Pat Morita

Noriyuki "Pat" Morita (June 28, 1932 – November 24, 2005) was an American film and television actor who was well known for playing the roles of Matsuo "Arnold" Takahashi on Happy Days and Kesuke Miyagi in the The Karate Kid movie series, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1984.

Morita was the lead actor in the television program Mr. T and Tina, regarded as the first American sitcom centered on a person of Asian descent, and Ohara, a police-themed drama. Both television shows were aired on ABC, but they were both short-lived.

Early life

Pat Morita was born in Isleton, California. He developed spinal tuberculosis (Pott disease) at the age of two and spent the bulk of the next nine years in Northern Californian hospitals, including the Shriners Hospital in San Francisco. For long periods he was wrapped in a full-body cast and was told he would never walk. It was during his time at a sanitarium near Sacramento that he was given his stage name, "Pat". 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.