Peter Urban
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Peter G. Urban (1934-2004) was one of the first to introduce Goju-Ryu karate to the United States. In 1953 Peter Urban was a young sailor when he was introduced to karate in Yokohama, Japan. After training for one year with Sensei Richard Kim, Peter Urban traveled to Tokyo and was introduced to Gogen Yamaguchi, who accepted him as a student. He also trained with Mas Oyama and can be seen in the first edition of Mas Oyama's famous book "What is Karate."
Urban felt that America needed its own Karate, much like Gichin Funakoshi developed a Karate that was more "Japanese." In a discussion on this matter with Yamaguchi, Yamaguchi didn't agree, at which time Peter Urban separated from the Japanese Goju-kai and created the USA Goju Association (USAGA) and the American (USA) Goju Karate system.
Peter Urban has been given credit as one of the people most responsible for bringing about structured martial arts tournaments in America, with one of the first being the North American Karate Championships held at Madison Square Garden in 1962. In 1967 Urban published his first book; The Karate Dojo. This established him as the first karate-ka to author a nationally recognized book on the martial arts. His second book, The Karate Sensei, was published in 1984. These books are still available today.
Peter Urban died in 2004.
Although widely criticised for declaring himself America's first '10th Dan' (Karate's highest rank), he was responsible for teaching some of the United States' top martial artists including, but not limited to:
David Box
Chuck Merriman
Ron Van Clief
Johnny Kuhl
Aaron Banks
Joe Hess
Lou Angel
Edward Veryken
Albert Gotay
William Liquori
Anthony Lau
