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[Hock]

I guess it would be another topic to start to say..

First timer in the USA
and/versus
First INFLUENTAIL-timers in the USA,

as there were dozens of pockets of families and folks in the USA doing stuff, many on the west coast.

Influential?

> Dan Inosanto - (otherwise? Most of America MAs wouldn't even know the Philippines existed. I can remember in the 80'swhen  big, dumb MA fighters sitting at Dan's knee at seminars, taking notes when Dan lectured on the archipelago. these brisers hadn't graduated high school! Yet, sat at his knee with a notepad. Who virtually, really publicised the term "mixed martial arts."

>Remy Presas and his never ending roadshow

>Leo Gaje and his lessor, yet never-ending, back then, road show.

Hock

[Bryan Lee]

  I'm limited in time here but I will try and briefly lay this out. The Moro's and Mindanao/Jolo has always been the heart  of Filipino Warrior culture. If you look into the FMA weapons most of them clearly came from the Moro's. Dig into the history of the Philippines and see what is there underneath it all. Go look at some pictures of Negritos the original peoples there. Most FMA history today is based on myth and has nothing to do with reality. Who first brought steel and swords to the Islands and which Islands? If you say the Chinese you could be correct but they were led by a Muslim and If you say Arabs and Indians you may be right but they first stopped at Ache. To the best of my knowledge steel was not invented in the Philippines so it was brought in and later it was produced in Indonesia first and later in Mindanao. The Moro Muslims were well established by the time the Spanish arrived and they never took over Mindanao only Cebu and North it was Only Americans who won for a time in the South Islands and it was done more through respect than any beating into submission or burying guys with pigs which is another myth but it too makes a good story. If you go around the Philippines today most people north of Cebu are Catholic and most are directly related to Spain aka Spanish DNA. If they are Spanish by DNA would that not mean FMA is Spanish in its origins? Would this mean Spanish/Muslim origins?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholicism_in_the_Philippines

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moro_rebellion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_He

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslims_in_Phillipines

  It is my conclusion the first FMA to reach the American Shore outside of a few pirates would have been the men of Blackjack Pershing's outpost in Mindanao. This would have been learned from contact with Moro's who were the best knife fighters in the history of the Phillipines. For that matter they are still fighting against outsiders, Maybe when Gloria goes the way of Toxsin they will find peace for themselves there but as long as someone like her is around they will fight on. Since most of the Muslims always speak Arabic as a second language as opposed to non -Muslims who speak English in Southeast Asia, they have always been lied about and misunderstood by those who never lived with them. FMA is a good story and sells well, Its just not a story based on historic facts, times, places, or written stories.   

  As I write this tomorrow will be my fifth Loy Kratong in Thailand and I will be well into  my 6th year of living in Southeast Asia. My first Loy Kratong was spent quietly at Jim Thompson's former home where I released a extra floating candle for him into the dark oily klong on a night filled with fireworks and festivities I sat and listened as Muslims called to prayer, The same Muslims who made his silk on the same klong where it was washed in filthy magic water to be  sold to Paris and New York as the highest fashion statement. It was Thompson the single greatest American to ever make Thailand his home who adopted and loved the Muslims of Bangkok and it was him who financed so many from Bangkok through hard work to travel to Mekka for pilgrimage. For those who don't know of Thompson you know nothing of Southeast Asia just as most who make so many claims of knowlage concerning Southeast Asia and its fighting arts.

http://www.hotelthailand.com/ezine/2001/issue3/zine3.html

After fighting ended in Cuba, Pershing received orders to report for duty in the office of the Assistant Secretary of War. Victory in Cuba and the acquisition of the Philippines brought problems unexpected by the government. The toughest questions centered around administering new colonial possessions. Since resistance continued in the Philippines, where rebels led by Emiho Aguinaldo fought for independence, the army had to devise a system of military government. Within the War Department a Bureau of Customs and Insular Affairs appeared in March 1899, with Major (temporary) Pershing as Chief. His description of the task facing him has a curiously modern ring:

The problems that arose involved readjustments in government and the determination of policies to be followed in the complicated business of ruling peoples as distant from each other geographically as Porto [sic] Rico and Mindanao and as different in character as West Indian Negroes [sic] are from Mohammedan Asiatics. Over the original code of laws of these peoples Spanish laws and customs had been superimposed. Our application of the rules of military occupation to the different alien groups frequently brought up questions which only the War Department could decide.


