Martial Arts Master Review : Taky Kimura

Bruce Lee™ is best remembered by those who knew him, not as a martial artist or movie star, but as a teacher and friend. When Bruce first arrived in Seattle, he began to develop a reputation for teaching gung fu.  Soon Bruce had many people wanting to study under him. One of those people was a thirty-six year old Japanese-American named Taky Kimura. Kimura had spent five years in a United States internment camp during World War II and suffered difficulty in getting a decent job afterward, under the shadow of post-war anti-Japanese sentiment.

Demoralized, Kimura was seeking something to give him back his self-confidence. He found that in the young Bruce Lee™, who became his mentor, spiritual guide, and best friend. "All the time we were growing up my mother and dad always said: "Look, we're nothing but second-class citizens so don't ever put yourself in the mainstream of life because you are going to get hurt,'" says Kimura. "We argued with them because the educational system told us that we were equal under the constitution. But then (when the war came along) all of a sudden things changed and we were put in the internment camps, even though we were citizens.