The Rise of American Kenpo

As I saw it
Part III
The Early Years
by
Will Tracy 2/21/96
updated 1/17/98
Ed Parker was one of the most personable and likable people I have ever met.
He made friends wherever he went, and some of those friendships lasted all his
life. But he also rubbed many people the wrong way and made as many
enemies as he made friends. When he died in December 1990, he left a house
divided and his organization quickly split into feuding factions. Why? We can
also ask why every one of Ed's original Pasadena Black Belts left him; why not
one of his pre 1965 Black Belts stayed with him, and why most of his later
Black Belts abandoned him? The answers are not easy, as they lie in the nature
of Ed Parker. It was at Brigham Young University that Ed spun the threads
which he would weave into the patterns of his life. It was also at BYU that Ed
learned "how" to teach. He had learned "what to teach" from Chow, but he had
seen the failures of too many kenpo clubs to follow the rough and tumble
"street fighter" methods taught in Hawaii. Instead, he applied the teaching
principles he learned at what was at the time, one of the finest teacher colleges
in the country. But when he left Utah, he left his students behind, to be
forgotten, it would seem, for nearly seven years. Some were so bitter that they
completely abandoned Ed. On the other side were Ed's lasting friendship. One
of which was made in 1956 with Terry Robinson who was the physical director
at the Beverly Wilshire Health Club. Terry opened the door for Ed, but it was
Joe Hyams who led Ed through the door of success and dragged him into fame.
With the exceptions of Ed's fateful meeting with Elvis Presley, who introduced
Ed to Nick Adams, I can honestly say, ever major connection Ed made in
Hollywood, was made through Joe Hyams. I was impressed with Joe the first
time I met him in 1957, and nearly 40 years later, I am still impressed with him.
Joe and I moved in the same circles, and it never ceased to amaze me that the
friends I would make were already Joe's friends. I recall having lunch with Joe
one day, when my good friend, Bronislau Kaper came in the restaurant with
Bob Crane. I motioned for Bronny to have lunch with us, and introduce him to
Joe. What I didn't know is, it was Bronny Kaper who had introduced Joe to Ed
Parker. Thirty years later, my good friend Bong Soo Han asked me to come to
his school to meet a very important friend of his. It was Joe Hyams. Joe is such
a fascinating person that I may devote an entire article to him in the future. But
back to the beginning. My brother, Jim, and I began training with Ed at his
Pasadena studio in 1957. It was always a "studio," never a school, even though
it was a converted garage which was across the street and a few blocks from the
present Pasadena Ed Parker Studio. The Studio was still called a dojo at that
time, and was impressive with tatami mats and striking devices. I had not seen
such a elaborate dojo even in Japan. As a side bar, about a year later, Ed had
some of his beginning students clean the plastic covers on the mats. They used
too much water. The mats got wet and rotted. He replaced them at a cost of
$1,200. (Now who got the original mans and new ones for him is a secret
known only to Ed's closest friends. It was a woman who was living in Japan
with her young son and daughter along with her parents who were with the
American Embassy there. I met the boy with Ed in 1964.) Ed had several high
ranked students in Utah, but he never spoke of them, and only a few of us even
knew they existed, let alone who they were. Jimmy Ibrao was Ed's top student,
and at the time, he was still a brown belt. But Jimmy would soon become Ed's
first black belt, earning his Shodan in nine months, something no other student
before or after would ever accomplish. Ibrao, at 5' 10", was a natural and a
spectacular athlete played professional basketball, and absorbed everything Ed
taught him. How good was Jimmy Ibrao? A year or two before his death, Ed
was telling me what a great athlete Jeff Speakman was, and how he was the
best student he had ever had. "Better that Jimmy Ibrao?" I asked him. I knew
this hit a nerve, because Jimmy had left Ed in 1961, when Jimmy his other
students went with James Wing Woo. Ed quickly shot back, "No doubt," he
said with the serious "Parker frown," "Jeff Speakman is the second best student
I ever taught!" Ed gave my brother, Jim, and me our first lesson, personally, in
private, before our first group class. Usually one of Ed's advanced students
taught the beginners the basics before they went into a group, but Ed took a
liking to Jim and me. We were, like Ed, Mormons, and unlike his other
students, I had studied Judo and Muduk for two years while in the Army in
Japan and Korea, and I had some Tai Chi training. Ed also appreciated the fact
that I had enough respect for the Japanese and Koreans to have learned their
languages well enough to converse. I remember the first time I met Ed at his
studio. When he told me his style was kenpo, I asked if it was Japanese or
