School Of Martial And Meditative Arts

So I have had someone purchase the manual online and download it 24 times...wtf.

Interview with Stan Mattson and Julie Alo October 27th, 1991
The following is an interview that Dr. Stuart Twemlow conducted on October 27th, 1991, after the death of Ron Alo. It was a discussion with Hanshi Stan Mattson and Hanshi Julie Alo-Wood about the origins of Hawaiian Kenpo with some fascinating information about James Mitose and William Chow and many other topics. I will transcribe the entire interview, including all the side talk. This is a wonderful slice of history, especially hearing from Stan Mattson, who passed away in 2001. This is one of the treasures that my father left for the dojo. He was always striving to increase his knowledge and document everything he experienced; he was a true scholar of martial arts. The four people in the interview are listed below.
Stan is Hanshi Stan Mattson.
Julie is Hanshi Julie Alo.
Stuart is Hanshi Dr. Stuart Twemlow.
Dan is Hanshi Dan Kennedy.

Here is the interview in its full glory, conducted while enjoying healthy food and thirst-quenching drinks. Some conversations were difficult to understand, so some translations may not flow smoothly. Overall, I got most of it correctly.
Stan - You got a problem; too late now.
Julie - Hey, there she is.
Stan - ...Ron talked one time. Why can old instructors hit younger, stronger, faster people before they can hit you? That's how you do that: start practicing.
Laughter.
Stuart - You started with Ron when you were sixteen.
Julie - When I was twelve.
Stuart - You must obviously have found him to be a pretty good teacher. There's a certain magic in teaching. People teach better than they practice.
Julie - True.
Stuart - Some people practice for quite a while and are terrible teachers.
Julie - Some people are competitors, and some people are instructors, but there are very few that can do both.
Stuart - Definitely. Did you see him compete?
Julie - He never competed. I mean, he did that for a living; I mean, he was a bouncer for 20 years. You can't expect a man like that to get in the ring. He was too fast. I think what separates him from others is he just had an insight into martial arts. He just had a good talent for instruction. I mean, when I learned, I started when I was twelve, and I started in the children's class. And he had kids from five years old up to thirteen. And I mean, the five-year-old was as good as any adult on that floor in the same rank. It was remarkable. I'm still trying to figure out what did he have to be, just a fantastic instructor...the products that he put out were beyond capacity..., and the techniques were beyond unbelief. I mean, I could look at five- or six-year-olds and see techniques coming out of these kids that were unbelievable. And so, you had somebody to look up to; I don't care if it was a kid or an adult. But when you trained, you were all frustrated on the floor, and all you said was, "God, if I could kick like him," or "If I could punch like him, or, you know, and so everybody just always kept their cool because he always taught state-of-the-art, and you was working on what was going on out on the street...what was going on out in the outside world. And we have always been twenty years ahead of everybody.
Stuart - Yeah. Did he have a particular interest in other styles? Any other styles? I mean, Stan told us that eventually, you developed your own styles, essentially, or you have evolved your own style?
Julie - Well, being an innovator, he threw a lot of things at us, or he made certain people learn certain things, and then we would go back and show him, and in 15 minutes, he could show you more than you learned in two years.
Stuart - So, did he pick stuff up very quickly?
Julie - Very quickly. He could analyze things in absolute detail.
Stan - He would say, "You see that group over there?" "Yes, sir." "Make him teach you this kata.” And you go to him, and he teaches you this kata. And he would say, "OK, you show me what he taught you, this kata." He would analyze it, and if he liked it, he would incorporate it. And teach somebody else. He could learn kata by watching it one time; he got it right. Unbelievable. It's an unbelievable characteristic.
Julie - And then later he'd say, "Well, I might not be able to get on the floor and do it, but I can do it, but I can tell you if you make a mistake.'
Stan - Yeah, even if he didn't know the form.
Julie - In black belt competition, you would walk around and shake his hand and he's said, "He didn't finish. You didn't finish, did you?" It destroyed you. He knew. He always knew. He already had a score for you as soon as you entered the doggone ring.
Stuart - Yeah.
Julie - He didn't even have to see you do anything. He could tell by the way you walked.
Stan - He was pretty phenomenal when he was watching when he was judging competition. He would watch a form. And he always hears people talk about, "OK, you know this kata. You can do it physically and mechanically, whatever. Do you understand the kata? Do you know why you're doing each movement and why, or what is there some hidden meaning in the form? Do you know what it is? Have you fully done the kata form, or are you just a mechanic?" And he could tell the difference between the mechanic and the individual that was fully interested in the form, and he was adept at understanding the meaning of form. And so that's why he could go in. He knew the interpretation of the next move after the move just before you screwed up. Really!
