder and hip. In mid punch I pushed my right leg and foot forward—putting my right side’s full momentum into the punch. When my knuckles met the board I mistakenly thought it would give a bit. It did not. And the pain, as I followed through with the punch, traveled all the way up my arm.
At the end of the punch, I withdrew my right side, as sensei had instructed, and re-assumed my starting position. I thought I was gonna cry.
“YOSH—JOTO DEREONSAN!” Sensei bellowed behind my right ear, praising me for my form and my fearless attack on that wily board. And then he instructed me to repeat the exercise nine more times. He said this practice would create callouses on my knuckles and make me unafraid to hit something solid. I was sure my knuckles would be mashed to a bloody pulp by the time I finished.
***
On one sunny Saturday morning I arrived at the dojo with all the other students from classes Sensei taught for the semi-annual belt competition. This competition was held for all the competing belts to advance to the next level. All the white belts, easily outnumbering all the other belts, sat at one end of the dojo, while the browns and blacks sat at the other. Sensei brought out what I could only describe as a Hollywood-type “Director’s Chair”; and placed it against the wall at the center of the dojo, and sat on it Buddha-like.
The dojo had been decorated with banners, all written in Japanese, which were strung to the walls and hung from the ceiling. In one corner there was a small table on which some black and white pictures in wooden frames were placed. As I walked by, heading to the area where I was to be seated, I saw that most of the pictures were of a much younger—and definitely thinner Sensei—performing katas and competing in various belt competitions. One photo had caught him in mid-air, a good six feet off the ground, delivering a devastating flying leg kick to an opponent’s head. The still shot showed sensei’s body in perfect form, right down the position of his hands and fingers. His opponent had tried to arm-block the kick—but his forearm had arrived just a nanosecond after Sensei’s stubby foot had found the side of his head. His face was frozen in a pain-filled grimace.
We had been taught, and indeed Sensei had always strongly stressed, that the end of every offensive move was but the beginning of a defensive one; and the photo had captured the very essence of his philosophy. I imagined, after having delivered the vicious kick to his opponent’s head, Sensei landing soundlessly on the floor in full defensive mode—fully prepared to repel a counter attack. Although I wondered how one could mount any kind of offensive attack after having taken such a brutal kick to the head.
To qualify for the competition for my brown belt I had been required to learn and execute flawlessly ten different katas—each one increasingly more complex than the previous one. Before the sparring started, each class did a specific set of katas to show the sensei that not only had our minds memorized each move, but also that each individual muscle involved in the particular kata had been trained, and had retained the memory of its specific job. I was relieved when I found out that for this competition we would be required to execute one of the simpler ones. While the katas for white belts were simple and lasted about a minute each, the browns’ and the black belts’ katas were sequentially complex; consisting of spins, leaps and lightning fast arm and leg movements, taking up most of the dojo’s floor. Prior to performing my kata I thankfully noticed that all the cement buckets were gone.
At the end of the kata exhibition the sparring sessions began. Unlike the American Karate exhibitions, the students here competed against one other within their own belt classes. We had been paired off by drawing colored beans out of a basket, and one didn’t know who his sparring opponent was going to be until Sensei called out a color. So for example, if he called out “aka” (red), the two white belt students with the red beans sparred with each other in competition for a brown belt. I had drawn a blue bean (ao), and as I sat waiting my turn I wondered who I’d drawn as my sparring opponent. Since this was going to be a “full-touch” sparring session, I was a little unsettled and hoped I didn’t get beat up too badly.
The purpose of the sparring wasn’t to see who could pound the other into putty, but how perfectly each offensive/defensive move was executed. To my relief, we were told that regardless of the outcome, if both students performed satisfactorily they would both be awarded a brown belt.
The call, “AO!” came right after the third set of sparring opponent’s competition had been brought to a halt by Sensei’s deep and booming voice yelling “YOSH!—which translated into something like, “OK, you guys did okeydokey!”. Both white belts immediately stopped, turned to face Sensei and bowed deeply.
I stood up tentatively and bowed deeply to Sensei. As I straightened up I saw who I’d drawn as an opponent. He was a short but solidly built Okinawan boy, probably seventeen years of age—and he and I had never hit it off. Whenever I had drawn this guy as a partner during our “no-touch’ practice sparring sessions, he had always managed to land a few heavy ‘unintentional’ blows. Although always rebuked by Sensei, he would glare at me angrily as we returned to our seating area. As much as I wanted to pay him back, I knew that this could not be the time nor would it be the place. I vowed to keep my temper restrained and my discipline intact.
