I wish I had courage like you

Pat Morita, 'Karate Kid's' Mr. Miyagi, dies

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Actor Pat Morita, whose portrayal of the wise and dry-witted Mr. Miyagi in "The Karate Kid" earned him an Oscar nomination, has died. He was 73.

My memories of Pat Morita have always been tied to "The Karate Kid" and the Mr. Miyagi role. I never saw the first movie in the theaters (though I did see The Karate Kid II at the theater), but I must have seen it a dozen times on video through jr. high and high school either in class or in reruns on TV. Growing up, there was a severe shortage of male Asian-American role models in media. You had the kid who played Short Round (from Indiana Jones) and you had Mr. Miyagi. And then you had the whole slew of male asian american actors who were generically cast as bad guys -- yakuza, triad, old chinatown gangsters. To have an Asian-American in a major movie role be a good guy instead of a villain, it was a pretty big deal at the time. I remember asking my dad after we had seen the movie if he knew karate -- and I remember being disappointed afterwards that my dad would never be as cool as Mr. Miyagi. I've since realized that my dad is cool for other reasons, but knowledge of martial arts is not one of them, and that for all the things Pat Morita does in the movie, well, he doesn't actually know Karate either.

Growing up, having seen the Karate Kid, lines were quoted throughout my childhood, and being in Southern California, we all knew where certain scenes of the movie were filmed, most notably the mini golf place, because it was the closest location to where we lived.

Pat Morita gave Asian-Americans growing up in the eighties a role model, and reinforced the idea through these movies that fighting is not a solution. He survived spinal tuberculosis as a child (with which he was told he would never walk), and the Japanese Internment camps. We'll miss you Mr. Morita.