Chinese Martial Arts
Mystery: Did Black Belt Ever Publish This Article?
I had an interesting email exchange the other day. The foremost researcher on H2H/Combatives instructor Dermot “Pat” O’Neill sent an image of page 10 from the January 1967 issue of Black Belt magazine. Here is the page (click on the image to open up to full size):
As you can see, Black Belt announces that the U.S. Marine Corps is going to drop its judo based combatives program and replace it with a system based on Chinese boxing. In the announcement, Black Belt finishes with “We will carry the full story.” So everyone is thinking O’Neill (if you’ve seen the film “Devil’s Brigade,” the combatives instructor is based on him) and the hunt is on for what promises to be a fascinating article.
I google a bit, and, as with many things, I wind up on eBay looking for a February 1967 copy of Black Belt, reasoning that the page was a teaser for the next month’s issue. The first seller was in Thailand training and couldn’t get to his issue to check if the story was in there, but the next seller had a copy and was willing to check for me.
Unfortunately, the article was not in the February 1967 issue. The seller, an extremely kind man with the seller id Bloop68, went to the trouble of pulling all the 1967 issues and checking for the article. No luck, but please check out his store because he could not have been more helpful for something that would have amounted to maybe a $15 sale (it was obvious he was checking because that’s the kind of person he was, not just because I was a potential sale).
One of the EJMAS editors pointed out that the story would have went to print sometime in mid-1966 and hit the newsstands in fall 1966 considering Black Belt’s lead time, but a quick search of the online historical newspapers was fruitless.
So, the mystery remains: Did Black Belt ever actually publish the article? If anyone knows anything relevant, or you just want to chime in, please contact us! You can leave a comment here or contact us privately through the Contact Us page.
For more on O’Neill online see Cestari & Grasso’s biographical summary here. For an excellent print resource see Brown, Steve.”Dermot O’Neill: One of the 20th Century’s Most Overlooked Combatives Pioneers.” Journal Of Asian Martial Arts, 12:3, pp. 18-31 (2003).
Discussion
2 comments for “Mystery: Did Black Belt Ever Publish This Article?”
Post a comment
Library
Articles
Update: A fellow blogger (see http://dancingword.wordpress.com/) recalled reading that Sifu Bucksam Kong had taught U.S. soldiers chinese boxing methods in the 1960s and that the reference could be to him.
Looking at the history section on Sifu’s website, http://www.bucksamkongkungfu.com/hist1.html, it appears a close hit, but ultimately unlikely that it would have been him:
“Sifu Kong started studying martial arts when he was 6 years old in his native Hong Kong. Two years later, he began studying Hung Gar with Lam Jo
In his teenage years, Kong moved to Hawaii with his parents and continued to practice Kung Fu tirelessly. By 1961, he became an American citizen and was drafted into the army where he taught hand to hand combat to U.S. soldiers in Korea.
Returning to civilian life in 1963, Kong opened his first school in Hawaii and became one of the first to teach traditional Kung Fu to non-Chinese practitioners.”
So while it looks like he did teach soldiers in the 1960s, he had been back in Hawaii for four years or so by that point and I’m therefore guessing it was not him. I have an email out to Sifu Kong to verify and will update if/when I receive a response. Great lead, thanks!
Not much to add, but I did hear back from Sifu Kong’s website. They provided me with the response:
Mr. Kong was in Korea serving military duty from 1961 to 1963. Thank you for your inquiry.
Of course, that response just parrots back the line from the website, but at least they responded. Beggars can’t be chooser.