Arigato Mr Miyagi!

No, I'm not referring to a fellow blogger Mr Miyagi, whose link happens to be in my blog.

Noriyuki "Pat" Morita was a Japanese American actor best known for the roles of Arnold on the TV show Happy Days and Mr. Miyagi in the movie The Karate Kid, for which he was nominated for Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1984. Morita gained worldwide fame playing wise karate teacher Kesuke Miyagi who taught young "Daniel-san" in The Karate Kid. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor as well as a Golden Globe and reprised his role as the sensei Mr. Miyagi in three sequels.

Pat Morita was born June 28, 1932 in Isleton, California, to itinerant fruit pickers. He overcame dual hardships in his younger years, first battling spinal tuberculosis and spending time in numerous hospitals. Although he was told he would never walk again, an operation to fuse four vertebrae was successful, and he was on his feet at age 11. Unfortunately, this was during the height of World War II, so he was transferred directly from the hospital to a Japanese internment camp to join his family in Arizona.

After the war, the family ran the restaurant Ariake Chop Suey in Sacramento, where Morita got a taste for showbiz by doing standup comedy. Despite this, he joined an aerospace company after graduating high school where he eventually worked his way up to head of a computer operations department. At that point, with his career set and a family started, he quit to pursue his passion for performance full time.

Morita died on Thanksgiving Day, November 24, 2005, at his home in Las Vegas, Nevada, of natural causes at age 73.