Lou Moyerman first started judo after being jumped by some kids, enrolling in a program led by Helen Foos. Moyerman would come to view Foos as a second mother and would be introduced to Takahiko Ishikawa through her. When he enrolled in Temple University and began a judo club there. From there, Moyerman took to spreading judo, establishing his Liberty Judo school and Liberty Bell Classic tournament. Today, Moyerman took some time to discuss his early time in judo, his relationship with Ishikawa, and the lasting effect of judo in his life. This interview was used in the writing of the book Takahiko Ishikawa: Judo’s Quiet Master, available now!
MAYTT: There was some tension between Ishikawa and Eichi Koiwai almost ever since the former arrived in Philadelphia. What do you think prompted such conflict and why do you think it lasted so long?
LM: As much as I know as I first went to the club, Koiwai used to come to the club, especially on Fridays, I think. He would be on the mat with Ishikawa, and he would work out and help out. He was also very instrumental in my life and judo too. Then, all of a sudden, he wasn’t there anymore. I don’t know exactly what happened, but I heard two different things. One I heard was that Koiwai threw Ishikawa in front of people and he was very discouraged about it. He didn’t like that – you were not supposed to do that. The major thing that I understand was that it centered around a rift in the Shufu Yudanshakai about the refereeing. Ishikawa, at one time, always refereed the Grand Championship match at the national championships. They don’t have it anymore, but they would take each weight class winner – there were about five or six weights – and they would fight each other until there were two left. The winner of that would be declared the grand champion. They did that every year for years and Ishikawa always refereed that match.
When they started doing the referee licensing, where you would have to take a test to get different levels of refereeing, what I understand what happened and I’m not fully positive on it, they told him after he refereed that he had taken the test and he wasn’t good enough. I don’t know if it was just Koiwai or the other referees, or who tested him or who didn’t tell him he was being tested – I think it was pretty stupid and should’ve just given him his referee license. And I understand that’s what set off Ishikawa over the edge. I don’t know much more than that.
He was the head examiner at the Shufu for a long time because of his rank and all, but he and this other Japanese guy, Miyamoto, who was his friend, they both resigned. Koiwai once told me something to the effect of Ishikawa pushed to be the coach of the world team or being involved in some capacity and Koiwai said that he went out of his way to make that happen and then Ishikawa didn’t take the position. So, I’m sure there are two sides to each story.
Koiwai was very good to me in my life and judo. I considered him one of my mentors too. He’s an American born Japanese. His second wife, Phyllis, she used to annoy me whenever I would travel to tournaments. That’s like my mother asking me if everything’s alright, so I started to call her mom. That’s how I felt about them. I tried to stay as far away from that feud as possible. That’s the most I can tell you that I know about it. It was either the refereeing from the one side or the coaching thing from the other, and when it happened, nobody could get them to make up.
When I said that there was a club at the central YMCA, a guy named Jack Hunter, who recently passed away at 101, he ran that club with Koiwai as a branch off from Ishikawa’s. I just know that the one thing about Ishikawa was he had the Japanese mentality. When you’re the sensei, everybody treats you as sensei, and that’s the way it should be. It was a shame how the relationship fell apart.
MAYTT: When he became the head of his own club, both the Philadelphia Judo Club and the Ishikawa Judo Club, what was his administrative practices like? Was he one to take on full responsibility or to delegate such duties to other members?
LM: He had an office manger who usually took our money. Whatever the price was a month back then – twenty dollars a month, or something like that. We either paid him if he was there or we paid his office manager, Trudy. She took the money and kept the records. I know that on the mat, I don’t remember anybody else other than him running or teaching class, unless he was very sick or if he took a vacation or closed the dojo for whatever reason. But on the mat, it was his domain and ran everything. Off the mat, I don’t know if he paid Trudy or she went to judo for free, I have no idea. I don’t know if he advertised or put stuff in the paper about the club, I don’t even know how people found out about the club unless they were in judo or looking for judo lessons.