Julie and Stuart - Uh huh.
Stan - And so he could interpret your form as you performed it. He could tell you whether you made a mistake. And he didn't have to know your form. It was simple, logical, understanding of the interpretation of form. He would drive some people crazy because he knew they made up all their forms.
Stuart - Yeah.
Stan - And there was no logical interpretation. He could just get in their knickers and drive them crazy all day.
Stuart - So he must have had a sense, a major sense for each kata.
Julie - Uh huh.
Stuart - So he basically thought differently; he didn't think of it as a series of moves. Thought it was an overall way, executed defensive and offensive action and offensive action executed properly.
Stan - Alo didn't promote people on the basis of knowledge. He promoted people on the basis of capability and sense. I had a student one time I was ready to test for blue belt, and he made me promote him to black belt. I said, "But he doesn't know the criteria." He said, "I don't care. You can teach him the criteria. There is always a brown belt.... laughter. He did that with a little kid who was ten years old. He jumped in the ring. And I said, "Why?" And he said, "Look at his face. He has a brown-belt face. And stand in front of him. He may only know three techniques, but he has a brown-belt face.
Stuart - Did he ever talk much about that projection?
Stan - Did he talk much about it? If people, yeah, he would. If you had a bottle of Chivas Regal or White Label…
Stuart - He had good taste.
Stan - …and lemon and ice, and some soda to go around, and you get into those kinds of conversations, he can't stop talking about it. By the way, you didn't have to be a brown or black belt; if you were wearing a white belt and you thought you were ready to receive the knowledge, he would include you in the conversation. If you were not, he would either physically throw you out or politely ask you to leave. But he would have those discussions about the meditative quality of the arts, OK? Without much hesitation, he was in the right crowd, but otherwise, he was very private. That's my input.
Stuart - I imagine that that's what he was looking at, at your blue belt. He would look at his aura. He could tell. Did he ever, was he ever one to have pre-cognitive experiences of dreams? Did he ever know what you were going to do before you did it?
Julie - Yes. He said the way he learned how to do that was whatever it was he was developing, he would sit down and try it, and he would watch somebody and try to predict what they were going to do next.
Stuart - Yeah.
Julie - And he got so good at it.
Stuart - Did you ever fight him, Stan?
Stan - Only in training; when he when he was teaching, he was teaching us how to do. He wasn't a huge fan of training to do kumite.
Julie - If you know your technique, you don't need the training. ...never need to fight anybody until you go to the tournament. Then when you get into the ring...when he is sparring with students and he says watch, and that was the next move. That's what frustrated a brown belt one night by telling him everything he was going to do before he did it.
Stuart - Yeah. Well, that's the mystique of winning, all the fighting mystique. But there is a much more logical reason. You have trained them. You know what they know. And they are going to do it your way. Even if there is a certain level, he may be at where he has some overall perception independent of the individual instruction, sort of like an archetype.
Stan - You will pick up readings in body position, weights, and subtle shifting, and you will not be able to verbalize it, but you will make the grab. And you will know. And all you is you just come in slight, and they grab here.
Stuart (talking to Julie): Then you trained for a black belt under him? You got a black belt when you were eighteen?
Julie - Yes.
Stuart - What was his goal? What was he doing, and why was he doing all that? What was the purpose of it? For example, was he interested in teaching people how to defend themselves against muggers primarily or for the general public or sort of training trainers, and why was he interested in spreading these ideas? What motivated him?
Julie - Hmm, Stan?
Stan - What, dear? No, we had a lot of discussions about the purpose or not; it was just his continued input. The motivation to become obliged to teach and see the truth of martial arts. You have an obligation to fulfill when you become a teacher; the obligation, the sole obligation, is to perpetuate the art. OK?
Stuart - To what end?
Stan - To the end of making a better person. There is nothing different.
Stuart - But self-defense?
Julie - Building self-confidence.
Stan - He talked about that a lot. If you could talk to Funakoshi or Ueshiba, Bodhidharma, or any of those old dead guys who were involved in martial arts, they would all give you the same philosophical indication. And that is, we want to perpetuate our art so that we can make the world a better place to live. And I tell people, "I want to make you so deadly so that you can go out and make other people so deadly so that pretty soon everybody is so deadly that nobody wants to hook and jab anymore, and peace will reign. That's it.
Stuart - But using a martial element is so very important.
Mattson - Absolutely.
Stuart - What do you think of forms where that is lost or varied like Mitoses’? Or what do you think of that?
Julie - Where there's no real martial arts. Yeah, where there's no real martial element.
