Yuki Shimoda - Career

Career

Shimoda's movie credits from the 1960s and 1970s range from B movies as Seven Women from Hell with Caesar Romero and Yvonne Craig (Batgirl) to A movies as Midway with Charlton Heston, Eddie Albert, Henry Fonda, James Colburn, Glenn Ford, Toshirō Mifune, Robert Mitchum, Cliff Robertson, Robert Wagner, James Shigeta and Noriyuki "Pat" Morita. He also was in the martial arts movie The Octagon with Chuck Norris. In the Disney movie The Last Flight of Noah's Ark with Elliott Gould and Rick Schroder, Shimoda's character was one of two Japanese soldiers on a deserted Pacific island decades after the end of World War II, who do not know the war is over. Walt Disney Pictures allowed more character development of the Japanese soldiers to not only entertain the audience, but to show how the Japanese soldiers and the Americans could work together to get off the island. Shimoda enjoyed meaty roles like this that entertained and educated the audience.

Shimoda's favorite movie, Farewell to Manzanar was later bought by Walt Disney Pictures to televise on the Disney Channel. Farewell to Manzanar was a National Broadcasting Company, NBC, television movie that stars an all Japanese American cast and presents the story of the relocation of Japanese Americans into American style concentration camps. Both Farewell to Manzanar and The Last Flight of Noah's Ark are similar, because they present Japanese and Japanese Americans as real people that audiences get to know. Shimoda acted in MacArthur with Gregory Peck and in The Horizontal Lieutenant with Jim Hutton, Paula Prentiss, Jim Backus and Miyoshi Umeki.

Shimoda had numerous television credits. The miniseries A Town Like Alice was broadcast internationally and in the United States on the Public Broadcasting System's (PBS) Masterpiece Theater. A Town Like Alice was the first non-British production to air in the United States on Masterpiece Theater. In the television miniseries, The Immigrants Shimoda played the part of Chinese American immigrant Feng Wo. He guest starred on popular television shows of the 1960s and 1970s as Adventures in Paradise, The Big Valley, Hawaiian Eye, The Andy Griffith Show, McHale's Navy, Mr. Ed, Peter Gunn, Love American Style, Wonder Woman, Hawaii Five-O, Sanford and Son, M.A.S.H. and Quincy, M.E. On Quincy, M.E., Shimoda starred as Dr. Hiro, a forensic medical examiner in the episode, "Has Anybody Here Seen Quincy?" that did not include star Jack Klugman. Shimoda was considered for a spin-off of Quincy, M.E., where he would be a coroner like Thomas Noguchi, M.D. the Los Angeles County coroner to many newsworthy deaths.

Shimoda filled in time between engagements with television commercial work, such as the Chrysler ad of the 1970s where Mr. T (Toyota) and Mr. D (Datsun - Nissan) admire a Dodge Colt and say, "Very nice, Mr. D." "I thought it was one of yours, Mr. T."

There were movie roles that got away. Shimoda got the lead role as Inuk in The Savage Innocents but was replaced by the Mexican American actor, Anthony Quinn. At the time, Shimoda was told that the reason he was fired as the leading man was because he was not realistic in the part of an Eskimo and that the part must be played by an Eskimo; discrimination that he fought against during his career was more likely the reason. It was too great a financial risk to have a Japanese American male actor take the lead role in the 1961 movie. World War II was too fresh in many people's minds and many people still did not differentiate between the former Japanese enemy and patriotic American citizens of Japanese ancestry. The United States of America was not yet ready for another Sessue Hayakawa, a Hollywood leading man from 1914 into the 1920s and the 1930s. Shimoda, like Hayakawa later in his career, took roles as the Japanese enemy.

Shimoda preferred to act as the honorable Japanese soldier or sailor like Dr. Matsumo, the good Japanese military physician, in Seven Women from Hell. Dr. Matsumo helped seven American women escape from a Japanese prison camp but was shot and killed by Japanese soldiers. The movie tried to show that there were good Japanese, too. According to the plot, Dr. Matsumo studied in the United States and says that he has family in a camp for Japanese in Utah. Richard Loo, a Chinese American, was also in Seven Women from Hell playing the stereotypical Japanese villain role he excelled in during the 1940s. This movie was released in 1961 and shows the humane side of the former enemy. Shimoda played schlock Japanese villain roles, too, but was happy to be choosier later in his career and avoid stereotypical roles for roles that portrayed Japanese and Asian people with human frailties and strengths.

Shimoda's Broadway career started when he moved to New York from Chicago to get more roles as an actor and dancer on stage. At first he worked as a waiter during the day and as a dancer at night. He found it difficult to find continual work as a dancer. He did find a job coaching Caucasian actors to act as more realistic "Orientals" in the 1950s. Ultimately he was hired as one of the first Asian American actors on Broadway. From 1953 to 1956, Shimoda acted in the Teahouse of the August Moon. Shimoda got his big break when he landed the part of Ito in the Broadway hit Auntie Mame. From 1956 to 1958 he starred opposite Rosalind Russell. After the play finished on Broadway, he moved to Los Angeles to do the 1958 Hollywood movie version to recreate his starring role.

His income from his acting career plus the knowledge he gained from the accounting degree he earned from Northwestern University allowed him to live a comfortable lifestyle. Some joked that Shimoda, being Japanese, probably had a Caucasian gardener, when many in southern California had a Japanese gardener; in actuality he enjoyed working in his own garden. Others say that he was short-tempered, because of his frustration at not becoming a household name. He finally felt he made it when his name was on a TV Guide crossword puzzle. In fact, he was an out-going, kind person with many friends in "the business" and many not in the Hollywood crowd. He was also a dog lover, who enjoyed driving his favorite dog, a collie named Saigon, in his convertible 1962 British Sunbeam Alpine with his Steve McQueen sunglasses around the Hollywood Hills. He devoted his free time to help young actors in the East West Players, a Los Angeles-based Asian American theatre group and, in turn, East West Players helped him to hone his own skills.