Complete Aikido. Christopher Watson G.

      We all have a point where our earliest memories begin. For most, it is perhaps our third or fourth year; for others, it might be earlier, recollection triggered by some momentous event that burns itself into our consciousness. For Suenaka, his earliest memories are of December 8, 1941, when he and his family were returning home from an outing and suddenly the skies over Honolulu were filled with Japanese Zero fighter planes dancing with American aircraft during the attack on Pearl Harbor. Though just eighteen months old, his memories sketchy at best, Suenaka can recall the day. One image stands out in his mind—the sound of machine gun fire as he watched from a bunker two planes engaged in a dogfight overhead. “For some reason, I remember seeing fireballs. It’s something a person doesn’t forget.”

      It might have been this unforgettable early glimpse of air combat that led Suenaka to investigate becoming an Air Force fighter pilot. However, his initial enthusiasm was cooled somewhat by the gradual realization of the lengthy study necessary to attain that goal. First, he would need a college degree. Then, he would attend Officer’s Preparatory School. And then, if he made it that far, he would move on to actual pilot training. Nevertheless, he was determined to give it a shot.

      After completing boot camp at Lackland Air Base in San Antonio, Texas, in December 1958, electrician and Airman 3rd Class Roy Suenaka was assigned to Mather Air Force Base, the ATC (Air Training Command) and SAC (Strategic Air Command) base in Sacramento, California. After enrolling in Sacramento College to study electrical engineering, top priority was finding a place to practice martial arts. Just a few months after arrival and with Yamamoto Sensei’s blessing, Suenaka began teaching aikido at the Mather Air Base gym. He also landed a part-time job with the San Juan school district teaching judo, plus some aikido, at Encino High School two hours a day, three days a week, for which he was paid the handsome sum of ten dollars an hour. For a young man in the early 1960’s, it was excellent money, especially since the Air Force already paid for his housing and medical care on top of his base salary.

      As aikido was in its infant stage in the United States, Suenaka’s aikido classes, modest though they were, made him one of the first people to teach organized aikido on the U.S. mainland. While it seems logical that there may have been other aikidoka who opened earlier schools on the mainland, probably U.S. servicemen who began their studies in Japan, documentation is scarce. Eugene Combs, who was introduced to Yoshinkan aikido at the Army’s Camp Drake outside Tokyo in 1955, opened the American School of Aikido in Lawndale, California in 1956, making him one of the first to teach the art on the U.S. mainland. In May of 1953, about four months after his initial arrival in Hawaii, Koichi Tohei traveled to San Jose, California to conduct an aikido demonstration there, while Kenji Tomiki traveled to the U.S. mainland one month later at the invitation of the U.S. Air Force (more on this later). However, these latter two events were demonstrations only. Besides Combs, the first wave of aikidoka to teach on the mainland were born of Koichi Tohei’s 1953 Hawaiian visit, and included not only Suenaka, but Tokuji Hirata, who began teaching aikido in San Diego around the same time Suenaka arrived in Sacramento, and Isao Takahashi, who moved to Los Angeles in 1959, becoming chief instructor at the Los Angeles Aikikai. Other Hawaiian aikidoka who subsequently emigrated to the mainland include Roderick Kobayashi, Clem Yoshida, Harry Ishisaka (who commenced his aikido study after moving to Southern California), and Ben Sekishiro, all of whom commenced their aikido studies after Suenaka’s departure from Hawaii (with the exception of Kobayashi, who began his study in 1957).

      Much like his father, Suenaka took every opportunity he could to investigate and, in some cases, study as many different arts offered in the area as he could. In particular, while in Sacramento, Suenaka developed a brief friendship with noted tang soo do instructor Mariano “Cisco” Estioko, and occasionally studied with him on an informal basis as time allowed. Studying different arts, no matter how briefly, whenever the opportunity presented itself was a conscious practice for Suenaka, meant to provide him with as broad a martial reference base as possible. Just as his street-fighting experience, both during his youth in Hawaii and his later days as a serviceman in Japan and Okinawa, provided him with “real world” proofs for his primary disciplines of aikido and karate, Suenaka’s constant study of other systems and styles enabled him to judge with authority the worth of a given technique, to say with authority, “This might work in this situation, but not in that one,” or “This technique from style A could be countered with this technique from style B.” It is due in large part to his extensive experience that Suenaka Sensei later came to discount so-called “advanced” techniques, regardless of system (including aikido), modifying or casting aside those techniques vulnerable to kaeshi (countering) and concentrating instead on proven fundamental methods. To him, the simpler and more direct a technique, the broader its potential applications and the fewer the chances for failure. It is out of this conviction that one of Suenaka Sensei’s guiding philosophies was born: “Advanced techniques are merely the basics performed better.”

      In addition to teaching in Sacramento, Suenaka gave several demonstrations in the city and surrounding area, including one in San Francisco’s Veteran’s Hospital. It may have been at one of these demonstrations that Suenaka came to the attention of actor and producer Ben Alexander, perhaps best-remembered by most as Sgt. Frank Smith in the early seasons of the Dragnet television series. Alexander hosted a local television talent show. One day, Suenaka received in the mail an invitation to appear on the show to discuss this new and strange martial art, aikido. The appearance went well, and several months later, Suenaka received another invitation to appear on the program, this time to demonstrate aikido technique.

      Suenaka opted to perform the demonstration with his uke (demonstration partner) using a “live” (or sharp) blade, a bayonet from an Ml Garand (minus the rifle, of course). After the first few techniques, Suenaka’s uke came charging in with a munetsuki attack (a thrust to the belly). Suenaka turned to the side, preparing to execute kote-gaeshi (a wrist-cutting throw). The uke, however, anticipating what Suenaka Sensei was about to do, “choked” his attack, changing the angle and following Suenaka’s turn, thrusting the foot-long blade full-speed directly at Suenaka’s abdomen. Suenaka was able to pivot out of the way of the altered thrust, though just barely—the blade penetrated his gi, barely missing his flesh as Suenaka captured the uke’s wrist and, reflexively, delivered a kote-gaeshi so powerful, the wrist was fractured. The uke collapsed to the floor, writhing in pain, the studio audience burst into wild applause, and Alexander quickly cut to a commercial, ending the demonstration. Suenaka was not invited back. Though gratified that his training saved his life, Suenaka is not proud of the incident, stating: “We were young.”

      In late 1960, twenty year-old Suenaka reluctantly gave up his dreams of becoming a pilot, his early fervor quelled by the long years of study necessary to achieve that goal. More significantly, he was realizing that the time necessary to achieve that goal was time he would much rather spend furthering his martial education. More and more, he found himself entertaining thoughts of traveling to Japan, to immerse himself in its rich martial tradition. However, he felt the likelihood of someone as low on the ladder as he receiving such a plum assignment was slim, at best. As luck would have it, however, around the same time Suenaka was beginning to have second thoughts about pilot school, Air Force SAC Commander General Curtis LeMay happened to visit Mather, one of many stops on a tour of North American SAC bases. Suenaka was in one of the base’s flight simulator rooms, inspecting the equipment, when LeMay popped in for an unannounced, informal inspection.

      At the time, LeMay, himself an experienced judoka, was actively promoting and encouraging martial arts study for Air Force personnel (the Air Force invitation extended to Tomiki Sensei, mentioned earlier, was the result of this program). He and Suenaka managed a moment or two