When he moved, we all helped him move. He went from Broad and Race to Broad and Capital Hill. That was the time Yono was here because I remember he and I going down there and helping set up mats and doing different things to help move from the one place. Most of the club members back then – the black belts – all helped him move. I don’t know why he moved.
MAYTT: What was Ishikawa’s relation to both the USJF and USJA? How did he help grow and further judo being a part of each organization?
LM: As much as I know when he was part of USJF, Shufu Yudanshakai, and all that, he was the head examiner. He sat on the meetings, and I think he voted, helping decide who got promoted. He would come in and watch the competitions. I don’t know if the system in there was something he liked or didn’t like. He and I never really talked about that. I think he got a little bit involved in USJA when he went to Virginia Beach. He left USJF very distraught all about the way he was treated, so I think that USJA picked him up and put him back up on the pedestal a little bit. As far as I know, my time with him and after that, it was all USJF.
MAYTT: How did the Ishikawa family dynamic change with the passing of their son? How did that event effect his judo and his overall outlook in the proceeding years?
LM: Hajime was fifteen when it happened, and I was fourteen maybe. I wasn’t Ishikawa’s student in judo then, but I know him from when he came to the house and everything. What I saw was that he was brokenhearted. His son was really getting good at judo. Mrs. Foos had a bunch of us – I was one of the worse kids, but I wasn’t terrible. She had four or five or six different kids that were pretty good at judo. And then there were about twelve of us that were decent at judo or above. I think Hajime was going to be someone spectacular one day; that’s how everybody was talking about him. He wasn’t losing too many matches and he seemed to pick everything up as he got a little bit older. I think that it crushed Ishikawa when that happened. Any parent would be crushed if that happened. I never talked to him about it; never when we talked about anything, that subject never came up. To be honest, I don’t think he would’ve talked to anyone about it.
When I still think about it, I still think that I could’ve been in the room that night and slept through him doing that – waking up a seeing that first thing. It was bad enough. I don’t know if I can say that we were close friends. There were other kids in the club that I was friends with. My cousin, who was also named Louis, used to do judo with us. It was very shattering then to have that happen, even for us as kids. We didn’t understand it. It was terrible.
MAYTT: What prompted his move from Philadelphia to Virginia Beach?
LM: Mrs. Foos left the area. He decided to go there. She had coal business – when the energy crisis happened, she went from being a wealthy woman to a very, very wealthy woman and she decided to leave. I was about sixteen then. So, she left and then she decided to build a dojo down there for him. I don’t know how or why or what kind of agreement they made. I do know that the dojo back then was worth about a quarter-million dollars. She owned that property, she owned that property next to it, where her business was, and she had her own house there too. I know she had beach front property all that kind of stuff down there. From my understand was that she built this for him so he could teach judo, have a salary, and retire there. I think he was getting paid thirty-six or thirty-eight thousand dollars a year to teach judo. So whatever kind of situation he set up for him. The dojo was absolutely gorgeous. It was the top of the line. I went down there for the grand opening and there about two hundred people that showed up for the event. Joe moved down there to be with Ishikawa. His wife, Becky, worked for Mrs. Foos for a long time. From what I know, Mrs. Foos and Ishikawa had a great relationship at the time. I would surmise so because she funded all of this.
MAYTT: How different do you feel the legacy of Philadelphia Judo would be without Ishikawa’s influence?
