James Shigeta, 85, Leading Man in ‘Flower Drum Song'

James Shigeta, an actor who challenged social boundaries when he emerged in the late 1950s as one of the first Asian-Americans to play leading roles in Hollywood, died on Monday in Los Angeles. He was 85.

The cause was pulmonary failure, his brother Clarence said.

Mr. Shigeta traveled a distinctive path to stardom. He was born in the American territory Hawaii to a family of Japanese descent. His native language was English, but he first became an acting and singing star in Japan, where he took language lessons while performing in the 1950s. He served in the American military during the Korean War.

 

  James Shigeta and Nancy Kwan in the 1961 film “Flower Drum Song,” based on the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. Credit Universal Studios, via Everett Collection    

His fame in Japan led to performances in Las Vegas, an appearance on “The Dinah Shore Show” and, in 1959, his first role in Hollywood, in “The Crimson Kimono.” He starred as a detective who falls for a key witness in a case, played by Victoria Shaw.

“YES, this is a beautiful American girl in the arms of a handsome Japanese boy!” read a promotional poster for the film that showed the lovers kissing.

In 1960 he shared a Golden Globe for most promising newcomer. The next year he seemed to be fulfilling the prophecy, with leading roles in two films, “Bridge to the Sun,” about an interracial couple, and “Flower Drum Song,” an adaptation of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical about arranged marriages — and resistance toward them — among some Chinese-Americans.

 

Changed Japanese Baseball

Kyodo News, via Associated Press - Wally Yonamine, the manager of Chunichi Dragons in 1974, was swarmed after his team won the Central League championship. He was also a three-time batting champion in Japan.

 Wally Yonamine, who was the first American to play professional baseball in Japan after World War II, has often been compared to Jackie Robinson for “integrating” the Japanese game. When he made his debut for the Yomiuri Giants in 1951, Yonamine was reviled by fans and players alike, who resented his otherness, just as Robinson had been vilified four years earlier when he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers. At a time when anti-American sentiment was rife in Japan — memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were still fresh — Yonamine endured catcalls and worse. Rocks and bottles were hurled at him from the stands. The Hawaiian-born son of Japanese parents, he was not only the enemy, he was a traitor.

 Remarkably, Yonamine was a pioneering athlete in two sports and in two countries. A speedy running back — 5 feet 9 inches and 180 pounds — he starred for a football team in the Army and, after his discharge, an amateur team in Hawaii, impressing professional scouts enough that he signed with the San Francisco 49ers of the All-America Football Conference, a post-World War II rival to the National Football League. (He never went to college, though he turned down at least one football scholarship, to Ohio State.) The 49ers, who joined the N.F.L. in 1950, say that Yonamine was the first Asian-American to play pro football.

Kaname Yonamine (his full name is pronounced KA-na-may YO-na-MEE-nay) was born on June 24, 1925, in Olowalu, a village on the island of Maui, where his father, an Okinawan, had moved to find work in the sugar cane fields and met his mother, whose family was from Hiroshima. (He adopted the nickname Wally in high school, and it eventually became his legal name.)

Book him, Danno

He might never have escaped the tagline, but he might not have objected thereto.

United Press International - James MacArthur and his mother, Helen Hayes, on the set of “Hawaii-Five O” for a 1975 episode on which Hayes appeared.

NY Times obit has bottom picture; top one is from an Msnbc obit.

"Hawaii Five-O," one of the longest running crime shows in TV history with 278 episodes, was shot on location in the Hawaiian islands. It was the first Hawaii-based national TV series. Glenn Cannon, a University of Hawaii theater professor who had a recurring role as the district attorney in the original series, said Lord and MacArthur were "a great part" of the team that produced the series and kept it "strong and positive." The use of many local actors, scenery and flavor of the islands led Hawaii residents "to feel very positively about the series," added Cannon, who still acts, directs and leads the local branch of the Screen Actors Guild. "People in Hawaii felt they had an ownership of the series." The drama has been remade by CBS with a new cast this season.

James MacArthur said that one of his favorite "Hawaii Five-O" episodes was a 1975 segment called "Retire in Sunny Hawaii Forever" because it marked one of the rare times that he worked on screen with his mother. Hayes played Danno's Aunt Clara, who visits Hawaii and helps the detectives solve a murder. Asked by the Hawaii Star Bulletin newspaper in 2003 about his fondest memories about working on "Hawaii Five-O," he replied: "Living in Hawaii."