Many years ago, while a graduate student at Stanford in Education, I also worked on a concurrent M.A. degree in Physiology Psychology. One of the requirements was a class in what was called The Psychology of Institutions, which looked at the military, prisons, industry, churches, and so on and the psychological effect they have on both society and those within those institutions.
When the instructor moved onto the subject of prisons and their effect on both prisoners and guards, I mentioned that I knew someone, a former black belt student, who was a corrections officer at Soledad Prison, where some of California’s worst criminals were housed. The instructor asked me to visit the prison and report what I saw, which my former student was soon able to arrange. (I had needed to move quickly as my former student intended to leave the job within a few months, and did.)
Soledad Prison was actually composed of three separate prisons. Central Prison housed serious criminals, mostly murderers from what my former student told me. South Prison was more like a jail farm, where low risk prisoners were housed. And North Prison was where they kept most of the worst prisoners. It was actually divided into two separate prisons. One housed mostly people who had intentionally killed someone (meaning premeditated murderers), who killed several people, or who murdered for hire. But, these were people who could generally get along with other prisoners. The other half of North Prison housed gang members, who had to be kept separate from each other. Two or three people were killed there the day before I took my tour, even with extremely tight security measures in place. There was also another maximum prison within a maximum prison, a section of Central Prison where the absolute worst criminals were housed. This was called O Wing. Charles Manson and Sirhan Sirhan, who killed Bobby Kennedy, were among those housed there.
While touring the non-gang side of North Prison, my former student introduced me to a guy who had been heavyweight boxing champion at San Quentin Prison, before being transferred to Soledad. He had been on death row at one point at San Quentin and had somehow managed to have his execution commuted. In fact, he was soon to be paroled. He wanted to learn full-contact fighting when he got out in hopes of fighting professionally. My former student suggested he train with me so he arranged for us to meet and talk.
The man was surprisingly clean cut and very well spoken. On the outside, I would have never guessed he had ever been imprisoned, let alone on death row at one point. He was a very powerful man. He could reportedly bench press 450 lbs. My former student left us alone to talk, not wanting to inhibit our conversation. To make small talk, I asked him about weightlifting. He told me about his training routine then asked if I did any lifting. I told him I did. He asked me about my routine. I told him it included bench pressing as there had been two recent fatalities nationally in the martial arts at the time in which people had been kicked in the chest and stopped their hearts. So I always included bench pressing in my students’ and my own routines in order to increase strength in extensor muscles (used in punching and blocking) but also to strengthen intercostals, the muscles between our ribs to make our rib cages stronger, and to increase the protective padding over our chests by increasing the size of our pecs. He didn’t say much. At the end, we shook hands and he said he would come see me when he got out. (I never saw him again.)
As my former student escorted me back to the exit, I asked him what the guy had been imprisoned for. I had no idea and my student didn’t know what we had discussed. He told me the guy had hit a man in a bar fight so hard in the chest he had stopped the guy’s heart and killed him. If I remember right, he had killed two people in street fights.
I felt like a fool. The poor guy probably thought I was mocking him – which would have been dumb for several reasons.
There are, I think, several rules of budo. One of them surely is “If you’re dead, it doesn’t matter how you died, you’re just as dead.” A touch or a hard, bone crushing smack are all weapons in the arsenal of a good martial artist. And, as such, I believe they are all there in the bunkai.
I’ll stop here for now. Thanks again for reading and for your continued support.
Wow! Interesting in that you would touch on the very thing that he was in for. It kind of makes me wonder however as to his motives being that he was in prison for fighting, and he wanted to learn more about fighting.
ReplyDeleteMaybe he was seeking to learn control?
Who knows? One of the questions I asked myself as I drove home that day was "What separates them from us?" as few of the murderers I met that day, and I met a lot, looked or acted any differently than people we meet every day on the street. I still don't know the answer. But it could be, as you mention, a lack of control. Where we'd probably (althought not for sure) walk away, they stayed and took action to what they perceived as a serious insult, one they couldn't live with. Or it could be they lived in a different environment, where that wasn't an option, or were faced with a situation unlike most of us have ever encountered. Or, maybe they just like dominating others. The reason may have been different for each of them. For this guy, I think he didn't have many other options on the outside, considering his record, and he was attempting to find a way to support himself by doing something he was clearly good at and in a socially acceptable manner. But we'll never know.
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