I received some sad news about the passing of a former co-worker at IBM Corp, Mr. Harold Uehara.  Harold was 82, and the last time I saw him was some twenty years ago when he retired from Big Blue.  Everything about Harold was colorful and unique.  Even though we considered him an “old man” at 60+, he was extremely youthful looking, well-muscled and always looked very dark…hence his nickname of Koge.  He was a field manager at the company, rumored as the uncredited creator of the “barefoot” design that was a trademark of notes from him.  I always admired his handwriting – beautiful (a fast-disappearing skill in our modern world of keyboarding)!  As I recall, like Sensei Peter and myself, he was a former member of the Strategic Air Command (SAC) in the US Air Force.  I think he once told me that he was flew in one of the three B52 bombers that circled the globe non-stop way back in 1957.  He was always extremely proud of his two children – in fact, his son worked for me at IBM for a summer, following his high school graduation. 

At an IBM picnic way back in the late 1970’s, a couple of other IBM black belts and I performed a demo for the assembled IBMers – I had the dubious “honor” of breaking three wooden boards with my head.  The boards broke on my second attempt and I was rewarded with a tankobu on my forehead which, fortunately, no one could see due to my long bangs (long-gone now 🙂  Anyways, sparked by the demo, Harold came up to me to talk story.  Our demo reminded him of the old days with his dad, Seishin Uehara.  As it turns out, his dad was one of the very few karateka who actually learned the art in Okinawa while he was growing up.  He is considered one of the first pioneers of karate in Hawaii (or in the US for that matter), as karate didn’t really arrive in the US until 1960 when the first JKA instructors made their way here.  Prior to that, in the 1950’s, there were a few local instructors who had learned the art while stationed in Japan.  Seishin was practicing and teaching it in the 1930’s. 

Some years later, I was reading up on Motobu-Ryu, which is a rare style of Okinawan karate that was passed down by the Motobu family, former instructors to Okinawan royalty and came across mention of the current master…Sensei Seikichi Uehara!  I had to tell Harold, who said he was almost certainly a relative –  the last name, the fact that his father had come from Oroku Prefecture, and in particular…the first part of the first name…Sei.  You see, the male members of Harold’s family would always have one boy in each generation with the Sei prefix in his name.  In fact, Harold’s son, who had worked for me, was given  the same middle name as his grandfather, Seishin.  The world is so full of coincidences.  In my family, the first part of our name in each generation was Shun.  In the founder’s family, it was Gi.  In my own sensei’s family (a relative of the founder), it was Gei.  These were the Okinawan pronunciation of the names, not the Japanized versions.  For example, the founder’s karate son’s name was Gigo…but in Japan, that translated to Yoshitaka (some foreigners erroneously think that these are two separate sons).  I also was given the Shun middle name, however it was Japanized to Haru.

I’ll miss Harold, but he lived a long and fruitful life.  The last note I ever received from him, perhaps 15 years ago, he was reminiscing about karate – and about his dad, often practicing tsuki into his homemade makiwara in the backyard.