I started training in the Martial Arts at 15 years old at an old run down Seasonal Labor Camp outside of Watsonville, Ca. Sensei Rod Sanford who in turn trained under a Sensei. Cal Alvila. Taught at this “Dojo”. Sensei Sanford had a Shodan or first degree Black belt in Karate and in Jujitsu. Both of these gentlemen had by the time I turned 16 began to “train” under the tutelage of O” Sensei Richard Kim. Every Saturday Sensei Sanford and Sensei Avila would drive up to the Chinese YMCA in San Francisco to train for 3 hours with O’Sensei and attend a one or two hour lecture after the physical training. Sensei Sanford would bring any students who wanted to train with O’Sensei up with him on this weekly pilgrimage. This weekly trip from Santa Cruz to the Chinese YMCA would continue every Saturday for me until I turned 19 and began to attend UC Berkeley as an undergraduate student and too become a full time student of O’ Sensei Richard Kim.
I remember taking the bus across the Bay Bridge from may apartment in Berkeley for the first time to attend a regular weekday class that O’Sensei held on Tuesdays and I remember thinking to myself that this was the beginning of a life long learning experience. I remember looking at professional looking commuters in their suites, ties and polished shoes and thinking to myself how lucky I was to have found a different path to a successful life. To have a philosophy to hang my hat on and to be able to learn about life from a Martial Artist of Richard Kim’s caliber. The fact that I was attending UC Berkeley was only secondary in my mind. My useful education was about to start with O’Sensei Richard Kim and I felt very lucky, and as the old Chinese saying goes, “it is better to be lucky then smart.”
By the 1980’s O’Sensei was no longer teaching regularly at the Honbu Dojo in San Francisco, and devoted his time on Saturdays’ and teaching seminars and extended martial arts camps in the USA, Canada, and Europe. I was invited by O’ Sensei to travel with him as he taught seminars around the world and was lucky to have an understanding wife and a way to make a living that allowed me to do this. I have accumulated quite a few stories and experiences that gave and give meaning to my life.
I am now past my 65th year of life. A full circle of Chinese Yearly signs have come and gone. O’Sensei passed away in 2001 and has been gone now for well over a decade. I had over 34 years of learning under Sensei’s guidance. With his passing I was asked by his Widow, Mrs. May Kim, to honor Sensei’s last direction that he conveyed to her (which she passed on to his students at Sensei’s memorial gathering). This wish or hope was, that his students should listen too and follow his student, Louis Jemison’s advise. Over the past decade I have done my best to do this for those students of his who ask and are willing to listen. I continued to teach within the two organizations he had created, the Zen Bei Butoku Kai and the Busen Butoku Kai (which has changed its name to Kokusai Butoku Kai) I and the other students of O’Sensei (including students who have formed their own organizations) attempt to give martial arts students a flavor or taste of what it was like to learn from this remarkable martial artist. The physical exercises, the philosophy, and spiritual training along with the re–telling of the many stories that O’Sensei shared with us. About our recollection of experiences we had while training with O’Sensei.