LM: I don’t know if we would have any kind of legacy if he wasn’t here. I don’t think that clubs, the instruction, or the ability of the people around then would’ve had what he had and what he developed. He had so many really good students. Some of them competed heavily and some of them were really good students who loved judo and got tied up in life. Probably Dick Walters was his best student ever. He kind of got screwed out of the Olympics a couple of times. He was a remarkable judo player. I believe he fought in the World and Pan-Americas, and all that stuff back then. I can’t remember everybody from back then, but I don’t know if there would be a legacy of judo if Ishikawa wasn’t there. He was Philadelphia judo. Everybody either eventually went to him or were touched by him along the line. You take a guy like Fred Merdy from Scranton, he would come down to practice, then he became enamored with Dick Walters and moved to New Jersey and trained under him for years because they had the same kind of mentality and outlook in judo. That would have never happened for Fred to improve his judo if it wasn’t for Ishikawa, because Dick was Ishikawa’s student. That’s how we all felt about him. There wouldn’t have been anything. I don’t think that Joe or I, or Rich Lays or anybody else that taught judo in Philadelphia after him could have ever done what he did.
I know when Ishikawa left, Rusty Scott who was one of his students and who practiced with us in Merion Dojo, took over. We knew each other as kids. He took over the dojo, then a couple of other guys like Art Bourgeau and Jimmy Gross, and they did really good with it – I mean, they really did. Nobody’s Ishikawa. Unless it’s inbred like Yoshisada Yonezuka in New Jersey – he passed away a few years ago. He was the one that always told me that Ishikawa would talk about him. Joe and I used to go up there and practice, and because we were Ishikawa’s students, he treated us like gold. He never charged us. He would talk with us. If it wasn’t for the fact that his son, Nicolas Yonezuka was such a good player, then that dojo there would’ve probably just vanished. Yani had Micky, his son, who grew up in his system and was an Olympian and a fantastic judo person. Now he’s running that club. Fortunate for judo that he is and for his kids and grandkids, who excellent judo players now too. It’s kind of runs in their blood.
All these people were affected by Ishikawa. All the Japanese sensei that we knew, Mamoru Shimamoto, Yonezuka, and all those guys were his sempai/kohai relationships. They knew the respect that he got.
I was at the Kodokan for the World Championship, about two years ago [2020]. We stayed right near the stadium, the Tokyo Dome, and it was about two blocks from the Kodokan. My wife and I went the Kodokan and walked around and they had Ishikawa’s picture up when he won the All Japan Championship. It was so cool to see that. I took pictures and I sent them to Joe saying, “Hey Joe. Look at what I just saw!” It was awesome to see the amount of respect he got and earned, because that was like the world champion then.
MAYTT: Were there things Ishikawa wanted to do for Judo that he was unable to achieve? If so, what prevented him from making those accomplishments in your opinion?
LM: I think he wanted Dick Walters to be a World or Olympic Champion. He was his best student ever and when Dick fought, Ishikawa used to stand by the mat and watch him fight. He wasn’t a real hands-on type of coach and that was the Japanese way back then. He didn’t come down and say, “Hey Lou. You’re going to fight this guy and I watched this guy fight, make sure you do this and don’t do that.” The training was in the club, and you would go out on the mat and fight. But I think he thought that Dick would’ve have been the one to do something like that. Maybe that was something that didn’t happen for him. Other students did very well in competitions all over the place, but I think he would’ve like to see that type of legacy where one of his students won the Olympic medal or World’s medal.
MAYTT: What do you believe judo meant to Ishikawa?
LM: It was his life. I think it governed what he did when he grew up, besides whatever he experienced in the Army. I don’t know what his parents did when they were raising him, but once he got deep into judo, knowing the Japanese mentality, it was probably that he ate, slept, and drank judo all the time.
Later in life, he retired from judo to play more go. From my impression, they have both a professional and amateur go ranking system and he was a very high-ranked go player in one of them. I don’t think it was professional, but he was a very good go player. He told me once that there was a professor from Penn that came to the dojo, and he had his go pieces in bowls on his desk. The professor, without asking, reached out, thinking the pieces were candy, and tried to eat them. Ishikawa later said, “That man was very stupid and not nice. He should have asked me. Because he didn’t ask me, I let him chew on them like they were candy just to see what would happen.” [Laughs] That comes back to him handing the money back to us. He figured he would embarrass the man and that’s what he did. He was very much into go. When he went back to Japan, he got married to a doctor – the lady was an M.D. – and whatever life he had left there, he basically played go with a lot of people. People asked him to come back and do different judo things and he turned them down. My understanding to that is that he wanted to retire, and play go, plain and simple. He was probably as good at go as he was at judo.