Stan - There's no fighting aspect involved. I think one of the big things about those disciplines that reportedly are not martially oriented…
Stuart - Hmm.
Stan - …that are more philosophically oriented toward the development of the human being, I think that basically there is an understanding conjunctive[?] to that philosophy indicates that you can do this every day of your life and never utilize it and never encounter a situation where you are not totally at peace with the rest of the world, or if you know this. You need to use it from an air of combat or self-defense; it will function quite capably for you in that regard. OK? And so, when you made the statement a while ago, non-martial applications such as Tai Chuan and I think that in all the systems of Tai Chuan that, the martial application exists and is becoming more predominantly taught. So that when someone from Yank-style Tai Chuan comes through here in Colorado today or in California today, learning from an old Chinese guy, teaching Yank-style, called Yank-style…
Stuart - Hmm.
Stan - …then he is going to say, "I'm going to teach you how to do this; it's going to take you the rest of your life to understand this, OK? Somewhere during this time, the rest of your life, you will come to understand that each of these motions is designed to develop you internally, help you find your focus, create your level of competence, or whatever can be used externally. That you can take the same power of generation, the same point of focus and externalize it so that you can make it combative if you wish…
Stuart - Yeah.
Stan - …OK, more and more instructors of Tai Chuan, especially in the United States, are adopting that kind of philosophy. So that, I don't know if we can say any longer that Tai-Chi is non-combative, that is, non-martial.
Stuart - Stan, that's right. Did Ron talk about his idea of what a warrior was? I think the basic issue here is the self-defense issue, which is one that the quality of life is conflict. And life is to live with conflict every day. So, there is value in the martial approach to conflict in general. So was his idea of a warrior, sort of like a type of person you might want to develop, sort of an ideal. Did he ever talk about that? What a warrior was? What his ideal person would be like?
Stan - I think he would call it a martial artist.
Stuart - Yeah, but what is the martial artist besides being able to know about technique? Is that what it is?
Stan - Technique means absolutely nothing.
Stuart - OK. Well, what is it we are looking for? We developed the system logically, which we were not familiar with at all. So, he is moving in some direction from what you are saying, probably a direction that has to do with some type of ideal state he has been trying to achieve. What would his perfect man or woman be?
Julie - In seminars, he talked a lot. He would talk about self-development, how you handle yourself, and he got, you know, away from the physical aspects and more mental, and we talked about, oh, the hardships that you might have to go through and obstacles that everybody faces, and you use it as a vehicle to be able to overcome these things and to gain strength from. He did focus a lot on gaining strength.
Stuart - But it is sort of a toughening quality that I think in the martial arts...to take a shot.
Julie - Well there is a survival quality.
Stuart - Exactly.
Julie - Yeah. That psychologically could be critical.
Stuart, when this early phase of your life was going on, were you living in California?
Julie - Yes.
Stuart - Where did you go to?
Julie - Wyoming.
Stuart - Why did you leave California? Why did you move here?
Julie - Uh, there was a fellow that was interested in martial arts, and we went to a certain martial arts store that we went to to meet Stan. And he told us he was from Wyoming, and he was a salesman. And he was in martial arts and so he was interested. He was looking for somebody who would stay, but nobody stayed. People came to that town, but nobody stayed. Nobody lasted a year in that town. And so Ron went out there and checked the town out and stuff like that and ended up calling me here.
Stuart - When was that?
Julie - 1982.
Stuart - So there was this major shift in 1985. What led to it? Why? Was there an event that precipitated that? He added escrima, weapons, and softer techniques from the early Karaho and Chow styles. There seemed to be a big shift there about 1985.
Julie - No. You wouldn't call it a shift. Our only weapons were maybe Sai and Nunchakus, and Nunchakus were in style and used with drills. And Sai, I don't remember where we got the Sai from. We didn't have any one of the weapons incorporated into the system. That was, I think, in 1980 because he was out in California.
The external noise from the tape machine overpowers the first part of Julie’s response.
Julie - Now, he has received his training in Hawaii.
Stuart - Was he born in Hawaii?
Julie - Yes, he was.
Stuart - How did he come to meet William Chow?
Julie - He visited other schools, and he visited judo schools, but he wasn't Japanese, and they wouldn't let him in. Uh, some other friends that he knew were Chinese, and they took him to kung fu schools. He was only a quarter Chinese, so he kept looking around and found Chow. I guess he had watched his class for one solid month before he found out. So, the first day he walked in there, they said, "You gotta leave," but he wouldn't leave. OK, now I've made up my mind. I want to start.
Stuart - How long did he train with Chow?
Julie - Three years.
Stuart - Was he a very promising student? I imagine he was.
