More than 50 people gathered at Yoshihiro Uchida Hall Friday to celebrate judo head coach Yoshihiro Uchida’s 102nd birthday.
Those in attendance included the San Jose State judo team, alumni and family members, and friends of coach Uchida.
Uchida was born in Calexico, California in 1920, the third of five children. At the age of 10, he started to learn judo.
Judo, meaning “gentle way” is a form of modern Japanese martial arts, a system of unarmed combat which primarily involves turning your opponent’s force to one’s own advantage versus opposing it directly. In an article by Puncher media describing the sport, it has a moral code including the principles of politeness, courage, sincerity, honor, modesty, respect, self-control, and friendship.
According to Black Belt Magazine, Judo was considered a traditional method for Japanese parents in America to instill culture in their children.
After the event, Uchida said doing judo has felt “like a lifetime.”
“I started when I was 10 right through the Great Depression in the 1930s,” he said. I enrolled in a judo class in Southern California, and I’ve been at it ever since.”
Uchida’s life changed drastically at the start of World War II, as did the lives of many other Japanese Americans, according to an April 1, 2012 New York Times article. His family was sent to internment camps after President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s executive order 9066, and processed through Yoshihiro Uchida Hall, now named after Uchida. He was drafted into the army while attending SJSU to serve as a medical technician, according to the same article.
According to SJSU Athletics, Uchida majored in biology while becoming student-coach for the university’s judo team in 1940. After graduating in 1947, he remained coach at SJSU while also working as a lab supervisor on campus. He has continued to be head coach for over 70 years.
According to the California State University website Uchida, along with UC Berkeley’s judo coach Henry Stone helped make judo a competitive sport among students, implementing weight classes and moving the sport away from just self-defense.
After taking judo to a national level, Uchida represented the U.S. as head coach of the national judo team at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo, with James Bregman winning a bronze medal and becoming the first American to medal in the sport.
"I turned judo into a weight system because I wanted it to be an Olympic sport, which it was not at the time,” Uchida said. “All these places started to adopt what I had implemented when I became coach."
Marti Malloy, SJSU alumna and team coach of the university’s judo team, said Uchida’s program has produced more Olympic medalists and has won more collegiate national titles than any other program in the U.S.
Uchida is also active in the San Jose community, assisting the San Jose Nihonmachi Corporation which helped invest over $80 million into the city’s Japantown.
As Uchida arrived for his birthday celebration, everyone stopped and applauded to greet the beloved San Jose figure.
Nina Seone, judo team captain and business administration senior said she loves the environment of the team and being trained by Uchida.
“Something that I really like about Mr. Uchida is that, even at his age, he’s always positive and smiling,” she said.
Malloy believes that Coach Uchida’s strict training style is what brought many people on the team success.
“Everyone who knows Mr. Uchida knows he can be a little harsh on you, but it's more of a reverse psychology thing, so you can try harder to prove him wrong,” Malloy said.