Korean. I was familiar with the Japanese word, kenpo, which was pronounced
kempo, and I had flown in and out of Kenpo Airport in Korea almost every
week for over a year. When Ed told me kenpo was Chinese, I assumed that the
word was pronounced differently in that language. Two years later, when I
went to Hawaii to study with Professor Chow, I discovered that he pronounced
the word, "kempo," the way it is pronounced in Japanese. Professor Chow,
however, wrote, or rather allowed the word to be written either way, and he
was very grateful to me for telling him the word was spelled differently than it
was pronounced. Professor Chow readily admitted that he had never gone
beyond the sixth grade in school, but always liked to learn. Ed was a Shodan in
Judo before he began training in kenpo, and mat work, falling and rolling took
up the first half of the group class. Mat work followed warm ups, which were
followed by grappling (more mat work). During the last ten to fifteen minutes
of each class, break away techniques (grab arts) were taught. There was no
difference in the Kenpo falls and those I had practiced in Japan and, as in Judo,
we wore Judogis. However, Ed taught Jim and me privately for half an hour
before each class, and he started a day class in which we were the only
students. As we would discover, only Mormons and influential people were
given private lessons by Ed, personally - and the others had to pay. A few
weeks later, my older brother, Al, was released from the Air Force, and joined
us. His first lesson was taught by Gary Orchard, who was a Mormon and one of
Ed's advanced students. After his first private lesson, Ed began teaching the
three of us together. As we would discover some months later, Ed was
preparing my brothers and me to teach private lessons to his influential
Hollywood students. One of the first technique Ed taught Jim and me was a
defense against a left jab. It consists of making a small circular movement with
the right hand to deflect the jab and throw the attacker off balance; followed by
a larger circular movement to rake a back knuckle across the bridge of the nose,
and a larger circle to hit the attackers jaw with a sandwiched elbow. I mention
this, because these were three completely circular movements, going from a
small, to wider and even wider circles, and this was taught in 1957. Professor
Chow taught the same technique to his more advanced students, and Ed would
later claim that Chow had put the circular movements into kenpo. However,
this was the same move Fusae Oshita taught me; and in 1961, when Ed and I
went to visit James Mitose's at his home, which was in Los Angeles not far
from Pasadena, Mitose showed me this same technique—with the same circular
movements. There were no forms or katas no standardized requirement of
promotion in Ed's system in 1957. When a student was no longer a beginner, he
moved into the intermediate class. Ed awarded a half inch brown stripe which
was worn on the tip of the white belt for advanced students and a second brown
tip for the more advanced white belts. After two brown tips the student
advanced to Sankyu (third degree brown belt), then Nikyu (second brown),
then to Ikkyu (first degree brown belt), and finally Shodan (first degree black
belt). My brothers and I wrote down every technique we learned immediately
after each session with Ed and after each class. When we got home we put the
new moves on 8mm film. While most of Ed's students came in once or twice a
week, we were there for every class, and soon took over teaching students their
first lesson before going into class, and then the beginning classes. Soon we
were running the studio. In 1959, Ed went back to Hawaii, leaving the studio in
the hands of my brothers. The advanced class were taught by Jimmy Ibrao and
Rich Montgomery, who would soon be promoted to Shodan. Before Ed left, the
school was making $500-600 a month. The first month receipts under Tracy
management the school broke the $1,000 mark. (That's equivalent to about
$10,000 in today's money) The school never went under that the entire time
Parker was gone, which was 9 months. However, Ed only spent about six
weeks of that time in Hawaii, and upon his return, once a week Al would take
the receipts to Ed's house, go over the books, and then he would teach my
brothers for two to three hours. Ed had told everyone that he was going to
Hawaii to receive his fifth degree black belt from Chow. Only my brothers and
I knew he was going to ask Chow to promote him to 3rd degree black belt. I
had been in Hawaii about 9 months when Ed arrived, and Chow had given
every indication he would promote Ed. What I didn't know, is Chow had not
given Ed his Shodan yet, and that is what Chow meant by promoting him. Ed
was unsuccessful in getting the promotion and he was bitter with Chow when
he returned. Parker was not just bitter over not getting promoted, he had
planned on picking up new material from the Professor. Chow, however, taught
him for three week and then refused to teach him any more. The fact was, as
Professor Chow told me, he didn't have anything more he could teach Ed.
