Robert Trias, 1923–1989: Before There Was an American Karate Industry
Robert Trias opened a karate school in Phoenix in 1946, founded a national karate association two years later, and wrote rules for American karate competition while holding down a full-time job as an Arizona Highway Patrol officer. He died in 1989. He is widely credited with the first documented commercial karate school on the American mainland, though nearly every “first” attached to his name comes from his own writings or from organizations he founded, and some historians now question parts of his story. Both deserve to be on the record.
- Full name
- Robert A. Trias
- Born
- 18 March 1923, Arizona (Tucson or Phoenix; sources differ)
- Died
- 11 July 1989, Phoenix, Arizona, aged 66, of cancer
- Art
- Shuri-ryu karate (named 1964)
- Founded
- Phoenix karate school (1946); United States Karate Association (1948)
- Other career
- Arizona Highway Patrol, 1946–1961
- Key book
- The Hand Is My Sword (Sandmar House, 1959; Tuttle edition 1973)
- Buried
- National Memorial Cemetery of Arizona
The Navy story, and the questions about it
Trias enlisted in the Naval Reserve in 1942 and served in the South Pacific. By his own account, while stationed in the Solomon Islands he trained with a Chinese Buddhist missionary, T’ung Gee Hsing, who taught him a Chinese art in the Hsing-I tradition, and he dated his first black belt to July 1943.
That account has never been independently documented; every version of it traces back to Trias himself. More recent research, reported but not fully sourced in current reference works, places him in California in 1943 and in the Solomons only in 1944 and 1945, and argues that his early rank was in judo. We print the traditional account as his, and the challenge as unresolved.
Phoenix, 1946
After his discharge in January 1946, Trias began teaching in his backyard and then opened a school in Phoenix. He is widely credited with the first documented commercial karate school on the continental United States. The qualification matters: karate and kenpo were already being taught in Hawaii by James Mitose and William K. S. Chow, whose line produced Ed Parker, and other teachers on the mainland are sometimes called founders in their own right.
What is not in dispute is the timing. Trias was teaching karate for money in Arizona a decade before Parker opened in Pasadena, and about a decade before Jhoon Rhee began teaching in Texas. There was no market to speak of, no supplier of uniforms or equipment, and no one to ask how it was done.
An association before there was an industry
In 1948 Trias founded the United States Karate Association, generally described as the first karate organization on the American mainland. He is credited with staging one of the first American karate tournaments, in 1955, and with writing some of the earliest formal competition rules. In July 1963 he co-promoted what was billed as the first World Karate Tournament, at the University of Chicago Fieldhouse, with his student John Keehan.
His book The Hand Is My Sword was first published by Sandmar House in 1959, and reissued by Charles E. Tuttle in 1973. It was followed by Karate Is My Life (1963), The Pinnacle of Karate (1980) and The Supreme Way (1983).
In 1964, at the suggestion of the Japanese karate masters Yasuhiro Konishi and Makoto Gima, his system took the name Shuri-ryu. Konishi countersigned his ninth-degree rank in the 1960s, and Gima recognized him as tenth degree in 1983. Black Belt gave him its Editor’s Award in 1979 and an honorary award after his death in 1989.
A karate empire built on a patrolman’s schedule
For fifteen years, from 1946 to 1961, Trias also served as an Arizona Highway Patrol officer, reportedly rising to lieutenant. The school, the association, the tournaments and the rules were all built around a full-time job in law enforcement.
The USKA gave Trias a reach far beyond Phoenix. Its regional directors and chief instructors included John Pachivas, who became its chief instructor, and Phillip Koeppel, his first student in the Midwest. Glenn Keeney served for ten years as its rules chairman before founding his own sanctioning body. Vic Moore was among the first ranked members of his Trias International Society.
The succession fight
Trias died of cancer in July 1989. He had named eight chief instructors for Shuri-ryu, including his daughter, Roberta Trias-Kelley, but left no single uncontested successor to the association. John Pachivas and George E. Anderson each claimed to lead the USKA, Black Belt reported in late 1989 and early 1990, and a separate group, the United States Karate Alliance, was formed by other senior members. Roberta Trias-Kelley is today recognized by many of his students as the inheritor of Shuri-ryu.
What a school owner should take from Robert Trias
Trias built the first national structure for American karate as a part-time operator. That should reassure every owner who is still working another job while the school grows: the association, the rules and the events came first; the full-time income came later.
He also understood before almost anyone that rank means something only when an organization stands behind it. A certificate signed by one instructor is a personal opinion. A certificate issued under published standards by a recognized body is a credential. Parents and students still pay more for the second.
And like Ed Parker, who died the following year, Trias shows what an unsettled succession costs. His association split within months of his death. The founder who writes down who inherits the curriculum, the name and the authority to promote is protecting every student who ever paid for rank under him.
Quick answers
- Who was Robert Trias?
- Robert A. Trias (1923–1989) was an American karate pioneer who opened a karate school in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1946, founded the United States Karate Association in 1948, and developed the Shuri-ryu system.
- Did Robert Trias open the first karate school in the United States?
- He is widely credited with the first documented commercial karate school on the continental United States, in Phoenix in 1946. Karate and kenpo were already being taught in Hawaii, and some historians question parts of his early history.
- What is the USKA?
- The United States Karate Association, founded by Trias in 1948, is generally described as the first karate organization on the American mainland. It divided after his death in 1989.
- When was The Hand Is My Sword published?
- It was first published by Sandmar House in 1959, and in a Charles E. Tuttle edition in 1973.
Sources, and what we could not confirm
Sources: Wendell E. Wilson’s 2010 biography of Trias, which draws heavily on Trias’s own writings; the published histories of Shuri-ryu and the United States Karate Association, which are organizational sources descended from Trias and are labelled as such; USAdojo.com’s biography; library catalog records (Open Library and first-edition listings) for The Hand Is My Sword; and Black Belt‘s reporting of December 1989 and March 1990, as cited in current reference works, for the succession dispute.
Conflicts printed rather than smoothed over. His year of birth is 1923 in most sources and 1922 in one. His birthplace is Tucson in one source and Phoenix in another. His date of death is 11 July 1989 in most sources and 7 July in a Shuri-ryu memorial. The Hand Is My Sword is dated 1958 by several biographies; the catalog record shows a first edition of 1959, which we follow.
Self-reported and organizational claims. His training with T’ung Gee Hsing, the 1943 black belt, the “first school,” “first tournament” and “first rules” claims, and his Highway Patrol rank all trace to Trias’s own account or to organizations descended from him. We have attributed them rather than asserting them. The challenge to his early history comes from research summarized, without full citation, in current reference works; we report it as an open question.
Corrections. See our editorial policy. If you hold records, such as service files, early tournament programs or newspaper coverage, that can settle any of these questions, we want to hear from you.