aloha

Please visit...

'HISTORY OF MARTIAL ARTS IN HAWAII'
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/historyofmartialartsinhawaii/

Every pic has captions telling about it and the RICH culture and history of
martial arts in Hawaii. There is something for everyone...BOXING, WRESTLING,
JUDO, JIU-JITSU, AIKIDO, KENPO, KARATE, KUNG FU, KALI/ESCRIMA/ARNIS, KAJUKENBO,
LUA, SUMO...

Welcome to our new group!

For those of you that were already a member of the

BJ PENN FAN CLUB http://groups.yahoo.com/group/babyjaypennfanclub/

, you can see we moved all of our martial arts, historical photo
albums to this new group.

For those of you that are new...

you can enjoy learning about the rich martial arts culture and
history of Hawai`i by reading the captions of each photo in our
Photos section.
There's an album for each different type of fighting art.

Everyone should be able to find pleasure from reading about where much of
America's martial arts 'roots' started.

Being made up of mostly an Asian culture, Hawai`i was a
hotbed/melting-pot of 'Eastern' philosophical ideas and teachings.
Hawaii's largest Asian communities being Chinese, Japanese,
Okinawan and Filipino, is why you'll find mostly a mixture of
fighting styles from these cultures. Being part of America meant
that they were exposed to arts such as Western Boxing and wrestling as well. And
most of them also have a background in the native Hawaiian art of Lua.

There are also considerable populations of Portuguese & Spanish, as well as,
several different pacific island peoples.

These have all blended together into what some locals have
affectionately termed as a "chop suey" culture. I've even heard
Filipinos call it a "halo-halo"(mix-mix), culture...referring to a
delicious Filipino type of milk shake were you mix together all the sweet fruits
and flavors before enjoying it. That seems to me to be a very good way to
describe Hawaii's unique way of life and people!

With such diversity, one can only imagine how many different
fighting styles must have been taught on any one island!?

Men like Seishiro "Henry" Okazaki, who came from a very strict Japanese
background filled with discipline and codes of honor and was often restrictive
in it's allowance of foreigners to be taught it's secret ways and martial arts.

But, he, and many other men like him, were in a place that was
filled with diversity of races and ethnicity.
It was men like Okazaki, Hawaiian-born James Masayoshi Mitose & William
K.S.Chow that first taught the Asian arts to foriegners.

These three men could really be considered the 'FATHERS' of
Hawaiian/American martial arts!

It was then their students that took what they had learned and
introduced it to the rest of America when they left Hawaii and came to the
mainland...

...men like Ed Parker, Adriano Emperado, Wally Jay, Al
Dacascos, Samuel Alama Kuoha, and so many others.

If you've ever been a student of KENPO/KEMPO or JUDO/JU-JUTSU(and their many
off-shoots), then you should be thankful for the efforts of these early, martial
art's pioneers of Hawai`l.

Any comments and contributions are very welcome!

mahalo nui loa

braddah shano

"He aikane, he punana na ke onaona."
A friend, a nest of fragrance.
(Sweet indeed is a good friend.)











---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]