Yosh Uchida

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yoshihiro "Yosh" Uchida (b. 1920) is an American businessman, entrepreneur, and educator who is best known for his contributions to judo. Uchida has been the head judo coach at San Jose State University for over 60 years, and was instrumental in the development of the martial art into a competitive sport.

Uchida is the child of Japanese immigrants who worked as farm laborers in California's Imperial Valley. ^[1] Yosh studied biology at San Jose State, and in 1940 was made the student-coach of the Physical Education Department's judo program. ^[2] He was drafted into the United States Army during World War II, and served as a medical technician. He returned to San Jose State in 1946 to complete his degree and to restart the judo program.

After graduating in 1947, Uchida remained the coach at SJS, a part-time position, while working as a laboratory technician at O'Connor Hospital and then at San Jose Hospital. During this time, Uchida and University of California, Berkeley judo coach Henry Stone began developing rules to allow their students to compete against each other, including a weight class system, moving judo away from a martial art for self defense to a sport for competition. Stone and Uchida persuaded the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) to sanction judo in 1953; the first AAU National Championship in judo was held at San Jose State in that year. ^[3]

[edit] References