No response.
Stuart - Do you know about Chow's association with Mitose?
Julie - Mitose was interested in Hawaii and visiting companions and friends. And I think Chow was curious about that cartel; I mean, he was curious about the breaking and their methods of doing things. But he was lower in rank. His father was the one who taught him.
Stuart - Oh.
Julie - He was a lower rank in the black belt martial arts hierarchy.
Stuart - What was his style? Was it his father's style?
Julie - It was his family's system. And I really can't answer you because everybody waited until too late to start asking these questions. And Chow passed away and now nobody has any answers.
Stan - Hardly anyone knows the name of Chow's father.
Julie - That's right.
Stan - Nobody knows who he is.
Julie - So that's why that I, you know, I don't care for the magazines all the time trying to write lineage on Kenpo. They just talk about him like he was a famous student of Mitose's, and that is baloney.
Stuart - Yeah, I wondered.
Julie - They just traded ideas, and he trained with his class and all that because there is a picture showing that, but he was a black belt; it never mattered because he was a black belt in the first place.
Stan - Professor Chow made quite a stir in 1967 about March, sometime around March in 1967, there was an article published in one of the martial arts magazines, I believe it was Black Belt, which said, "Chow confessed to being a 15th degree."…
Stuart - Yeah, I saw that article.
Stan - …and Chow said, "If you are a master of this art and you and you are a tenth degree already, and you add one, you are 11th degree, you add another one, you know, it's no big deal. It's no big thing. I think he loved to do that. It could be the whole thing was blown out of proportion.
Stuart - Was he psychiatrically disturbed? He spent a lot of time in a mental hospital.
Julie - I think the problem with that, and Ron mentioned that was the fact that he didn't have proper schooling and he couldn't communicate with people in English; it was so bad. He felt that he was going senile, or however you call it psychiatrically disturbed, the fact that he couldn't express himself the way he wanted to. He couldn't figure out what they wanted him to do, you know, and surely, he couldn't come up with the right words to tell them.
Stan - The same thing happened to Sokin Hohun, who was the other guy that was a major practitioner of Kobudo in Okinawa. Sokin Hohun was raised in a community in Brazil or one of the other Japanese settlements in South America, so he was fluent in Spanish, and he was fluent in Japanese. But he was not so fluent in some English. Recently Mr. Marvin Fisher, a quite young American author, met with Sokin Hohun through his publication. But Sokin Hohun and his agent was considered by Marv Fisher as being completely senile. Alright? I don’t know if there was much credibility in the determination of senility when Mr. Fisher was dealing with Sokin Hohun, and he probably would have had the same experience if he had talked with Professor Chow. But even Shihan Ron Alo would tell you that the last time he met with Chow, Chow was slipping a lot.
Stuart - Was he?
Julie - Uh huh.
Stan - He would think it was more senility. Yeah.
Stuart - Where did Ed Parker come in?
Julie - Ed Parker trained before Ron.
Stan - He started two years before Ron did, with both crossing paths at some point in their careers. Because Ron always told me, in fact, the first time I was introduced to Parker in Pasadena, I was a Cub Scout white belt, and we went up to Pasadena, and they greeted each other as classmates. They discussed a lot about Chow. In fact, the first order of business was how secure Chow was because Parker didn't send him any money now that he was famous in America.
Stuart - Oh yeah.
Stan - So that was the first order of business. And in fact, the second order of business was the fact that neither one of them ever denied their roots like so many other martial artists at the time. Yeah, because over there, everybody wanted to survive.
Stuart - Yeah.
Stan - So it was easy to develop .... here’s some tomato and sausage and green onion' and uh, you might appreciate a snack as we continue to prepare your dinner.
Someone says something about cocktail napkins.
Stan - He says he's just a country boy." "Well, he might be. We have those. Even Marron has those hakamas. We'll start wearing red satin flashy trash.
Stuart - So what did you do after 1967? You've got your shirt on. What did you do then?
Stan - I continued to teach for my two tours in Vietnam, oh, nearly nineteen months in Vietnam. And then, when I came back to the States, that would have been 1969, and I was stationed in Long Beach, California, I'm sorry. I came back in June 1968. So, from June of 1968, I had workouts on weekends in San Diego and re-entered training with Shihan Alo at his dojo in Anaheim. He worked with me in the adult class and made me teach the teenagers. I didn't like them…
Stuart - Laughs.
