And, with decolonization on the horizon, imperial masters began
encouraging “native” soldiers to box and wrestle. In Uganda, for example,
Idi Amin became a boxing champion in the King’s African Rifles, while in
Malaya, silat was taught to Malaysians opposing Chinese Communist
insurgency.
The fear of Communism also inspired the Americans to rethink their
attitudes toward combatives training. For example, labor unrest in Japan
caused the Americans to reintroduce kendôand jûdô into Japanese police
training programs as early as 1947, and in 1949 fear of Communist sabo-
teurs encouraged General Curtis LeMay to introduce jûdô into U.S. Air
Force physical fitness programs. The U.S. Air Force program also had a
profound effect on the modern Japanese martial arts. Said future Japan
Karate Association leader Nakayama Masatoshi: “The Americans simply
were not satisfied with following blindly like the Japanese. So, under Mas-
ter Funakoshi [Gichin]’s guidance, I began an intense study of kinetics,
physiology, anatomy, and hygienics” (Singleton 1989, 83–84). Equally im-
portantly, discharged servicemen returned home to open jûdô and karate
schools, which in turn introduced Asian martial arts to Middle America.
During the Vietnam War, military psychologists decided that the best
way to create killers was to replace time spent sticking bayonets into straw
bales with time spent chanting phrases such as “Blood makes the grass grow;
kill, kill.” Although these methods reportedly increased firing rates (U.S.
Army studies of debatable reliability report firing rates of 25 percent in 1944,
55 percent in 1951, and 90 percent in 1971), they also increased individual
soldiers’ risk of post-traumatic stress disorders such as alcoholism, drug
abuse, and suicide (Grossman 1995, 35, 181, 249–261). The new methods
didn’t do much for accuracy, either—another Vietnam-era study found that
while soldiers could put 300 rounds in the air per minute, at 50 meters they
still only hit a paper target one time per minute (Davis 2000, 10).
So following Vietnam there was renewed interest, at least in the
United States, in teaching hand-to-hand combatives to prospective combat
infantry. The Marines experimented with various systems based on boxing
and karate, while the army went New Age.
The base document for the army’s program was a position paper
called “First Earth Battalion,” and among the latter document’s recom-
mendations was the suggestion that soldiers practice “battle tuning,”
which was described, in so many words, as a combination of yogic
stretches, karate kata, paced primal rock, and Belgian waffles (Channon
1979). Although “battle tuning” was a bit esoteric for many old soldiers,
in 1985 the army hired former Marines Jack Cirie and Richard Strozzi
Heckler to provide a couple of dozen Special Forces soldiers with training
in biofeedback, aikidô, and “mind-body psychology.” After six months, the
Combatives: Military and Police Martial Art Training 91