Though he could act like one on occasion, Pershing was no bureaucrat. Doing his desk jobs efficiently became a good soldier, but it also became a good soldier to get away from the desk and back to the field. Over loud protests from friend Meiklejohn, Pershing wormed an assignment to the Philippines in September 1899.


Desk duty served him well, though, for few officers had comparable legal and administrative understanding of insular problems. True, initial tasks as adjutant general of the District of Zamboanga and later of the District of Mindanao hardly gave him a chance to display his knowledge. But when he could he offered careful advice, showed interest in the Moro natives, and slowly impressed the brass. A man of his obvious talents could be useful in command capacity and in October 1901 Capt. Pershing (he finally made it in February 1901) took charge of Camp Vicars, an important Mindanao outpost.

For the first time he had a chance to practice some of his ideas of leadership and military government. The main task of Camp Vicars' commander focused on the Moro population. Few American soldiers either knew or cared much about these strange Mohammedan folk who decked themselves in turbans, wildly colorful clothes, practiced polygamy, took slaves, and brandished razor-edged krises, campilans, and barongs. About all known of them was their warlike nature, their unending desire to kill Christians, and their resistance to all forms of law and order.

Many Americans felt about Moros as they did about Indians: the good ones were dead. Standard operating procedure seemed to be shoot first and chat later. Obviously this sort of treatment bred equal enmity, and by the time Pershing took command at Camp Vicars relations between Americans and Moros were about as bad as they had been between Spaniards and Moros--which is to say impossible.

The new Yankee leader acted like none before him. Instead of sending out patrols to round up hostiles, he sent out letters written in Arabic, letters which talked of friendship and mutual assistance. A few Moro dattos and sultans tried the novel ways of peace and grew to trust Pershing. Working with this small nucleus, he tried to win over all the barrios of Mindanao. But this attempt failed. Fierce, proud people, the Moros tended to see weakness in peace talk and most could not forget the Mohammedan duty to rid the world of infidels.

Lake Lanao, landlocked deep in the interior of the Island of Mindanao, served several barrios as fishery, avenue of commerce, route of retreat. Two especially fearless bands of Moros hugged the shores of the lake and made it their own sea-the Lake Lanao and Maciu Moros. Their dattos treated every friendly overture with contempt, and Pershing finally knew he must fight them or lose the respect of the Moros who had accepted him.

By the time he led his first expedition into Mindanao's interior he knew much Moro lore. Hard fighting, he understood, conferred religious virtue; those Moros who died well, especially when warring against Christians, went immediately to Mohammedan paradise--noble death, then, formed the threshold of bliss. To an old Indian fighter this warrior philosophy had chilling similarity to the Ghost Dance frenzy which drove the red men to their desperate last stands.

Pershing understood a soldier's desire to die well--this ambition was not, after all, the exclusive property of Moros or Indians. And he respected those who achieved this goal. But he knew that somehow he must soil death for the Moros, somehow rob it of its hallow. This achieved, and discretion might have a chance over valor.

[At this point in 1963 Professor Vandiver repeated the oft-quoted story of how Pershing buried the Moslem Moros with pigs to intimidate them. He has since concluded that legend has no basis in fact and asked it be deleted from this presentation.]

But Pershing knew that he must give something valuable in return for such shabby guile: what he gave was mettle for mettle. He treated the Moro soldier as a worthy foeman whose strength demanded both strength and artifice in response. When he fought Moros he stormed their cottas with fury and when he carried their forts he spared the survivors the weakness of mercy.

Slowly but inexorably the Lake Lanao and Maciu Moros, then the fearsome Job and Sulu bands, yielded to this strange Yankee--this noble warrior who talked so softly. When at last they came to know he meant to help rather than humiliate them they, too, trusted. And when they did, they gave him their hearts. He became the first American soldier admitted to the exalted station of Moro datto in a mystic ceremony reminiscent of the Arabian Nights. Other Americans less sensitive to humanity, less understanding, less learned, might have spurned the strange rites and ridiculed the honor. Not Pershing. And the important thing is that none of the Moros expected he would.