We walked to the center of the dojo where a very large wrestling mat had been spread. We faced, then bowed deeply to each other. Sensei yelled “HAI”, and the sparring match began. We assumed our fighting crouch and started circling one another—looking for an opening. Knowing this guy like I did, I assumed he would try to land the first blow so I prepared myself for what I knew would be his favorite opening: a straightforward kick to my midsection. I guessed right.
With an ear-splitting yell he launched his forward kick. I leaned back, transferring my body weight to my right leg, and with a sweeping under-handed forearm half-moon, sidestepped his kick pushing his left leg off to my left side. His momentum, along with my forearm’s sideward energy, caused him to pivot clumsily to his right exposing his left ribcage and kidney. Quickly shifting my balance to my left leg which was still in the forward position, I spun to my left, bringing up my right leg and delivering a solid swinging side kick to the area between his ribs and his left hip. The blow from the side of my foot was stronger than I realized and after connecting solidly with a dull slapping sound he crumpled to the floor clutching his side and yelling, “Itai, itai, itai!” (Hurt, hurt, hurt…).
I retreated and took up my basic defense position, never taking my eyes off my writhing opponent. A few seconds went by and I finally heard Sensei yell, “YOSH!” It was over.
Taking a step back I brought my feet together, put my hands to my side, and waited for him to get up. Still holding his side he got up and slowly turned to face me. I bowed deeply.
Even though he lost the match, the little Okinawan and I were both awarded our brown belts. He had launched a good attack in which his form was excellent, and I had blocked and retaliated with a successful attack of my own. Even though I had penetrated his defense, we were each judged on style and form.
After the white belts finished their competition for brown belts, the browns began their competition for black belts. But what was truly interesting for me was when the three black belts who had been in quiet attendance were called up for their competition. Two of the three blacks paired off, and I wondered why, since they were already black belts. I later learned that they were competing for a higher degree of black belt. These higher degrees, once attained, were displayed as subtle white markings on their otherwise solid black belts. I had always wondered why Sensei’s otherwise black belt had a solid white stripe running along the center. He had attained the highest level there was.
Once the two solid black belt competitors had finished their sparring and Sensei had grunted out his “Yosh” for them, the one remaining black belt rose and walked to the center of the mat. It was then I noticed that his belt had small, interlinked, white diamond insignias along its length. And what further surprised me was that he was going to compete with Sensei himself. Apparently, his present rank was below Sensei’s and now he was going for an equal rank.
While I thought the forgoing black belt competition was intriguing to watch, what was to come would forever remain in my memory and would further enhance my feelings of awe and respect for Sensei and for the discipline he’d instilled in me.
As the candidate and Sensei squared off at the center of the mat, the level of anticipation and excitement grew in the little dojo. Everyone’s eyes were glued to the two combatants as they approached and bowed deeply to each other. Sensei’s opponent was a good five inches taller than Sensei, much younger and rock solid—a streak of gray shimmering in his otherwise jet black hair. Next to him Sensei seemed older, balder, and even shorter and rounder than normal.
Without a sound, they began to slowly circle one another—each one in the starting position: crouched, left foot leading, arms out and bent at mid-level with half-closed fists positioned even with their eyes. It suddenly seemed that the little dojo’s space had magically grown and all the sound had been sucked out of the little wooden building.
The candidate made the first move: a lightning fast right fist thrust to Sensei’s chest that was easily swatted away. Sensei’s body seemed to float as he backed away from his foe and set himself up for his planned counter-offensive move.
In a flash, Sensei was in the air—at least five feet high—both legs in blurred motion as he literally flew in the direction of the younger opponent who frantically used upper half-moon blocks to swat away the attack. As Sensei landed soundlessly on the mat he was instantly back in a floor-level crouch. As his opponent attempted to make a hasty flying kick attack, Sensei spun on his axis—legs flying at almost floor level, and took both legs out from under the other man. As he fell clumsily on his back, Sensei was instantly on top of him, one knee locked under the other man’s throat, his clenched fist hovering menacingly over his nose.
It was checkmate. Had the younger man attempted an escape move Sensei would’ve sent his fist into the man’s face shattering his nose.
For what seemed an eternity neither man moved. Finally, Sensei’s body relaxed and in a quiet voice said, “Yosh!”
He removed his fist from the man’s face, backed off, and helped him to his feet.
