The Rise of American Kenpo

As I saw it
Part II
The Mormon Connection
by
Will Tracy
1/5/96 Revised 12/2/96
The history of American Kenpo (not kenpo) begins with Ed Parker and his
conflicting relationship with Professor Chow; and it was this relationship
between Chow and Parker that led many, including myself, to realize that both
men had departed far from the First Principle of Kenpo. Chow was hurt when
the Emperado brothers and his other students left him, and he was hurt even
more because one of his students, not just an Island boy, but a brother Mormon,
Ed Parker, had made it good on the mainland and was getting wealthy while he
was poor, unknown, and forgotten. And it is this Mormon connection that
would become the foundation for the development of American Kenpo. Ed
Parker held people in different levels of respect and trust, and if the reader
doesn't understand this, he or she will never understand Ed Parker. The lowest
level of Ed's trust were people he knew, business associates etc. Next were his
Kenpo students, above them were his Kenpo elder brothers. Above these were
Mormons. I don't care what any of his students may say, if one wasn't a
Mormon, Ed really didn't trust him, and he was not allowed into Ed's true inner
circle, with one very important exception. If you were Kenpo and Hawaiian,
you were held to the same respect as a Kenpo-Mormon. If you were Mormon-
Kenpo-Hawaiian, you were family. Those who would claim they were part of
Ed's inner circle found just how in they were (not) when Ed died leaving them
on the outside. This Parker hierarchy was quite apparent to my brothers and
me. Ed had shared rice with us when he did not have rice to share. We are the
ones to whom Ed came when he was turned down for buying a house because
the seller didn't want his house to go to "his kind." We were Mormons. I was
made Shodan by Professor Chow at a turbulent time when Ed needed Professor
Chow's approval. My brothers were among Ed's highest ranking black belts. I
know of few others with whom Ed felt comfortable enough to go to their
houses on a regular basis. But we were not Hawaiian. About 1984, I turned Ed
down when he asked me to help him with the control of his organization. When
he asked me why, I told him, "Because I'm not Hawaiian." He understood
perfectly. We both knew that only a Kenpo-Mormon-Hawaiian would ever take
his place. Not only that, but Ed knew how much I opposed his Mormonization
of the IKKA, and American Kenpo when I refused to be a part of it. This
included the way Ed changed the wearing of the belt to comport to Mormon
temple ritual, as well as the way he would draw his hand across his body and
other practices which were similar to temple rituals. He also knew how I had
fought to get unanimous agreement among the Yuudansha to oppose his plan
using the "Mormon method" for stripping a Yuudansha of his belt and rank.
Mormons have a peculiar attitude towards authority and knowledge. And this
attitude is reflected in American kenpo. Within the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints, (Mormons) all authority rests with the First Presidency, i.e.
the President and his two counselors. The President is considered to be a
Prophet, Seer and revelator through whose authority the "priesthood" is
extended to all worthy male members of the church. Under the First Presidency
there is a hierarchy of Apostles, Seventies, Regional Representatives, Stake
Presidents, High Priests, Bishops and Elders. Ed Parker would pattern
American Kenpo after the priesthood organization of the Mormon Church.
