In due time, he was a department head at another aerospace firm, Lockheed, handling the liaison between the engineers and the programmers who were mapping out lunar eclipses for Polaris and Titan missile projects. Needing a regular job to support his wife and a newly born child, Morita became a data processor in the early 1960s with the Department of Motor Vehicles and other state agencies, graduating to a graveyard shift job at Aerojet General. After Morita's father was killed in 1956 in a hit-and-run while walking home from an all-night movie, Morita and his mother kept the restaurant going for another three or four years. Morita would entertain customers with jokes and serve as master of ceremonies for group dinners. For a time after the war, the family operated Ariake Chop Suey, a restaurant in Sacramento, California, jokingly described by Morita years later as "a Japanese family running a Chinese restaurant in a black neighborhood with a clientele of blacks, Filipinos and everybody else who didn't fit in any of the other neighborhoods". Īfter World War II ended, Morita moved back to the Bay Area and he graduated from Armijo High School in Fairfield, California, in 1949. After about a year and a half, he was transferred to the Tule Lake War Relocation Center. Released from the hospital at age 11 after undergoing extensive spinal surgery and learning how to walk, Morita was transported from the hospital directly to the Gila River camp in Arizona to join his interned family. During his time at a sanatorium near Sacramento, Morita befriended a visiting priest who would often joke that, if Morita ever converted to Catholicism, the priest would rename him to "Patrick Aloysius Ignatius Xavier Noriyuki Morita". For long periods, he was wrapped in a full-body cast, and he was told that he would never walk. Morita developed spinal tuberculosis ( Pott disease) at the age of two and spent the bulk of the next nine years in the Weimar Institute in Weimar, California, and later at the Shriners Hospital in San Francisco. Noriyuki, as Pat was named, had a brother named Hideo (Harry) who was twelve years older. Tamaru's wife, Momoe, born in 1903, immigrated to California in 1913. Morita's father Tamaru, born in 1897, immigrated to California from Kumamoto Prefecture on the Japanese island of Kyushu in 1915. Morita was born on June 28, 1932, in Isleton, California to Japanese immigrant parents. Miyagi in The Karate Kid, which would be the first of a media franchise in which Morita was the central player. Morita was nominated for the 1985 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Mr. The two shows made history for being among the few TV shows with an Asian-American series lead. T and Tina and in Ohara, a police-themed drama. He was the series lead actor in the television program Mr. Miyagi in The Karate Kid film series, Captain Sam Pak on the sitcom M*A*S*H, Ah Chew in Sanford and Son, Mike Woo in The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo, and The Emperor of China in Mulan and Mulan II. He was known for his roles as Matsuo "Arnold" Takahashi on Happy Days, Mr. Noriyuki " Pat" Morita (J– November 24, 2005) was an American actor and comedian.
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