The dojo burst into applause, and I was dumbfounded at what I had just seen. Throughout my training I had seen Sensei demonstrate flying kicks, but during these demonstrations, his support leg had never left the floor nor had he ever moved this fast. I had grown to believe that he was just too heavy and old to make those kinds of moves. What I saw that day was almost magical.
Both men now approached and stood facing each other—the candidate bowing deeply to Sensei. Sensei also bowed and reached out to shake the other man’s hand. They both walked over to where Sensei had been sitting and he reached under his chair retrieving a black belt with a white stripe down the middle—exactly like his own. Cradling it in both hands and bowing, he held it out to his younger opponent.
I will never forget the feeling of awe and sheer pride that I felt that morning for the little round sensei and his modest dojo. After the competition, he approached me and in halting and broken English congratulated me and expressed his pride at my performance. He told me that I had forever changed his perception of Americans and that he would never forget Fruranku Seenatura Dereonsan.
***
For the rest of my time at the dojo my brown belt opponent never spoke to me again and always tried to avoid becoming my partner whenever we were paired off for no-touch sparring. Because I was now married and was determined to spend as much time as possible with my new wife, I attended class less and less, and finally decided to drop out of my karate classes. Because of my lack of training, I was never able to complete the training required for my black belt. A few weeks after winning my brown belt I stopped attending the dojo altogether.
As I look back at my life, I realize that those months I spent with Sensei at his humble karate dojo instilled in me what I had sorely lacked in my character. Since I’d left home in 1960 I had led a very confused and undisciplined life. It had taken me almost seven years, a broken marriage, countless errors in judgment, and a couple of reassignments thousands of miles apart to finally gain the maturity and inner strength to understand what I needed to do to get my life in order. My training with Sensei had helped me develop a quiet but strong sense of discipline; his lessons on tactics had instilled in me the ability to understand that success in any endeavor depended not only on how cleverly you attacked a problem but also how well you defended yourself if your attack failed.
Consistently plagued with an intense lack of self-esteem since childhood, Sensei’s training helped teach me how to assess problems by using circular strategic thinking rather than trying to attack difficult situations head-on. I also learned that regardless of the complexity and/or size of the problem, I could solve it by first assessing what it was I needed to solve it. Then after formulating a plan, I executed it by pressing forward carefully using patience, determination, and dogged persistence. And lastly, I learned that even when I failed, the positive lessons learned by attempting a seemingly impossible task far outweighed the negative outcomes resulting from the loss. In short, you learn by trying even if you fail in the attempt.
For the first time in my life I felt strong, confident and intensely sure of myself—but most of all I saw who I had become and what I could achieve with my newly-developed inner strength. Suddenly, nothing seemed impossible; my only regret was that I had wasted so many years floundering in self-pity, living only for the day, and letting outside forces negatively affect my life. With my newfound self-reliance, I was eager to face the world and welcome new challenges.
As I entered this new chapter I felt more self-assured than I ever had in my entire life. And more importantly, I truly believed that, given the opportunity, I could successfully complete any endeavor on which I chose to embark.
It was then that I came to the decision that staying in the Air Force could no longer be an option for me. The regimented, political, and extremely dogmatic lifestyle emblematic of military life which I once enjoyed no longer appealed to me; rather, I now craved an environment which would challenge me in new and different ways. Although at this time I had no idea how to get “from here to there”, I understood that I had a little over a year to look for and locate that unknown. Little did I know that Texas, the place where all of this had begun, would end up providing me with not only new and exciting opportunities, but would help put me on a new career path—one from which I would not stray for many years to come.
New Beginnings
One afternoon, a few weeks before Kaz and I were married, we’d been out visiting Shuri Castle—an ancient palace populated by the Ryukyu Kingdom between 1429 and 1879. Largely destroyed during World War II, several walls and most of the lush green palace grounds remained. On the way back to Naha, I noticed that the temperature gauge on my car was rising dangerously high and the engine was beginning to sound strained. I knew I had a small radiator leak but thought I had it under control. Kaz knew where a little Okinawan car repair shop was, so I made a beeline to its location.
After the mechanic checked the car out, he told us that the radiator was shot. In fact, he doubted that I’d even be able to get back to my hooch after dropping Kaz off. When I asked if he could fix it, he replied the radiator was way beyond repair. I would have to have a new one installed.