Tenure in the Philippines was interrupted in 1903 by a call to duty with the nascent general staff. While in Washington tending this important desk job, the captain met and married Frances Warren, daughter of Senator Warren of Wyoming. Their marriage glittered as the capital's social event of 1905--everybody came, including President and Mrs. Roosevelt and members of the Senate.

No sooner was Pershing married than he was shipped-this time to Tokyo as U.S. Attache with the special assignment of observing the Mikado's armies in the Russo-Japanese War. And so began Pershing's first acquaintance with Japan. He fell in love with the country, took his family there often, and developed an admiration for the formal determination of the people. He also came to appreciate the efficiency of the army, an appreciation which grew as he followed Japanese operations at Dalny, Liaoyang, and Mukden. A keen professional eye caught the strength of Russian positions at Mukden, laced with wire, entrenched, supported by concentrations of artillery and machine guns. That same cold eye, like it or not, recognized the terrible power of the machine gun against masses of cavalry. And again war taught logistical lessons. Even the efficient Japanese could not solve the problems of masses of men, animals, guns, refugees, and prisoners. Disciplined trains broke into herds of vehicles, people, guns, equipment, all hopelessly stalled in chaotic masses to dwarf memories of Tampa. Again modern armies ran afoul of war's ancient enemy-disorganization.

The large corps of foreign observers, with the Japanese, all friends of Pershing, rejoiced at his spectacular promotion in mid-September 1906. The lowly captain of heroic duration in grade had been elevated by President Roosevelt to the rank of brigadier general! A reward for Moro service, the promotion put Pershing ahead of 862 senior officers and posed endless problems in jealousy and protocol.

But training and observation steadied him for increased responsibility, prepared him for wider opportunities, and tempered him for high command. The new brigadier at last received the assignment he most wanted: back to the Philippines as Commander of the Department of Mindanao and Governor of the Moro Province. This dual military and civil role had all kinds of possibilities. As military commander of the Department of Mindanao, he had charge of U.S. forces in the area and responsibility for operations--this meant, of course, he had power to enforce his decisions as civil governor of the province.

Had he been less experienced, less sympathetic with the Moros, power might have corrupted his administration into the petty tyranny known in other parts of the Philippines. But power he used to dignify his friends and chastise his foes; so justly did he use it that the Moro Province became a model of American military government. Civic advances could be glimpsed from Zamboanga to Iligan, from Tawi Tawi throughout the Sulu Archipelago. And at last leave-taking in 1914 both Pershings and Moros mourned the parting.

Still, long tropical service takes its toll, and the entire Pershing clan--grown to six by 1914--needed a change. Assignment to San Francisco promised a pleasant post, and the family settled comfortably in the Presidio. None realized it, of course, but the brief months of happy life at the Presidio were to be the last. While Pershing was away on the Mexican border in August 1915 his quarters burned. Frances and the three girls were killed; only son Warren survived.

[Bryan Lee]

[Bryan Lee]

[Bryan Lee]

[Bryan Lee]

[Bryan Lee]

[Benjamin Liu]

Several years ago I read an article, probably in a Filipino publication, about a town in the Southern US that was founded by Filipinos, supposedly some who were trained in FMA.  Some fought for the South during the Civil War, and the town was eventually destroyed in the 20th Century by a storm.

There is an old WWII movie filmed during the war titled "Gung Ho."  During the documentary part where the Marines are training, the narrator says something like "One of our men is a Filipino, and he's teaching knife fighting, where a knife goes from a handy tool to a deadly weapon."  I'm not sure what the exact words were, but this shows that there was awareness of FMA in the US during WWII, and if that part of the movie is correct non-Filipinos were also trained in it. 

[usks1]

Here is something to look at.... Make sure you look thru it all... It is pretty long.

Enjoy.

http://www.freewebs.com/sundangan/fmatimeline.htm