Stan - …and so that was a lot of fun. That was when I found out that this guy was going to continuously change things, you know. It's always going to change. There was always going to be development, progress, innovation...you are never going to be stagnant. Because if you learn something and he likes it, he can apply Karaho Kenpo Karate as he learned it, and he'll take it and fly with it. And so I re-entered training with him in basically June or July of 1968, and I tried to keep up with teaching in San Diego and Anaheim, and I stayed with him, in fact, lived with him for a while, and then, started living on base. I got stationed in Long Beach and started living there. I started a class on base there called Naval Station Long Beach and then taught, uh, opened a second dojo for him in Anaheim. When he thought I was ready. When he thought I was prepared, capable, whatever, because you know, he promoted me in absentia to Shodan, he never formally tested me for Shodan. Even though I had taught under his direct guidance and supervision, he wasn't sure how I would do on my own several months after I returned. We did a lot more heavy kumite and fighting weapons with weapons, you know? Nunchaku against Sai and stuff like that. Some individuals get on one side of a bunker with a knife, and another individual gets on the other side, and you jump off the middle, you're both going to wind up inside the hole.
Stuart - When did you get interested in knives?
Stan - Actually, we developed; this is interesting because it wasn't until Ron showed that we when he showed up, were teaching four hours of close combat with two to four people in San Diego and had then just temporarily discontinued at Paris Island. Shortly after, Vietnam started to accelerate. We went from four hours of close combat to sixteen hours of close combat in seven months. And the instructors on board at the time, which included Ron and me, created the whole system…
Stuart - Hmm.
Stan - …beyond the first four hours of education. So we got real serious about martial arts, and that's when we started; we had guys with Jiu-Jitsu, Aikido, Shorin-Ryu, uh, I guess I said Judo, and then Ron's Kenpo, and then I had the Judo and Jiu-Jitsu combined background and all these instructors had combined martial arts background and had been teaching close combat for a while and all hell broke loose in Vietnam and they boosted about the amount of close combat that you needed. So, then we developed the knife, and we just took our combined knowledge…
Stuart - "We" is you and Ron?
Stan - No, "We" is the unit of about eight close combat instructors of the Marine Corps depot in San Diego; took our combined knowledge of knife fighting and knife defense and military knife fighting and bayonet as previously established and created a system...the recruits were being taught bayonet and knife fighting, OK?
Stuart - Uh huh.
Stan - And we also taught them how to defend themselves after they learned how to fight with a knife. So, and there’s nothing new about what we taught in terms of knife fighting; it was a standard military method at the time. The bayonet was significantly advanced beyond what the Soviets were using at the time. But we took all these things and created a sixteen-hour instructional package which had to be approved by the Headquarters of the Marine Corps, which was then implemented again at Marine Corps Depot, Paris Island, and their selected instructors came to San Diego to train with us and took the package back there. And there are still sixteen hours of close combat available in a program of instruction in the Marine Corps. So, he was largely responsible for much of the development, particularly in bayonet fighting; the whole structure of bayonet fighting had been previously based on a Soviet keep your balance, move quickly, kind of thing…
Stuart - Uh huh.
Stan - …and he took the converted bayonet fighting methods used in the Marine Corps to the use of foundation positions from Kenpo Karate? So that was one main key factor.
Stuart - Yeah.
Stan - And then the knife defenses were Ron's. And then, when we opened a closed combat class, he implemented this also; when you teach the recruits their first HHC1 (their first two hours of hand-to-hand combat), the first thing that you do is you have an instructor who walks out on the floor and wearing a gi…
Stuart - Uh huh.
Stan - …and then in Vietnam, we changed to camouflage utilities. We started out wearing Gi’s. Good opening. One of us would walk out because we worked in teams of two, one instructor on the tower and one on the floor at all times, and when the recruits started hooking and jabbing heavily…
Stan - You're going to burn that dinner, what would happen is the uh…
Cooking sounds.
Stan’s wife - I'm going to add some hot water to it...
Stan - …and the other available instructors would come out when the recruits would get him involved in actual close combat, and we would resuscitate those that had been choked out and stuff like that and take care of those that were injured. But teaching from the tower was the most difficult thing that he did and the easiest thing that I did. So that's how we basically put everything together…
Stuart - What do you mean by teaching from the tower?
Stan - There's a tower in the center of one side of the classroom, and the primary instructor will stand on the tower, and he can pull out of four recruits in two hours. In so doing, then you convey to the rest of the recruits that this is the way to strike this individual, throw this individual, break this individual's arm, or rip this individual's lips off, or whatever you do. Ron had trouble conveying that in English.
Stuart - Oh yeah, of course.

For the rest of the interview, go to the latest SOMMA Manual available for purchase.

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Have a great 2026.

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The final SOMMA Manual is completed. Go to https://payhip.com/b/WqSNt to purchase this 903 page labor of love