After deciding that I may as well get a new radiator, the mechanic said that that was also out of the question. He explained that because it was not a Japanese car, there would probably not be any replacement radiators on the island. Further, even if I could find a new one, the water pump and all the hoses would also have to be replaced. He also mentioned that he’d found a leak in the automatic transmission, and given the overall condition of the car, that would probably also have to be replaced. I realized that the cost of all that repair work easily exceeded the entire worth of the car. Asking him for his opinion, he informed me that the car was junk and had pretty much seen its last day. Not seeing any other options, I left the car there and Kaz and I took a sukoshi cab back.
A few days later, after having taken base cabs to and from my work at the ADC, one of my friends suggested I should consider a new line of cars Toyota had just started selling on the island. The model was called the Toyota Sports 800. It was an aerodynamic-looking little two-seater sports car, made mostly of aluminum, weighed 1,279 lbs., and was powered by an 800cc, horizontally opposed two-cylinder air-cooled engine. It had black leatherette bucket seats and came in two colors: red with a removable black Targa lift-off roof panel, which was stowed in the trunk, and silver with the same removable black top. Best of all, it was priced at just over $1,000, and the Naha Air Base Credit Union would finance 100% of its cost. (See pic in Frank’s Blog).
After getting off work, I took a taxi down to Naha to see the car at the Toyota dealership—and it was love at first sight. A week later, after having secured a car loan at the Credit Union, I drove home a brand new little red Sports 800. Many years later I found out that Toyota had only manufactured 3,131 units of this particular car, and more amazingly, I had owned one of only 300 of these that were manufactured with the steering wheel on the left side.
Goodbye Okinawa
In October of 1967, Mika and I were married—twice: A traditional American wedding at the Air Force Chapel on the base with a military chaplain officiating, and on the following day, after entering our names into the Wedding Register at the City Hall in Naha, an Okinawan style reception was held at the Teahouse of the August Moon in downtown Okinawa. This is the same teahouse where the movie of the same name was filmed in 1956, starring Marlon Brando and Glenn Ford.
Mika (I was now regularly calling her Kaz), wore a beautiful white wedding dress and veil for the Chapel wedding, and a gorgeously ornate Japanese wedding kimono, complete with gold and silk threading, for the ceremony at the Teahouse. For the Japanese ceremony, her makeup and kimono—all traditional—took over 6 hours to complete.
I wore a dark suit for the ceremony at the air base, but was completely decked out in a formal “Morning Suit”, tails and all, for the Japanese ceremony. The American wedding was over in a matter of minutes; the pictures afterward taking more time than the whole ceremony itself. The Okinawan one was a whole different matter, the reception lasting deep into the Naha evening, many hours after Kaz and I had departed the festivities in the late afternoon.
We drove away from the tea house that afternoon in my little sports car and spent our honeymoon at a small but beautiful resort hotel located on the northern end of the island. For the first time in many years I was very much in love, and I felt extremely happy.
We settled down in my little hooch, and I continued to work at the ADC while Kaz worked the snack bar at my old barracks. I few weeks later I was notified that I was slated for reassignment stateside, and days later was surprised to discover that my next, and last, posting would be Bergstrom Air Force Base, in Austin, Texas. The location made perfect sense for the Air Force since I’d notified them earlier that I would not be seeking reenlistment at the end of my second tour of duty, but would be requesting full separation from the service. Since they typically paid travel mileage from the separation base to the enlistee’s home of record, Austin—being only a hundred and fifty miles from Houston—made perfect sense for them. At nine cents a mile, they would be paying me a paltry $65 in travel, housing and per diem funds—plus whatever I had accrued in paid vacation leave.
To top everything off, Bergstrom was a TAC base, (Tactical Air Command), and I soon learned that my duties, once I checked in, had less to do with tracking aircraft on radar for air defense while sitting in a nice dark room (what I’d been trained in for the past seven years), and more to do with the delivery, set-up and operations of forward air defense stations in wartime environments out in the battlefield. Specifically, all necessary equipment used for aircraft radar tracking was parachuted in by low flying cargo aircraft, like the C-130 Hercules, and our TAC teams (me), already on the ground just behind combat troops were tasked to find the equipment, set it up, make it operational.
This equipment consisted of huge tents, powerful generators, miles of heavy cabling, monstrous radar scopes, bays of communications equipment, and large wooden cases containing water and MREs (meals ready to eat). To say I was less than enthused to learn how to set up and operate all these apparatus would be a huge understatement.
