We are very pleased with the attitude and progress being made by all of our members, especially the beginner white and blue belts who started over the past year – our “post-pandemic” generation of trainees.  The intent of HISKF, is to offer a weekly serving of karate-do that, over time, allows busy families in our community pick up a decent understanding of Shotokan Karate-Do, its values, traditions, techniques, and culture while improving their strength, flexibility and balance.  I liken it to drinking several glasses of water a day to keep hydrated and stay healthy.  This low-key regimen can be very beneficial when practiced over a period of years.  By contrast, when your senseis were young, I’d say our training regimen was more like “drinking water out of a firehose”, haha.  Typically, we’d be training at the University Karate Kai several times a week, and we might also be found at the Pearl City Dojo, the Main Dojo, and as brown/black belts, at the late-night Special Training Unit.  Sure, we were crazy for karate – but we were also on a compressed timetable and knew that we’d be leaving the university for our professional careers in just several years.  Sensei Wayne started in the fall of 1969, Sensei Peter began (along with me) in the fall of 1970, I then paused and restarted for good in the fall of 1971.  We were focused on reaching our black belts before we left the university (Sensei Peter and I were also due to be commissioned in the Air Force in 1974).  As they say, “Failure was not an option.”

The UHKK had a notorious fallout rate due to its rather harsh training regimen, fashioned after the training found in JKA university clubs back in Japan.  As a result, the great majority of young collegians who joined the UHKK quit or graduated long before ever making it to the higher ranks.  The UHKK became the KAH’s best club and its black belts became the core of the Special Training Unit.  Sensei Funakoshi was a strict instructor and examiner but fortunately, each of your sensei’s actually did well enough to skip rank multiple times and all of us successfully achieved our shodans by the time we graduated in 1974.  It was a good thing too; as young black belts a couple of years later, Sensei Wayne was teaching at a dojo in Oregon, Sensei Peter was teaching at a dojo in Michigan, and I was teaching at a dojo in California. Today, despite the passage of over fifty years, we continue to draw from the well of Karate-Do that HISKF members also “sip” from.  Drink up everybody!