Actually, that title belongs to Joseph Greenstein, the
Mighty Atom, who jumped ship in Yokohama and trained in some kind of jujutsu there, one of the first non-Japanese ever to do so, in, IIRC, 1905. What isn't mentioned in the Wikipedia article is that the training regimen he followed as a kid, learned from the circus strongman, included a lot of specific breathing exercises. (And my favorite "feat of strength" listed in the article is - "Beating up 18 Nazis with a baseball bat." - times were different then - the judge praised him for it).
Some film:
#1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aLyEH3-k4U
#3
#4
Ellis Amdur