About Us

Pacific Rim Martial Arts Academy is a rare jewel in the martial arts community that is passing on a legacy of faithfulness to a long tradition of martial arts training that goes back unbroken to the middle of the last century.

Founded in the spring of 1979 by Grandmaster James R. Garrison, Pacific Rim Martial Arts Academy has been offering martial arts classes for juniors and adults for more than 37 years, continuing a long history of passing on the kind of tradition that takes several lifetimes to acquire. Our Head Instructor, Mr. Michael Martyn began his training at Pacific Rim in 1981 and spent more than 30 years as Mr. Garrison’s direct student.  In 2012, Mr. Garrison presented Mr. Martyn with a katana and wakizashi from the Edo Period to signify the passing of the school and Pacific Rim’s tradition and heritage.  This change in leadership was completed in 2014 when Mr. Garrison retired from active teaching at the school and Mr. Martyn assumed full-time responsibility for the dojo.

Pacific Rim is in the unique position to blend Asian cultures in a way that provides students opportunities to train in a variety of martial arts.  Since its founding, Pacific Rim has been host to martial arts masters from both Japan and Korea.  As the oldest martial arts academy in Oregon, Pacific Rim is considered to be the most complete training environment for students wanting to learn the traditions and benefits of traditional martial arts training.

True excellence has a long tradition of wholehearted dedication, loyal allegiance, unassailable integrity, and infinite patience, and blossoms over a lifetime. Techniques are what we practice in that particular moment. A lifetime practitioner realizes that over time, techniques will be perfected, will change, will evolve. But the qualities that really matter—internal qualities such a courtesy and integrity—these do not change. These are the same no matter what martial art one is practicing. Pacific Rim passes on an internal value system of courtesy, respect, personal integrity, dedication, and internal fortitude to its students because that is the way the arts have been taught for the past six decades.

This is the best approach to any art; and this is the legacy of Pacific Rim.