My first experience doing aikido was in fourth grade. There was a Vietnamese guy in Lubbock, Texas, who was teaching. I did it for a couple of months. I got good at taking falls. I was the only kid in a group of these adult students. But then the TV show, Shogun, came out. I didn’t want to go to aikido. I wanted to stay home and watch Shogun. My dad said, “Well, if you stay home and watch Shogun, everyone else will advance in aikido, and you’ll miss out.” So that was it. Shogun stopped my aikido career in the fourth grade.
In college, I had a friend who practiced aikido. A Japanese guy from Canada, Hiroki “Rocky” Izumi was the instructor. He was a bit eccentric. He wore a cowboy hat and cowboy boots with his hakama. He invited Tohei sensei from Chicago to come down to teach a seminar. I remember being on the mat; everyone was chattering, and all of sudden the mood just got quiet. I wondered, “What’s going on?” And then this little Japanese man walked onto the mat. And for some reason, I was intrigued. I had always liked martial arts. I liked Bruce Lee. Bruce Lee was my connection to something. I was the quiet kid. I had always wanted the student-teacher relationship. All of a sudden, there was this little man with this certain kind of authority, and I thought, “I like this.” Tohei Sensei taught class. He spoke broken English. He was very serious. He took aikido very seriously.
I found out later that he was a kamikaze pilot during World War 2. When he trained to become a kamikaze pilot, his family had a ceremony to say goodbye to him. It was like a funeral for him. They considered him dead. But the war ended before he flew his mission. When he went home, his family had already written him off. They didn’t really acknowledge him anymore. But he found aikido, and he took it to heart.
His seriousness appealed to me. It gave meaning. It made sense. It had purpose. When you’re an aikido instructor, there’s no clear product. But there’s a meaning. And he took it to the highest level. It gave him purpose.
As an immigrant kid, I never felt a part of U.S. society, but aikido gave me a reason, a purpose. Tohei sensei made it clear that aikido is not Japanese culture; it is martial arts culture. What matters is the culture of the dojo. He made me feel like even though I’m not Japanese, I could set foot onto his mat.