When a person is excommunicated from the Mormon Church his priesthood
and any authority is taken from him. But this removing of authority
encompasses much more than just excommunication. Many Mormons believe
that all the knowledge one gained under the priesthood is also taken away; a
concept that has it roots in Mormon history. When the early leaders of the
Mormon Church rebelled and split into factions, Joseph Smith, the founder of
the Mormon faith, quickly excommunicated them. Not only were they cut off
from the Church, but their "priesthood authority" and presumably the
"knowledge" that went with that authority was also taken from them. This
concept that excommunication revoked the priesthood authority as well as
knowledge, was exacerbated when Brigham Young became the President of the
Mormon Church. Over the next 100 years, the loss of knowledge with
excommunication became so well accepted that modern Mormon leaders teach,
and many Mormons believe, that a person only has knowledge pertaining to an
office or position in the Church as long as he hold that office or position; and as
soon as one is released from his office or position his knowledge is taken from
him. Thus, according to Mormon belief, one doesn't have to be
excommunicated for knowledge to be taken, it is taken when he leaves his
office. The final steps in the formation of American Kenpo would find Ed
Parker alluding to himself as the "High Priest and Prophet" of kenpo, (his own
words, not mine) and incorporating Mormon Temple signs, tokens and oaths
into the forms and rank. The concept was for Ed Parker to be the First President
of American Kenpo, in whom all authority was vested. All black belts would
hold their belts at his will and have their knowledge only as long as Ed Parker
permitted. When a black belt left the American Kenpo organization, he would
be stripped of his belt; he would no longer have authority, or the knowledge to
teach American Kenpo. This concept was probably always in Ed's
subconscious, but began to show itself openly in 1964, and in the transition that
would lead to what would become American Kenpo, black belt rank would
expire on a certain date. This was based on the Mormon tradition of having
officers serve for a limited period. This concept would eventually have
everyone in American Kenpo fighting to stay alive in the Kenpo. All rank in
the IKKA was lost when they left the IKKA. To justify their rank, many of
these former IKKA black belts have created their own associations to give
themselves rank. While Professor Chow had a strong belief in the Mormon
faith, he was what might be called a Jack Mormon. He drank and had other
"Mormon faults." But he had no illusions about knowledge being lost when a
student left him. No one could take his knowledge from him. The only way to
keep his students from leaving him was not to give them black belts, and that is
exactly what he did for a period after the Emperado brothers left. It was during
this period that Ed attained the knowledge for Shodan. But Professor Chow was
promoting no one to Shodan, and without a black belt, no one would leave him.
When Ed Parker, and some of Chow's other students, went to the mainland and
claimed to be black belts, Chow changed his system. If his new students didn't
have knowledge, they couldn't teach. Sonny Emperado, however, and his group
were still practicing their art on the street, and it worked. So Chow went back
to teaching his original kenpo which had always worked for him on the street.
Nor did Professor Chow have any doubt that if he were to give Ed Parker the
rank he wanted, Ed Parker would eventually claim to be the Master of Kenpo.
And despite the animosity that arose between Ed and Professor Chow, when Ed
claimed San Dan in 1956, Chow only complained to his closest associates. This
gave Ed a de facto rank that Chow eventually accepted. There is one other
Mormon connection which would develop 20 years after the fact. If Ed Parker
had any intention of founding a Kenpo empire when he went to the Mainland in
1949, (as he would later claim) he kept it a well guarded secret. He had less
than half a year of training under Professor Chow, at that time and Chow
denied that Ed had ever talked to him about teaching at BYU or opening a
Kenpo Karate school, let alone taking Kenpo to the continental United States.
And there is good evidence that Chow was telling the truth. No one was
making a living teaching Kenpo. Chow got by making $40-50 teaching classes
at the YMCA. But the Emperado brothers, who had taken several of Chow's
YMCA classes when they left him, were being run ragged going from one class
to another. The simple fact is, Parker went to BYU to get a degree so he could
go into law enforcement. It was not so he could become a martial arts
instructor, as he would later claim. Again, Ed was at BYU from September
1949 until August 1951, at which time he entered the Coast Guard. He was in
Coast Guard training until March or April 1952, after which he got stationed in
Hawaii. Over the next two and a half years, Ed would spend over one year at
sea. But there are other facts that militate against Ed intending to make a living
at Kenpo. Ed never taught anyone but his fellow Hawaiians at BYU before he
went into the Coast Guard in 1952. In his book, Inside Elvis published in 1978,
Ed was honest about his early years. In that book, he had no martial arts
agenda. On page 24 he states that his classes were closed to "haoles" (whites).