Before I left for Hawaii, Ed taught my brothers and me in his back yard, and
confided that he was running out of material to teach. He had written down all
of the techniques and kept them in a card file. Before each advanced class Ed
would go to his file and choose the techniques he would teach that night. We
copied all of Ed's card file and went over the techniques he had taught. He was
surprised when we told him that most of the students had never seen most of
the moves. He could recycle the techniques and keep teaching for another three
years before his students would have gone through the entire system. But Ed
had a personal need to keep learning and have new material to teach. He just
didn't want anyone to know he was doing it. When Al suggested that I go to
Hawaii and study with Chow, Ed jumped at the idea. He even allowed me to
keep the money for the private lessons I was teaching so I could pay for the
trip. As I already mentioned, Chow refused to accept me as a student at first
because I was Ed's student. I knew there were bad feeling between them, but I
figured I could work around that. Masaichi Oshiro had been Chow's head
instructor, and was in fact Ed's instructor for most of Chow's classes. He was
preparing to go to Japan to study under Yamaguchi, and was happy to accept
me as a student. He introduced me to another kenpo instructor, who in turn
introduced me to Fusae Oshita. I lived with trained with Master Oshita for the
rest of the year. Professor Chow taught his classes differently from the way Ed
taught. Most of our classes were held in the public park where often students
would just happen to see us and join in. There was a more vigorous work out,
and far more attention was given to body alignment for maximum speed and
power. Professor Chow had his own way of doing the techniques. After all Ed
Parker was 6'2" and weighed 220 pounds. Professor chow was 5' and weighed
130 pounds. And where Ed Parker was fast and powerful, Professor Chow was
even faster and even more powerful. There was another difference of which I
was recently reminded by one of Professor Chow's students. Professor Chow
taught from the heart. I had previously stated that Professor Chow "really didn't
have many new techniques to teach", and "There was no question that Ed had
learned Chow's complete system". These were meant relatively. I had learned
nearly 700 kenpo techniques from Ed Parker. I learn about 20 new techniques
from Chow, the rest I learned from Oshita. I would then show the techniques to
Chow and he would show me how he did them. In total I learned about 70 new
techniques, and over 140 new variations to techniques I already knew. I also
learned 50 joint locks and restraints that Ed Parker did not know. But these I
considered minor additions, relative to what I knew and what I had learned.
