Kajukenbo Self-Defense Martial Arts

In the crowded streets around Palama Settlement in Honolulu after the Second World War, five young black belts decided that the textbook answers they had were not enough for the kinds of fights they were seeing after dark. They began to meet to pressure-test ideas and build a method that did not care about lineage as much as outcome. The group would earn a nickname that stuck, the Black Belt Society, and the art they refined took its name from what each brought to the table. Karate for structure. Judo and jujutsu for throws and locks. Kenpo for combination striking. Boxing, both Western and Chinese, for footwork, timing, and hands. The year was around Nineteen forty seven, the place was the Palama Settlement on Oahu, and the names of the founders are still the names students memorize on their first day: Adriano Directo Emperado, Peter Young Yil Choo, Joseph Holck, Frank Ordonez, and Clarence Chang.
The name explained the intent, but the method explained the culture. They adopted a simple rule that practitioners still repeat today. If a technique worked reliably, it stayed. If it failed, it was stripped out without ceremony. That ruthless filter shaped the curriculum into linked bursts of pressure, impact, off-balancing, and control that could be applied in alleys and barrooms as easily as on a matted floor. Early sessions were held wherever space could be found, but the first formal classes took root inside the Palama Settlement gym under the Emperado brothers. The workouts were known for contact, body conditioning, and line drills that demanded composure under fatigue.
Adriano Emperado, the central figure, had grown up in the Kalihi–Palama district and started with boxing at home before learning escrima as a boy and later training kenpo under Professor William K. S. Chow. That background helps explain why Kajukenbo combines short, hard kenpo handwork with shovel-like low kicks, angling footwork, and clinch entries that slide into throws and joint attacks. His time with Chow also explains the insistence on contact and conditioning that marked the early years on Oahu. Emperado would remain the art’s anchor until his passing in April of Two thousand nine.
The early curriculum changed as the group learned what worked. In the first phase, students used the familiar Karate pinan forms for fundamentals, then the Palama Sets were created to encode Kajukenbo’s own movement logic. Through the Nineteen fifties and into the end of the Nineteen sixties, different lines documented the sets in different numbers, with senior instructors describing eight in the earliest period and as many as fourteen when the syllabus had matured. Alongside the forms came structured families of responses. There were sequences for dealing with straight punches, for dealing with two-handed lapel grabs, and for dealing with club and knife attacks. The point was repetition until the hands moved before the mind finished debating. Instructors taught the habit of multiple striking, the idea that a block should land like a hit and every hit should set up the next one. They taught the long salute to start and end, and the habit called look and cover before you disengage, a quick scan for another attacker while you put your hands where they can work again if needed.