Judo Teachers and Scholars: In Memoriam
Judo was the first Japanese martial art to become an Olympic sport and a mass-participation activity around the world. These profiles cover the judo teachers, officials and scholars in this archive, from international figures to the people who kept local dojos open for fifty years.
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The profiles
Donn F. Draeger
1922 – 1982
U.S. Marine, judo pioneer and scholar of Japanese classical martial arts; founder of the International Hoplology Society.
Dennis Penfold
1931 – 2024
British judo 8th dan, European and International Judo Federation kata judge, and with Geoff Gleeson an early pioneer of coach education in Britain.
José Onofre “Pepe” Roses Juaneda
1949 – 2025
President of the Balearic Judo Federation for 23 years, vice president of the Spanish Judo Federation 1993-2016 and Secretary of Refereeing for the International Judo Federation.
Daniel C. Brown Sr.
1940 – 2025
Owner and head instructor of the Brown School of Judo and Jujitsu in Utica, New York for more than five decades, and co-founder of a U.S. youth judo programme in 1996.
Tone Shimizu
1938 – 2025
Japanese-Filipino judo instructor raised in Yokohama and educated at Seattle University, whose family directed memorial gifts to the Keiko Fukuda Judo Scholarship.
Dale Thompson
d. 2026
Orlando judo instructor with roughly seventy years on the mat and a leadership role in the Florida Judo Yudanshakai.
Every profile in this section follows the In Memoriam research standard: deaths confirmed before anything is written, every claim sourced, conflicts between sources printed, and promotional claims labelled as such.