MAYTT: What are three significant contributions you feel Ishikawa did for judo as a whole that change people’s perspective of the art?
LM: He came to the United States would be the first because he gave the judoka here an opportunity to see how someone who taught and learned judo in Japan and would in turn teach us the best judo that he could. In other words, he uplifted judo by being here. If he didn’t come here, who knows what would’ve happened with Philadelphia judo or judo in the whole country because he was the highest-ranking person in the United States for a very long time.
His mannerism and his ability to teach and communicate with people was always on a good level. He never looked down upon anybody. He was a true champion in a sense that he was still a really good person on the mat with people. For a lot of people, they get really good at judo and then go, “Why can’t you understand this? Are you stupid?” He always treated everybody really nice. He could get to different levels to teach judo – he could teach white belts and teach black belts on their own level. That was something that was very important about him.
The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is him being himself when he taught and was on the mat. He always wore a black belt and never wore a red or a red and white belt. He was very humble. He taught people to be humble and to be respectful; to learn judo in the right way. It was very instrumental in building judo in this country, I believe. It wasn’t just him, but the other Japanese instructors that came over. I don’t know where we would’ve been – I know judo hasn’t been the same since he and a lot of them left. We miss him. He taught his students to be respectful. It wasn’t just a bow; it was the respect of judo. Respect of getting on the mat and learning, behaving, working hard, and trying your best. All those things were things that he left for all of us.
I always think sometimes if I could see him now, would he say to me if I did good or for me to have done something differently. I think about, at times, if I made him proud. “Is Sensei proud of me of what I did in judo?” or would he be mad at the way I yelled at the referees and what I did. Did I do him well? If I did, I’m very happy. If I didn’t, I should back and change it, but I can’t now. I try to tell my students about him. I have a picture of him in my son’s dojo and when people ask who he is, I tell them about Ishikawa because they should know because this was a great judo person. I tell them that picture of Ishikawa is the Sensei. as I said earlier, I don’t have my students call me sensei – I was either coach or Lou on the mat – because Ishikawa is the sensei, as with Yonezuka and some of those others. Ishikawa was the sensei; he just was. He was a teacher.
MAYTT: They often say one person can make a difference. What difference did Ishikawa make in your life specifically?
LM: He helped me grow up. All coaches, whether it’s judo or any sport, help their students grow up. He helped me be the best competitor or judo person I could be. I got a little crazy at times and yell at referees, but eventually I grew out of it, and it was because he helped me through that. He taught us a way to teach judo. When I teach judo, I think about how Sensei would teach it – I would have to remember what he would say about doing this throw, hold down, or move. If I was teaching that way, then I knew I was teaching good judo. And that’s what I saw him do – teach really good judo. That’s what I try to do. I think Joe would say the same thing. He’s a remarkable teacher too. To pass on what we learned to the next generation so that they can do the best judo they could do too.
MAYTT: What does judo mean to you?
LM: It’s such an integral part of my life, next to my family and sports. I work a lot with the Maccabiah Games, which is a Jewish organization for the Jewish Olympics and all. I tell everybody we’re here for three reasons: we have a love for the sport, because we are Jewish and proud of it, and we have a family back here in Maccabiah. Judo has meant almost the same as the same type of thing there. I have a judo family, the are some of the best people I know – that we are very close. Sue is like my big sister. Joe and I, since this pandemic, we haven’t seen each other in a long time but he’s just like family. His daughter is like my third daughter. Outside of my own family, one of the most important things in my life has been judo. I’ve got a chance to go all over the world and make friends all over the world in judo. I’ve managed teams and I’ve coached teams.
