Okay, Curtis LeMay wasn’t a judo champion in the sense that he was winning awards for tossing people around. He did, however, popularize the martial art for the postwar world, bringing it into the U.S. Air Force, and through the military, to the rest of America.
Time has not been kind to LeMay. He’s remembered for firebombing cities across Japan, especially Tokyo, an attack that killed 100,000 Japanese civilians in a single night. He also built the Strategic Air Command into a nuclear powerhouse with the belief that he would one day nuke the Soviet Union “back into the Stone Age.” He was even lampooned in one of the most popular movies of all time.
Also Read: 7 awesome airpower quotes from General Curtis LeMay
For all his bluster, LeMay was an innovative thinker, a problem solver, and the first to make the changes he wanted to implement. When “Old Iron Pants” decided the Air Force was out of shape, he found a way to fix it. He even put on his own judogi.
When LeMay took command of Strategic Air Command in 1948, he inherited a mess. SAC was supposed to be the nation’s nuclear deterrent, but its planes were unreliable, and—some veterans might be shocked to hear—the Air Force was out of shape.
More importantly, the Air Force had new B-36 Peacemaker bombers that could keep crews airborne for 30 hours at a stretch, and physically unfit airmen could make mistakes during those long flights. Mistakes can cause accidents, especially at 40,000 feet.
LeMay fmaously despised any kind of inefficiency.
He needed something that would do more than just get airmen running laps (we know how that turns out). He needed a program that built endurance, coordination, and mental toughness. If it could also keep a downed aircrew alive and evasive behind enemy lines, that would be even better.
Judo was the answer.
In 1950, LeMay ordered Lt. Gen. Thomas Power to stand up an experimental physical conditioning unit at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. The program combined preflight conditioning with post-flight recovery. Flight surgeons recommended steam baths and massages for recovery. For conditioning, they chose judo.
There were many good reasons to choose judo: It taught airmen how to fall and roll, which is a great skill for anyone who might have to bail out of an aircraft. It also built functional strength and situational awareness. And it gave crew members a fighting chance if they were shot down and unarmed.
To run the program, LeMay hired Emilio “Mel” Bruno, a former national wrestling champion and sixth-degree black belt in judo. It was Bruno’s job to build SAC’s judo program from the ground up. The Air Force officially dubbed it “Combative Measures,” a perfectly bureaucratic name for throwing around your fellow airmen.
LeMay’s biggest challenge was finding instructors. There simply weren’t enough qualified judo teachers in the Air Force. He decided to send airmen directly to the Kodokan Judo Institute in Tokyo, the birthplace of judo. There, they received advanced training under the world’s foremost experts.
It was a “train the trainer” kind of program. The first class of 13 instructors shipped out in 1952. They trained in judo, jujitsu, karate, and other martial arts, then returned to teach at SAC bases across the country.
In 1953, LeMay also brought 10 of Japan’s highest-ranking judo, karate, and aikido masters to the United States for a 60-day tour of SAC installations. The group included legends like the future Japan Karate Association head Masatoshi Nakayama.
Japanese instructors were struck by how American airmen approached training. Unlike students in Japan who followed instructions without question, the Americans demanded to understand the why behind every technique. Nakayama later said that the experience pushed him into an intense study of kinetics, physiology, and anatomy under his own master’s guidance.
It was a mutually beneficial cultural exchange. American judo players like Staff Sgt. George Harris proved that big, athletic Western fighters could compete at the highest levels, and by the late 1950s, even Olympic-caliber Japanese judoka started adding weight training to their routines.
LeMay, as usual, was unconventional but turned out to be right. Within a decade, SAC produced more than 160 black belt judo instructors. Between 1959 and 1962, a judo instructor course at Stead Air Force Base in Nevada graduated nearly 10,000 instructors through a five-week curriculum that covered judo, aikido, karate, air police techniques, and aircrew self-defense.
Moreover, SAC’s competitive judo team became a national tour de force. In 1957, Harris (who had only studied judo for only five years) won the Grand Championship at the National AAU Judo Championships in Hawaii. The Air Force team as a whole captured the National Five-Man Team Championship that same year, then successfully defended it the year after.
Harris went on to represent the United States at the second World Judo Tournament in Tokyo in 1958, where his performance earned him a promotion to fourth-degree black belt. He was the first Armed Forces judoka to receive that honor. The SAC Judo Society became a chartered black belt organization under the Kodokan in 1956, the first and only U.S. Armed Forces judo association to receive that recognition.
LeMay’s judo program eventually wound down during the Vietnam era. Downed B-52 crews over Southeast Asia had little practical use for hand-to-hand combat techniques, and by the mid-1980s, Air Force PT had shifted almost entirely toward cardiovascular fitness and weight management.
The Strategic Air Command Judo Association evolved through several name changes. First came the Air Force Judo Association, then the Armed Forces Judo Association, and finally, in 1969, the United States Judo Association (USJA). By the 1990s, the USJA had 10,000 members.
A more outsized after effect came when discharged Air Force judo instructors carried the art into their civilian lives. They opened judo schools across Middle America, places where Asian martial arts may never have existed before.
It’s understandable why history either loves Curtis LeMay or hates him. He remains a deeply complicated historical figure. His World War II bombing campaigns are still controversial, and his hawkish Cold War politics made him a lightning rod for criticism. Running for vice president alongside George Wallace, the pro-segregation governor of Alabama, doesn’t help his legacy.
What LeMay did was solve the practical problem of unfit aircrews flying long, dangerous missions with what probably seemed like a pretty unorthodox exercise program at the time. But the judo schools that dot strip malls across America can trace their roots back, in part, to the Air Force’s most (in)famous cigar-chomping bomber pilot.
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