Читать книгу Complete Aikido. Aikido Kyohan: The Definitive Guide to the Way of Harmony онлайн

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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).