David Orange

Now I'm going to look back to the very roots of my aikido experience, to a document we called "Bearden's Manual." This was written by Capt. Thomas E. Bearded, US Army, stationed at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, where he also trained with Capt. Sadayuki Demizu, Japanese Air Self Defense Force, aikido sandan, and son-in-law of Minoru Mochizuki.

When some officers at Redstone learned of Demizu's aikido knowledge, they encouraged him to teach and he taught for some time at a rec center on base. Glenn Pack, a graduate student at the University of Alabama, was a teenaged student in Demizu's class, allowed access because his father worked on the base. Pack distributed Bearden's manual to the early generations of yoseikan aikido students at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa

Thomas Bearden was US Army Captain, experienced in judo, I believe, and he was a nuclear engineer. Pack and I explored writing a comprehensive book about yoseikan aikido to be largely based on Bearden's manual and we went to visit him to discuss this and aikido history. It was like meeting Robert Heinlein. He spoke at length about free energy concepts and UFOs. Though retired already as Lt.Col. at that time, he still had an office at Redstone. He is apparently today a highly regarded figure among those involved in free energy, Tesla concepts and UFOs. Look him up on Wikipedia. His manual on aikido reveals nothing like that. It is written as the main document for the military officers who would be training with Demizu and it was undoubtedly filed with the Army for various uses. It's organized I, II, III, a., b., c., 1., 2., 3. for 32 pages, translating Demizu's knowledge of aikido (from training with Minoru Mochiuzki and Kyoichi Murai). It was probably written about 1966. I first encountered it in 1975. Col. Bearden gave me his permission to distribute the whole manual as I wished and to incorporate it in any book I wanted to write as long as I credited him where due. It's actually standard for literary work, but this was an unpublished manual.

So how did a military officer teach other military officers aikido? The manual begins by defining both aikido and ki:

II. GENERAL

a. AI-KI-DO : Three Japanese words which mean "the high moral Way of union of Ki."

1. AI - the union of two ki's meeting; entering into and deflecting the opponent's Ki.

2. KI - spiritual energy; body energy flow, controlled by the quiet mind.

3. DO - The Way, or high moral road of seeking enlightenment and self-mastery

This was how it was defined for the US Army by a Captain in the Japanese military studying rocket and missile technology.

The aikido he taught was much more mainstream in appearance than the yoseikan budo that supplanted it when Patrick Ague was sent at Thomas Bearden's request to Mochizuki. Demizu's aikido pretty well matched all the other aikido you could see. The pace may have been tougher with multiple military captains with black belts going full tilt...

David