a degree of pride at stake, of wanting to acquit oneself and one’s teachers well in a familiar, yet foreign environment. It was no different for Suenaka; indeed, if anything, the responsibility he felt was even greater. He had spent eight years studying aikido in Hawaii, thousands of miles away from where he now stood, under the watchful eyes of the Founder. He was one of the first fruits of the seed Koichi Tohei planted in Hawaii in 1953, and very much represented the outcome of that maiden effort. And there was another source of pressure as well. Though Japanese by blood, Suenaka was American by birth. While completely Japanese in appearance, English was his native tongue; as Suenaka has noted several times earlier, though he could make himself understood, he was at the time by no means fluent in Japanese. He was, in many ways, a foreigner, as much as any American serviceman stationed in Japan, though in his case his native hosts’ expectations of his behavior were immeasurably higher.
It was with a mixture of confident anticipation and wariness that Suenaka first stepped onto the Hombu mat. The other students were friendly, but distant, and were obviously testing him with each and every technique. Despite his credentials, learning aikido under Tohei Sensei and his designated instructors, Suenaka realized he would have to prove himself. It is a tribute to his skill and tutelage that he was not found wanting:
“The waza at the Hombu was somewhat different, in that there were several other shihan teaching, so the style of aikido, so to speak, was a little different from what I had learned in Hawaii. Everybody had his own interpretation of what aikido was, under O’Sensei, so it wasn’t really drastically different, but I noticed little differences here and there, which made it interesting for my study. My aikido fit in pretty well, because at that time, or course, Tohei Sensei was the chief instructor, and so everybody pretty much followed suit; his particular style of aikido was reflected in all the other instructors’ aikido.”
During his years at the Hombu, Suenaka noticed one major difference between the way O’Sensei taught and the way Koichi Tohei taught, a difference that prophesied Tohei’s later split with the Aikikai:
“O’Sensei never really emphasized ki. He talked about ki, but more than, you could say, ‘instructing’ ki, he demonstrated ki in his waza, whereas Tohei Sensei really stressed ki development and using ki in aikido techniques. O’Sensei would give lectures on ki, but not while he was demonstrating aikido. He would mention specific techniques during his lectures, and demonstrated using ki in techniques as part of the lecture, in a lot of different ways. But Tohei Sensei stressed ki a lot more while he was teaching waza than O’Sensei did.”
Though he needed no further convincing after his private experiences with O’Sensei in Hawaii, it was during one of O’Sensei’s lectures that Suenaka received a forceful demonstration of the power of ki:
“O’Sensei was demonstrating what true ki was supposed to be like or feel like, and he used me as uke. He was holding a chopstick in his hand, but he didn’t say what he was going to do. I was kind of skeptical, but I trusted him. I never hesitated to attack him. I knew he wasn’t going to kill me or really hurt me badly. He didn’t tell me how to attack him, he just said, you know, ‘Come get me.’ As I attacked him, he struck me in the forehead with the chopstick and knocked me down. He knocked the heck out of me! I almost lost consciousness, very close to it. Everything went white for a few seconds, then I got up and went back to my place and sat down, and I asked someone there ‘What happened?’ They said, ‘Man, he knocked you down with a chopstick!’ I had a big welt in the middle of my forehead from where he’d hit me with this chopstick! He knocked me silly!”
As Suenaka says, while O’Sensei never lectured about ki during waza, the strength of his ki—as well as his considerable physical strength, despite his advanced years—was apparent:
“There was another time, when we were doing katate-tori,
where I would go in and grab O’Sensei. He would grab my wrist as he countered the attack and throw me across the room. And when I got up, there would be a bruise already forming on my wrist from where he’d grabbed me. [O’Sensei] didn’t like it when the uke didn’t give him a strong attack; some-times it would seem like he would throw you even harder if you didn’t attack him hard. And then he would hardly ever use you as an uke again. [O’Sensei] used me as an uke a lot, because I always came in and attacked him hard! I knew he would wipe me out when I did, but again, I knew he would throw me even harder if I didn’t! Anyway, I didn’t care; I loved it!”
Despite his prodigious martial skill, the ease with which he tossed his ardent uke about the dojo and his uncanny command of ki, Suenaka Sensei remembers O’Sensei more than anything as a gentle man, kind, and forgiving. Though quick to erupt into awe-inspiring anger when provoked, sending his students immediately to their knees in respectful seiza (sitting posture), his anger disappeared almost as soon as it surfaced. For O’Sensei, it would seem as if anger was a tool, serving to get the offending party’s attention; though no doubt genuine, it was put away as soon as it had served its purpose. Again, this is in keeping with the guiding philosophy of aikido, as expressed by the Founder.
Suenaka recalls an incident during one of his evening meals with O’Sensei during his first visit, which echoed their first encounter in O’Sensei’s hotel room in Hawaii a month earlier. The event impressed on him, in an unexpected and almost comic way, aikido’s guiding philosophy; that O’Sensei, martial master though he was, literally wouldn’t even harm a fly:
“As we got ready to eat, he noticed a fly on his bowl of rice. There were some other uchi deshi eating with him as well, and we all noticed the fly and were ready to chase it away, and he stopped us. ‘The little fly won’t eat too much,’ he said. ‘We’ll just let him eat his fill and then let him go away, happy.’ We tried to tell him about flies carrying diseases and all that, but we all ended up just sitting there watching the fly eat until it eventually flew away.”
On his fourth day in Japan, Suenaka realized it would probably be in his best interest to report back to his duty station before the MPs began searching for him. After taking his leave of O’Sensei, Suenaka hopped a cab back to Tachikawa Air Force Base and again reported to the CBPO. This time, he was sent to his squadron for assignment. It was there that Suenaka met Captain Rausch, his squadron commander and the man who was to unwittingly play a pivotal role in Suenaka’s continuing martial education.
Captain Rausch was young, barely ten years older than the twenty-one year old Suenaka. In answer to Rausch’s query, Suenaka said he was supposed to report to Civil Engineering, whose primary responsibility it was to keep the base’s physical plant in good repair, but that there was no record of his orders. “What’s your AFSC (Air Force Specialty Code)?,” Rausch asked. As luck would have it, he was frustrated with CE’s slow reponse to his repeated requests for service: whenever he needed something fixed, it took them days to attend to it. “I can’t even get them to come by and change my lightbulbs!,” Rausch lamented. When Suenaka informed him he was an electrician, Rausch asked, “Would you take care of my lightbulbs, electrical switches, everything? Can you repair things?,” he asked. “Oh, I can repair anything!,” Suenaka responded. That’s all the answer Capt. Rausch needed. Before the day was through, Suenaka found himself assigned directly under Rausch, charged with the awesome duty of pretty much killing time until a lightbulb burned out. He was issued his own supply card to requisition supplies as needed, and was left alone.
Opportunity was banging on the barracks door. Suenaka wasted no time in approaching the barracks houseboy, Yama-san, who made about forty dollars a month to see to the household chores of all the airmen on Suenaka’s floor: shining shoes, cleaning house, laundering clothes and uniforms. Would Yama-san be interested in earning an extra 2,000 yen (at the time, $5.60) a month to change lightbulbs and electrical switches? For Yama-san, it was close to a week’s extra salary, so naturally, his answer was yes.
As long as his light bulbs and switches were changed whenever needed, Capt. Rausch cared
