| Clyde Kusatsu | |
|---|---|
 Clyde Kusatsu | |
| Personal Information | |
| Born: | September 13, 1948 |
| Birthplace | Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S. |
| Occupation/ Career: |
Actor |
| Years active: | 1973-present |
| Spouse(s): | Gayle, ?-present (2 children) |
| Website/URL: | http://www.clydekusatsu.com |
| Character information | |
| Appeared on/in: | M*A*S*H |
| Episodes appeared in: | 4 in Seasons 3-11 |
| Character(s) played: | Kwang Duk Sergeant Michael Yee Captain Paul Yamato |
Clyde Kusatsu (born September 13, 1948) is a Japanese-American actor who appears in a total of four episodes of the CBS-TV series M*A*S*H, as bartender Kwang Duk in the Season 2 episodes "Officers Only" and "Henry in Love", as Sergeant Michael Yee in the Season 8 episode "Goodbye, Cruel World", then finally as Captain Paul Yamato in the Season 11 episode "The Joker is Wild".
Career[]
Kusatsu has been a regular on several series, but neither the adventure Bring 'Em Back Alive (1982–83) nor the Hawaiian-set medical drama Island Son (1989–90) (in which he played one of Richard Chamberlain's colleagues) lasted very long. His many television movies have included the film adaptation of Farewell to Manzanar (1976), about Japanese American internment during World War II. (Kusatsu also guest-starred on an episode of Lou Grant on Japanese internment in the U.S.).
Other television films and mini-series have been "And The Sea Will Tell", and "American Tragedy" playing Judge Lance Ito. He had a memorable role in the "Baa Baa Black Sheep" episode "Prisoners of War" as a downed Japanese fighter pilot in the Pacific (1976); Golden Land (1988), a Hollywood-set drama based on a William Faulkner story; and the AIDS drama And the Band Played On (1993). Kustatsu also made several guest appearances on Star Trek: The Next Generation as Starfleet Vice Admiral Nakamura, appeared in four M*A*S*H episodes and later starred in the short-lived ABC-TV series All American Girl (1994–1995), the first Asian American family sitcom in the U.S.
Feature roles, beginning with Midway (1976), have generally been small, but in the 1990s Kusatsu had roles in Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story (1993, as a history teacher) and the Clint Eastwood movie In the Line of Fire (1993, as a United States Secret Service agent). He appeared as a high school English teacher in American Pie (1999). Other recent films have been "ShopGirl" as Mr. Agasa, and in Sydney Pollack's The Interpreter (2005) as Lee Wu, head of security for the United Nations Headquarters. He currently plays the recurring role of Dr. Dennis Okamura on the CBS soap opera The Young and the Restless. Kusatsu starred in Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay (2008) as Mr. Lee.
Kusatsu is married to Gayle Kusatsu; they have two sons, Kevin and Andrew.
External links[]
Clyde Kusatsu at the Internet Movie Database- Clyde Kusatsu article at Wikipedia
- Clyde Kusatsu 2008 interview on Asiance Magazine online