I was on the Olympic staff once because of judo – I would have never had a chance to have gone to the Olympics. I’ve tried as an athlete and I didn’t make it, so I wouldn’t have gone as an athlete, so I went as a staff member. It was quite a unique experience. I should’ve gone to Tokyo this past year [2021], but that didn’t pan out. That’s what it meant to me. I go to judo now; I get on the mat once in a while – I’m all beat up and I’m old – and I watch my son teach. I watch my son run my club that I started years ago. And I’m sure Joe feels the same way; he watches his daughter teach. She, Chrissy, is very good and an excellent judo person too. They’re family. That’s what it has meant to me. If I could do it all over again, I would try to be better at the sport, and maybe I would have won a little better and listened to my coaches more. But you can’t change that so I’m happy with what I did and I’m happy that I produced good students, not just in judo but to help them grow too, just like the teachers I had – that’s what teaching is about.
MAYTT: Where do you see American Judo going in the next decade?
LM: The pandemic has crushed judo in a lot of places, and I think it has not helped American judo. I see people like Nicky, Yoni’s son, doing a remarkable job with his kinds. I see a future in judo if we can keep the kids that are doing good in judo now, in terms of being international athletes and things like that which helps our sport. It’s very hard at the level right not because the way to get to the Olympics is incredibly tough. The number of tournaments the kids have to go to and the amount of money they would have to put in, it’s not easy anymore. It’s almost like judo has to be a full-time job and you have to be a professional with nutritionists, sports psychologists, and coaches, videos, practices, and having enough bodies to practice with, which is the hardest thing in this country.
We have some good judo clubs but it’s hard to keep kids in judo. You have to make it feel like family, you have to make them like judo, otherwise they’ll go to wrestling or the basketball, or go to other sports where they can make a lot of money. I have hope – I hope it works. Sometimes I feel pessimistic about it and sometimes I feel that we have some really good players coming from good coaches and coming up and really love the sport, so I hope they can continue. I feel like whatever part I’ve done helped. If there’s any part I need to do in the future, I’ll try and do a little less than what I did before – I’m not getting any younger. It’s for kids like Chrissy, Joe’s daughter, her husband Allah, and my son; they love judo the way they do to make the future as bright as they can. And I think they’re trying. It’s very hard in this country to make a judo club work with jiu-jitsu the way it is, with karate the way it is, with school varsity sports the way that they are. If we could get judo into the schools and if we can get judo leagues, and judo as a varsity sport. And if we get judo into colleges, it would be a lot easier to hundreds and hundreds or thousands of judo players out there instead of the few we have. But its hard. It’s a whole barrier of people that don’t understand us, and they think its fearful; schools think they can throw each other and hurt each other. They don’t understand the respect of judo. Hopefully the younger generation of judo players will stay in the sport and teach. And I think we’ll be ok. I don’t think we’ll ever be great, but we’ll be ok.
This situation is really hard right now. I talked to my son, and he said, “Dad, you think they will keep us open? Do you think they’ll shut us down again? I have a feeling we might have to close again.” You work really hard to get a program going and doing thing. Same thing with the tournament. I bet there’s a lot of people in judo that missed the Liberty Bell the last couple of years because we didn’t have it. I don’t know if a lot of people went back to it, or they didn’t go back to it. It depends on what state you’re in, what city you’re in, it definitely hasn’t helped our sport, that’s for sure.
MAYTT: If there is one thing that future judoka should remember about Ishikawa, what should it be and why?
LM: The first thing I think of is his smile. I see him skipping around the mat and doing foot sweeps by himself and smiling. I think, if there’s one thing they should really learn, they should learn that what a judoka and teacher he was. He simply had the most knowledge about judo, it’s throwing and techniques. He was simply amazing.
MAYTT: This has been a great conversation, Lou!
LM: It was a good time!
Find out more about Shimada, Ishikawa, and more in Takahiko Ishikawa: Judo’s Quiet Master!