However what I considered to be as an insignificant number of techniques,
happens to be more techniques than are contained in all of American Kenpo
today. I returned to Pasadena in January, 1960, after having been promoted to
Ikkyu, and Ed had mixed emotions when I told him I had gone over every
technique he had taught me with Professor Chow, and there were only a few
different techniques. What was new, however, were the kicks I learned from
Oshita. I find it interesting that those who now claim to have learned the
Kosho-ryu system from James Mitose have never heard of Oshita. Yet Mitose
has over 60 photographs of Oshita in his book, and no one it seems ever asked
who this black belt was. Ed decided that the way to learn new techniques was
not with Professor Chow, but in kung fu forms, and Ed wanted me to go to San
Francisco to study kung fu. He didn't want to learn the kosho-kenpo forms
because they were too Japanese, and he wanted something the Japanese did not
have. Ed had another reason for staying away from his studio for so long in
1959. First, he was writing his Book, Kenpo Karate, and second, he was
planning his strategy for opening a second school. There were several reasons
for the new school, the most obvious of which was to expand. After all, Ed
Parker's Studio in Pasadena was the second actual school in the United States
where only kenpo was taught. (Paul Pung had opened the first kenpo studio in
San Francisco in 1953.) But Ed was not ready to expand. His only trained
instructors were the Tracy brothers, who were still brown belts, and none of his
Black Belts liked to teach, nor did his Black Belts know how to teach well
enough to attract and keep students. Ed told his Black Belts he was giving them
their own school, but the real reason had little to do with that. Professor Chow
had refused to promote Ed, because Ed had given him neither the recognition
nor the money Professor Chow thought he deserved. To appease Professor
Chow, Ed promised to open a second school, and share the profits with him 50-
50. Ed had hoped his book, which came out in 1960, would be a best seller. It
wasn't. It did, however shake up many of his students. The book showed 62 self
defense techniques, and most of his students thought Ed had shown everything
there was to kenpo. These were the techniques my brothers and I taught in the
beginning and intermediate classes, and it was all they knew. With the book
out, Al convinced Ed, that the first brown tip should be awarded only to
students who knew all of the techniques. This was the beginning of a belt
standard in Kenpo. During this period Ed's interest was in trying to promote his
book, and he had no real interest in the new school. Al Tracy, Ike Roman, and
the other advanced students got the building on La Cienega Blvd. and
remodeled it. The problem was, only my brothers were prepared to teach full
time, so Ed planned on taking the following year to prepare his Black Belts to
run the second school. About this time Robert Tries criticized Ed, saying kenpo
wasn't an art, it was just a fighting style which didn't have any katas. (Tries'
students would later claim Tries was in fact a kenpo master-he wasn't) Parker
knew Mitose had katas, but he didn't want to learn anything from Mitose. Ed
had always told his students that his style of kenpo was Chinese. (Later Ed
would invent the fiction that Chow had learned Kung Fu from his father and
uncle.) Several of Professor Chow's Black Belts would make the same claim,
but that is something Chow denied at first. But he too would succumb to the
lure of fiction to give his new system antiquity. The denials, however, only
made it appear that Professor Chow was concealing his actual training. One
thing was certain, however, in those days Parker seldom even mentioned
Mitose except to say that he was Professor Chow's instructor. Ed had little
respect for either Mitose or his system, but he feared the man. It wasn't a fear of
one fighting man for another. Mitose was living near Pasadena at the time and
Ed didn't want his students to know Chow's instructor was so close at hand,
especially since Ed had run out of material to teach. But Parker feared Mitose
even more because Mitose had dangerous religious ideas. Unlike Chow and
Parker, Mitose was not a Mormon. This alone was enough for Ed to distrust
Mitose. But there was more. Mitose was also a minister—of a very
questionable religion—and that made Mitose someone Parker would mistrust
and avoid if possible. When Parker introduced me to Mitose a few days after I
returned to California in October, 1961, he made me promise not to tell anyone
who Mitose was, or where he lived. He not only didn't want anyone to know
about Mitose, he didn't want anyone to know he was associating with him. I
thought this was rather silly, since I lived with Mitose's family in Hawaii. The
purpose for this secret meeting was to talk about Mitose's desire to create a
Temple of Kenpo, where people could come to pay their respects to the
founders of kenpo (and pay), to worship (and pay), and train (and pay). Parker
knew it would bring in a lot of money, but a "temple" run by Mitose was a
dangerous idea. Temples are a very sacred thing with Mormons, and Ed didn't
feel comfortable talking to others about his religious beliefs. He needed me to
explain why a Kenpo Temple was not possible, without offending Mitose.
