Pat Morita

Did You Know?

• Morita was an alcoholic for most of his adult life, drinking almost every day, which was the main underlying cause of his death.
• He was married three times: to Kathleen Yamachi (1953–1967), Yukiye Kitahara (1970–1989), and Evelyn Guerrero (1994 until his death).
• Morita was inducted into the Martial Arts History Museum Hall of Fame in 2015.

Early life

Pat Morita came into the world on June 28, 1932, in Isleton, California, born to parents who had immigrated from Japan. His father Tamaru arrived from Kumamoto Prefecture in 1915, and his mother Momoe followed two years earlier, in 1913. He had an older brother, Hideo, known as Harry, who was twelve years his senior. When Morita was just two, he contracted spinal tuberculosis, or Pott disease, and spent the next nine years largely confined to medical facilities—first the Weimar Institute in Weimar, California, then the Shriners Hospital in San Francisco.

For long stretches, he was encased in a full-body cast and told he would never walk. During a stay at a sanatorium near Sacramento, he met a visiting priest who joked that if Morita ever converted to Catholicism, he would rename him Patrick Aloysius Ignatius Xavier Noriyuki Morita. At age eleven, after major spinal surgery and learning to walk again, he was released from the hospital and taken straight to the Gila River camp in Arizona to reunite with his interned family. About a year and a half later, he was moved to the Tule Lake War Relocation Center.

After World War II ended, Morita returned to the Bay Area and graduated from Armijo High School in Fairfield, California, in 1949. His family then ran Ariake Chop Suey, a restaurant in Sacramento. Morita later described it wryly as a Japanese family operating a Chinese restaurant in a black neighborhood, serving a clientele of Blacks, Filipinos, and others who didn't fit in elsewhere. He kept customers entertained with jokes and acted as master of ceremonies for group dinners.

In 1956, his father was killed by a hit-and-run driver while walking home from an all-night movie. Morita and his mother kept the restaurant going for another three or four years. Needing steady income to support his wife and newborn child, he took a job as a data processor in the early 1960s with the California Department of Motor Vehicles and other state agencies, then moved to a graveyard shift at Aerojet General. Eventually, he became a department head at Lockheed, where he served as the liaison between engineers and programmers mapping lunar eclipses for the Polaris and Titan missile projects.

Television and film career

Pat Morita’s early film work included playing a henchman in Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) and a similar part in The Shakiest Gun in the West (1968) alongside Don Knotts. On television, he appeared in the fourth episode of The Courtship of Eddie’s Father’s first season (1969) and the season two premiere of Columbo (1972). He landed recurring roles as Ah Chew, a friendly acquaintance of Lamont Sanford on Sanford and Son (1974–1976), and as South Korean Army Captain Sam Pak on M*A*S*H (1973, 1974). He also played Rear Admiral Ryunosuke Kusaka in the war film Midway (1976). After becoming the owner of a drive-in, Morita taught self-defense classes there on the side. On Happy Days, he first guest-starred as Arnold in seasons four and six, then returned as a recurring character for season ten (1982–83) and guest-starred in the final eleventh season; he also played Arnold on Blansky’s Beauties in 1977. For The Karate Kid, the studio initially wanted Toshiro Mifune, but he didn’t speak English. Morita auditioned but was turned down because of his stand-up comedy background and his Happy Days role. Producer Jerry Weintraub specifically opposed casting him, viewing Morita as a comic actor. After five auditions, Weintraub finally gave him the part—Morita won it by growing a beard and basing his accent on his uncle’s. Once cast, Weintraub suggested that Morita, who had long used the name Pat, be billed under his given name to seem “more ethnic.”

Posthumous credits

Even after his death, audiences could still see Pat Morita in new roles he had already completed. He provided the voice of Master Udon in the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Karate Island," which was made in his honor. In the 2006 film Only the Brave, about the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, he portrayed the father of the lead actor and director, Lane Nishikawa. That movie also featured two other actors from The Karate Kid, Yuji Okumoto and Tamlyn Tomita. Additional posthumous credits include Act Your Age, Royal Kill, and Remove All Obstacles. The fifth episode of Cobra Kai on Netflix was also dedicated to his memory. Two documentaries, Pat Morita: Long Story Short and More than Miyagi, The Pat Morita Story, have explored his legacy, using archival footage of the actor.