Morita and Kitahara had two daughters, Aly and Tia, according to People. Morita and Yamachi were married for 14 years until 1967, though People reported in 1986 that the actor “bristles now when his first family is mentioned.” He married his second wife, Yukiye Kitahara, in 1970, with a reception at the Playboy Club, their daughter Aly wrote in Hyphen magazine.
He worked for the California Department of Motor Vehicles, according to the outlet, and then went on to work night shifts at Aerojet General, a rocket and missile propulsion manufacturer. They had one daughter together, Erin Morita, in 1954.Īt the time they married Morita worked at his parents’ Chinese restaurant, but he felt that he needed a better paying job to support his family, the Los Angeles Times reported. GettyEvelyn Guerrero speaks at a memorial service for her late husband Pat Morita.Īccording to a 2010 essay in Hyphen magazine by daughter Aly Morita, Pat Morita married his first wife, Kathleen Yamachi, in 1953, at the age of 21 his wife was 27. We want more than anything for our father’s story to be told, but we want it done right with the right people involved. My family has strong personal reasons for not supporting this project, and anyone else who has decided to follow suit has done so on their own accord. My sisters and I are aware of a documentary being made right now about our father, but have declined to become involved.Īs the current documentary being made stands now, we are not confident that it will be done with our father’s best interest in mind, but rather as a vehicle for my father’s third wife to tell her version of a very incomplete story. It became available to stream February 5 on Apple TV.Īccording to Pacific Citizen, “More Than Miyagi” director Kevin Derek said one of Morita’s daughters “asked to see its outline and structure.” When he shared it and asked to interview her, “she responded that she needed to be included as a writer and producer in order to participate,” the outlet wrote.ĭerek told the outlet that he told her “there can only be one chef in the kitchen and that I would like an ongoing dialogue but do not want any side of the family influencing the direction of this doc.”Īly Morita, Pat Morita’s daughter, told Pacific Citizen in an email: The 2021 documentary “ More Than Miyagi: The Pat Morita Story” looks closely at the actor’s childhood and his struggles with alcoholism. GettyActor Pat Morita and his wife Evelyn Guerrero. Morita’s Daughters Did Not Agree to Be in the ‘More Than Miyagi’ Documentary Here’s what you need to know about Pat Morita’s kids and family:ġ. Morita died of kidney failure in 2005, leaving behind a wife and the three daughters he had had with two ex-wives. He was later transferred to the Tule Lake Segregation Center, according to an interview with the Television Academy Foundation.
Morita was discharged from the hospital and taken by the FBI to Arizona, where he was placed in the Gila River Relocation Center with his family, the outlet reported. He spent the next nine years in the Weimar Sanitarium, according to the Los Angeles Times.Īt the age of 11, an experimental spinal surgery granted him the ability to walk, the Los Angeles Times reported. Morita spent about seven years of his childhood in a full-body cast after being diagnosed with spinal tuberculosis at age 2, according to a biography on the website for the City of Fairfield, California.
His parents, Tamaru and Momoe Morita, emigrated to the United States from the Japanese island of Kyushu, according to their Japanese American Internee Data Files from the National Archives and Records Administration. Morita was born Noriyuki Morita in Sacramento County, California, in 1932, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Pat Morita was a Japanese American actor best known for his roles as Arnold on “Happy Days” and Mr. Pat Morita acknowledges the crowd after singing the National Anthem at the Democratic National Convention in 2000.
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