What Ed wanted was to see if there was some other way to make the plan work
without involving Mitose. Nothing would come of that, but it did give rise to
Ed Parker getting his promotion to San dan. A couple of months later, Ed
introduced me to Paul Twitchell, whom Ed considered to be even more
dangerous than Mitose. Twitchell had come to Ed looking for information on
oriental martial arts and religion. His ideas both bothered and frightened Ed. As
far as Ed was concerned, Twitchell was not someone he wanted as an enemy,
but he didn't want to be connected with him in any way. This time Ed used me
to explain Mormon beliefs and the hierarchy of the Mormon Church
government and organization to Twitchell. That way, Parker, who had
surrounded himself with Mormons, would be insulated from "bad ideas." And
as far as Ed was concerned, Twitchell had bad ideas. Ed told me, that when
Twitchell first came to him, his first thought was to get Twitchell together with
Mitose, so the two would go off and do the "devil's work," together and leave
him alone. I made the introduction and Mitose saw in Twitchell the man he was
looking for. After the first meeting Mitose told me Twitchell was the perfect
man to head a new religious organization which would blend Oriental
philosophy with his ideas. He was right, and that is exactly what Twitchell did.
But not with Mitose. After many meeting over the next two year, in which it
was impossible to tell where Mitose's ideas began and Twitchell's left off,
Twitchell walked away and began laying the foundation for his own religion.
It's hierarchy would be based almost entirely on what Mitose and he had
discussed. The new religion would be a blend of Hindu-Buddhist theology,
Mormon doctrine and everything Twitchell had imagined. I had always
believed, and told Mitose after Twitchell just stopped coming to Los Angeles,
that he and Twitchell might have founded their own religion if he had not been
so opposed the Hindu theology. The two men thought very much alike. Both
were devious and didn't let the left hand know what the right hand was doing.
And, as it turned out, both were using the other to gain what each wanted -- But
what they wanted, just didn't include the other. Suffice it to say that Parker was
afraid of anything that would shake his already shaky Mormon faith. How
shaky was his faith? Let's just say Ed didn't always believe in all of the
Mormon doctrine. Parker would later fall under the spell of an apostate
Mormon cult, and it would be Mills Crenshaw who prevented him from
abandoning everything to follow its "false prophet" as many of Ed's students
Mormon students would do. The criticism of Ed Parker and kenpo by Robert
Tries in 1960, hit home and it annoyed Ed that someone would point out the
truth. Parker was desperate. I was not in Pasadena and would not be back for
over a year. So Ed took several of his high ranking belts, including James Ibrao
and John McSweeney, along with actor Rick Jason, to San Francisco with the
specific intent of learning some of the Chinese systems. Parker was well
received by Professor T.Y. Wong who introduced him and his students to
Jimmy Lee. Choi Li Fat master, Boon Low, was equally cordial toward Parker
and introduced him to several Chinese herbalists and doctors. It was during this
1960 Chinatown visit that Parker met Jimmy Wing Woo. Jimmy Wing Woo
had studied kung fu in China for twelve years, but he didn't have a school. He
taught at other schools and was one of the most respected Tai Chi masters in
San Francisco. He was exactly what Parker thought he needed, and Parker was
exactly what Woo was looking for. Ed made several trips to San Francisco after
that, and it was not long before he moved Woo down to Pasadena where he
stayed at Ed's house. For the next eleven month Ed and Woo worked together
on Ed's book, Chinese Kenpo. Professor Wong would later tell me that during
Ed's visit with him, Ed Parker had been very impress with Wong's own book he
was writing "Chinese Karate Kung-Fu" (Pictures of Parker and his students
appear in the book which came out later that year) and Ed questioned Wong at
length on the ten line and double "ten" line. Ed was excited when he called me
from San Francisco to tell me what he learned, and he would tell me later that
he had instinctively known the principle of the ten line all along, but it was on
his visit to San Francisco that it was all made clear. In Chinese, the number 10
is written with one vertical line, which is "crossed" in the middle with a
horizontal line. The double ten line is a cross (ten) with another cross (ten) set
diagonally. Professor Wong drew the double ten lines as an octagon, but Parker
was becoming obsessed with the circle, and drew a circle around the double ten
line, making it into a compass. I remember how Ed's excitement turned to
disappointment when he called to tell me he had discovered the hidden symbol
of double ten line which was the compass of Mormon temple ceremony, and I
told him that the compass of the temple was the architects compass, not the
directional compass. Ed called me a few months later to tell me that he had
discovered that his design incorporated both a directional and architect's
compasses. This point in Ed Parker's career marked the beginning of what
would become known as Traditional Kenpo, and it was the beginning of the
end for the Original Kenpo which was taught by Ed Parker from the beginning.

