Masutatsu (Mas) Oyama (whose real name Choi Yong-I) was born July 27, 1923, in a village not far from Gunsan in South Korea. He was sent relatively young in Manchuria, in Southern China, to live on the farm of his sister. At the age of nine, he began studying the form of Chinese Kempo South called Eighteen hands of Mr. Yi, who was at the time employed on the farm of his sister. When Oyama returned to Korea at the age of 12, he continued his training in Korean Kempo. in 1938 at the age of 15, he went to Japan to train as an aviator. But survive by itself at that age proved more difficult than he thought, especially since it was a Korean in Japan, and the aviator training fell into oblivion. Gichin Funakoshi that remains however, not without practice martial arts by participating in judo and boxing more... See more text