The Pittsburgh Press (January 29, 1942)
Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
SEATTLE – All my life I’ve wanted to know jujitsu.
Like most men of small dimensions and slight courage, I’ve always felt that if I only knew jujitsu, I could throw all these modern Greek gods nimbly into the ashcan and emerge a hero.
So now I have met a jujitsu expert, and I’m on my way. This fellow not only knows jujitsu, he has gone so far beyond it he could make hash out of a whole squad of regular jujitsuers.
I did not ask this expert to show me any jujitsu tricks. In the first place he was so big I was afraid he’d kill me on the first lesson; and second, he gave me four books on the subject. I’m going to study at home by candlelight, and then burst out all of a sudden one day throwing people right and left.
My jujitsu friend is Svend J. Jorgensen. He is a Seattle policeman. He is a hearty, good-natured guy who looks just like a cop. He is 50 and built like a yoke of oxen. Even if he didn’t know jujitsu, I’ll bet he could beat hell out of you.
He was born in Denmark, came to this country when he was 19, went to sea for four years, worked in Alaska, was a physical instructor in the U.S. Army in the last war, and joined the Seattle police force a few days after leaving the Army in 1919.
Patrolman Jorgensen has never fired a shot in his 23 years on the force. He is proud of that. “I’d rather have a medal for not killing somebody than for killing somebody,” he says. During his police career he has captured 67 gunmen, one murderer, and 30 safe-crackers. “And never fired a shot,” he says.
Used it on only three
I asked how many of those nearly 100 desperate cases he had actually had to use bis jujitsu on. Patrolman Jorgensen looked a little disappointed. “Only three,” he said. “The rest, I just got the jump on them.”
Jorgensen could shoot ‘em dead if he had to. He is a super crack shot. He holds 127 medals – more than anybody on the force – for sharpshooting. He has won the Distinguished Pistol Shooting medal in the National Rifle Matches at Camp Perry.
Jorgensen got interested in jujitsu shortly after joining the police force. What got his heat up was one night when a Seattle tough guy, with a gun in each pocket and another stuck in his sock, killed two rookie policeman and a detective.
“They got killed because they’d never been trained to protect themselves,” he says. So he started figuring out how policemen could take guns away from bad men.
First he got an American to teach him some jujitsu tricks. Then he took lessons from a Japanese expert. With that basis, he began inventing his own brand of jujitsu. Today his jujitsu is only 15 per cent Japanese, and 85 per cent Jorgensen.
Years ago the police department started Jorgensen teaching jujitsu to the force. Now every man on it has had some training. Jorgensen has taught thousands of people. He has trained the military police at Fort Lawton and Fort Lewis. He has trained detachments of U.S. Marines, Coast Guardsmen and National and state guardsmen. He has trained Border Patrolmen at El Paso and policemen from eight Western states. He has even trained some girls at the University of Washington – just in case. Thank goodness I’m too old for college.
Jorgensen knows hundreds of ways to disarm and knock out tough eggs without using your revolver. But there’s one hypothetical situation that always stumps him. “Suppose,” you ask, “that the bandit is 20 feet away, with his gun pointing at you?”
“I’ve never yet figured out how to get a jujitsu hold on a bullet,” Jorgensen says. “If a man is 20 feet away, you better start shootin’ before he does.”
Children know jujitsu
Jorgensen has two grown daughters and a boy of 15. “Do the girls know jujitsu?” I asked. “Sure they do,” he said, “but they’ve never had to use it. One of them is married. She hasn’t even had to use it on her husband.”
The boy is already a hero. He saved a child from drowning when he was 11, and got a medal. Patrolman Jorgensen himself is no mean life-saver. He has rescued three people from drowning and 11 from gas. What burns him up about his kid is that be made this rescue before his father had got around to giving him a life-saving course.
In his off-time Jorgensen runs a little school called “Jorgensen’s Jujitsu Gym.” It is in the back end of a restaurant. He takes private pupils, averaging about 100 a year. He trains them in classes, twice a week for three months. The course costs $30.
He has written four booklets on his favorite subject. One of them, called “American Police Jujitsu,” has sold more than 40,000 copies.
Jorgensen is so wrapped up in his subject that he sometimes comes in for a little kidding from the other policemen. For instance, at roll call the other morning–
“I have here a cablegram concerning Patrolman Jorgensen,” the captain said to the assembled policemen. “It is such an unusual recognition of his work in jujitsu that I wish to read it aloud.” And the captain read approximately as follows:
“In view of the distinguished place Patrolman S. J. Jorgensen occupies in the world of scientific self-defense, it is hereby requested that the Seattle Police Department detach him for this period of emergency, in order that he may be matched by our Government with the best jujitsu expert in Japan. They shall then wrestle it out in a previously designated meadow, and the winner shall decide who wins the war. (Signed) Gen, Douglas MacArthur.”
Jorgensen is still a little skittish when you mention it.