The response to these first three parts of this series has been overwhelmingly
positive. However, several American kenpo black belts have made the criticism
that what I have written does not hold Ed Parker in the light of a Kenpo Master.
I disagree. Each Kenpo Master was or is human with human frailties as well as
human strengths. It would appear that they believe, when the legend dies you
print the legend, which with the passage of time, will turn lies into history. This
is not the Way of kenpo. It is, however, the American kenpo way.
Shortly before his death, Professor Chow asked me to write a book about
the origin of kenpo in Hawaii. He did not want the world to forget that
kenpo had its origin in China, nor did he want the world to believe that
kenpo was a mock dance of a hundred newly invented forms.
Unfortunately, Professor Chow died before we could get beyond the
preliminary ideas for the book.
There is one thing of which the black belts of American Kenpo have
convinced me, however. None of them has any knowledge of what led
Ed Parker to develop his new system, other than that which Ed has
written or which is regurgitated by those who make their money off Ed
Parker's system. To them, "Master Parker" made the a metaphysical leap
to the sublime true art. But what is being taught in that system is
diametrically opposed to what Miyamoto Musashi wrote over 300 years
ago.
The ignorance and lack of knowledge of the Way of kenpo has
convinced me that those who claim to know Ed's system are undeserving
of such knowledge, and I don't believe that such information should be
available to them. After all, if the Black Belts of American Kenpo don't
know how their system came into existence, then Ed Parker never
wanted them to know, and I shouldn't be the one to tell them. That
knowledge should be the prerogative of the Black Belts of kenpo.
The rest of this series, therefore, will be posted in the Insider, which is
restricted (by user name and password) to "insiders." The insiders in
turn, can pass the information on to their students. Those in American
Kenpo can in turn get the information from Tracy students.

The first Kenpo form was not Short Form 1, but the Black Belt Set, and
it was not created by Ed Parker. It was taught to him. In fact Ed Parker
only learned one half of the set. Nor did Ed Parker create Short or Long
Forms 1, 2 or 3, or Form 4. Again, they were taught to him.

The Panther Set was taught by the same person who created the first
kenpo forms. It was referred to as the Book Set because it was the form
that was originally going to be in Ed Parker's book, Secrets of Chinese
Karate. It's Chinese name is Boon-Gi.

There were no forms in Professor Chow's Kenpo. And the first form Ed
Parker created himself was Form 5.
Where the Kenpo forms came from?
This is for Insiders ONLY Part 4. The creation of the Kenpo forms in the
INSIDER.
The creation of the Kenpo forms and the change from Original Kenpo to
Traditional Kenpo set the stage for all of Ed Parker's black belts to leave
him in what would be a bitter split.
How and why this happened is found in the INSIDER, Part 5. The break
and healing of Kenpo

Other articles that will appear in the near future

Part 6. How Ed Parker got his rank

Part 7. The expansion of Ed Parker's Kenpo
Part 8. The decline of Original Kenpo
Part 9. The IKKA takes control
Part 10. The failure of Ed Parker's businesses
Part 11. American Kenpo takes root
Part 12. The rise of the American Kenpo Cult
Part 13. Ed stops teaching
Part 14. The breaks that didn't heal
Part 15. More infinite insights into the master