There were so few Islanders on the mainland that no one in his right mind
would ever think he could make a living teaching them Kenpo. When Ed did
start teaching non Hawaiians, they were mostly law enforcement personnel, or
law enforcement students. One of Ed's early BYU students was a BYU fencing
instructor by the name of Mills Crenshaw, who would become the driving
forces in the Parker Kenpo system in Utah and the IKKA. Ahead of Miles in
rank was Charles Beeder who was Ed's assistant instructor, and of course, a law
enforcement officer (a game warden). But there was never any though of
making money from teaching kenpo, other than the small amount he made
teaching at a Provo health club. After all, he didn't begin teaching non
Hawaiians until the year he graduated BYU. Ed made little or nothing from
teaching Kenpo at BYU, and he often stated that Charles Beeder had fed him
when he didn't have food, and money from home was days away. Ed did make
a small amount of money however teaching at a Prove health club. On page 25,
of Inside Elvis, Ed states what he had always said when I was teaching for him,
"Graduation was decision time...should I further my education or seek
employment?" Those were his only two options. Teaching kenpo, and
establishing a kenpo empire was never an option at that time. In his own words,
Ed Parker states that it was a chain of circumstances that led him to open his
first studio. Ed Parker wrote Chow after he went to Pasadena in 1956,
requesting permission to open a school. This was the first Chow heard about it,
and asked Sonny Emperado what he should do. Sonny recalls the letter and
writes about it, because he told Chow he should give his permission. (Chow
also showed me the letter in 1959, and it was clear this was something Ed had
just come upon. Had Ed planned a chain of Kenpo schools from the beginning,
his students in Utah would have been the first to support him. However, it was
not until after Ed Parker had made a success of his Pasadena studio that Mills
Crenshaw opened his own school in Salt Lake City. That was around 1962. Ed
of course would claim that he had been given Chow's blessing to open kenpo
schools on the mainland. Chow tells it a very different way. Again the Mormon
connection comes into play with this. Chow and Parker were both Mormons.
Within the Mormon faith there is a priesthood office called, Patriarch, whose
duties include giving blessings to all faithful members of the Church in his area
who wish them. Ed Parker's father was a Patriarch in Hawaii. However, every
Elder in the Mormon Church has the authority to give blessings, as does every
father, whether he is an Elder or not. Chow had many of his Mormon students
come to him to ask for a blessing before they went into the service or to the
mainland. This was a religious blessing, something Mormons do all the time.
For instance, after a person is baptized into the Mormon Church, he or she is
confirmed a member of the church and is often given a blessing with the
confirmation. Likewise, whenever a person receives an office or position in the
Mormon Church, he or she is usually given a blessing. Blessing in the Mormon
Church are not as common as handshakes, but they are certainly far more
common that hugs or kisses. This was the blessing Chow said he gave Ed
Parker when he went back to BYU in 1954. It was not a blessing to teach
kenpo, because Chow told me he never knew Ed was teaching Kenpo on the
mainland, until he asked for permission to open his first school. After receiving
his Bachelor's degree in 1956, Ed moved to Los Angeles where he intended to
work with youth in law enforcement. When my brothers and I began training
with Ed, a year later, he was still bitter over his law enforcement experience.
While it is true that Ed opened his first school after a health club where he was
teaching went out of business, there is more to the story than that. Ed first got a
job in law enforcement and immediately requested to work with youth. His
supervisors had other plans. Ed was large, looked tough and had an appearance
that commanded respect. His martial arts expertise made him perfect for
working with the toughest, hardened criminals. When Ed was finally told that
he would never be working with youth, he quit. Ed had been teaching kenpo at
a health club (owned by a Mormon) to augment his income, and it was only
after he quit his job that he began thinking of kenpo karate as a way to make a
living. After all, Ed had only trained for two things, law enforcement and
Kenpo. Ed was bitter over his law enforcement experience for years. Then he
didn't speak of it any more, and after a while, Ed would tell people he had
planned on taking kenpo to the entire country from the beginning. I was not
only there when Ed tried to take kenpo the rest of the country. I was the one he
sent to the different school to get them to come with him. When it became
obvious that other styles would not come over to kenpo, Ed changed his
direction and started his International Tournament in Long Beach. But that was
8 years after he opened his first studio.