I was now a staff sergeant so not only was I expected to be proficient in the actual set-up and operation, I was placed in charge of a crew of seven airmen who were to do the actual labor while I supervised and ensured that all was well. Lovely.
I learned all this information from another sergeant who had just arrived at the ADC in Naha from the very base I was going to. “I was excited when I learned I was leaving Bergstrom to come to Okinawa.” He told me one afternoon during a coffee break. “Although I hated to leave my family due to the lack of base housing here at Naha, I was more than willing to accept that small inconvenience just to get out of Bergstrom and leave that shitty job.” I was not looking forward to my assignment.
Kaz and I left Okinawa in January of 1968, and flew to Travis Air Force Base in Oakland, California after which we took a shuttle bus to San Francisco to pick up a PSA flight to Los Angeles. Once there, we commissioned a taxi to drive us to San Pedro, where we picked up our little sports car which we’d shipped from Okinawa a few weeks earlier. We then began the long drive to Texas, making a visit to my parents’ home in Houston before departing to Bergstrom AFB just outside of Austin, where I’d serve my last eleven months in the Air Force.
We drove for three days, but unlike my previous car trips, this one was actually pleasant. Although our car was very small, the seats were extremely comfortable and the ride surprisingly smooth. Despite the short wheelbase, the car seemed to absorb most of the rough patches of highway we occasionally came upon, and I was pleasantly surprised that the little two-cylinder engine was more than up to the challenge when crossing over mountains. It had a four-speed manual transmission and when going up steep grade I found that all I had to do was shift down into third gear to crest the grade. What was really phenomenal was that the car’s little 800cc engine averaged over sixty miles a gallon on regular gas. This made our trip very economical.
Because we were not in any particular hurry when we left California, we decided that we’d just drive casually, keeping the speedometer at a steady 65mph, and stop whenever we wanted to. This made the trip pleasant and stress-free. And again, unlike my previous trips, we stopped and spent the night at small hotels, motels, or motor inns we saw along the road at the end of the day.
The car had a very good heater but no air conditioning, so before I shipped the car from Okinawa I purchased a small four-inch rotating fan at an Okinawan auto parts store and installed it just behind and between the two passenger seats. I ran the power cord under the driver’s seat and up behind the instrument panel where I tapped a power source. With a little ON/OFF/ROTATE switch just under the fan blades, the fan kept us very comfortable throughout the trip.
Because I’d traveled this part of the country several times before, I sometimes grew weary of the landscape. But for Kaz, it was a wonder. Although while growing up she’d visited Japan several times, I don’t believe that she had seen this much land all at one time, so the changing scenery kept her constant attention. From congested, traffic-filled freeways in California, to rolling miles of beige sand, red boulders, and purple-hued mountains as far as the eye could see; dust-devils twisting and hopping along the parched desert earth; giant white anvil-topped thunderstorms bubbling up along the distant horizon; and, endless miles of white-striped black-topped ribbon-like highways, the scenery must’ve filled her mind with awe and wonder.
The sights, sounds, and smells that I’d somehow missed during those long treacherous road trips in the past, I was now experiencing to the fullest. I was older, my senses had matured, and I was at peace with myself. Further, I was now with someone who had come into my life at a time when I really needed some stability, and who was willing to leave her home and family and travel thousands of miles from everything she’d ever known—putting her absolute trust in me and my ability to make her happy. My heart swelled with pride and love, for as our little car ate up the miles, it was bringing us closer to what I truly believed was a bright and fruitful future.
On that long trip, I did a lot of thinking—mostly about the past—and I promised myself that I would work hard every day to make our dreams come true and avoid the pitfalls that had derailed my previous marriage. I replayed our courtship in my mind, beginning from our first meeting at the snack bar all the way to the evening when Kaz told me that I’d have to meet her parents and ask them for her hand in marriage.
I prepared myself for the worst, but everything ended up turning out OK. Well…there was that one little hitch, when her mother looked at me—her eyes filling with tears—and said loudly in English: “YOU STEAL MY DAUGHTER!!” I don’t think I said anything—I was so shocked. I thought she couldn’t speak English. By the time the sake was passed around and toasts were made, everyone at the table seemed to finally accept that my intentions were honest.
Now, on the way to Texas I didn’t know what I would be doing in a year, but whatever it was I was determined that I would be successful. What I didn’t know was that regardless of all our efforts to attain that success and happiness, someone very close to me would end up causing Kaz and me, irreparable harm.
To be continued…
