Clyde Kusatsu

Clyde Kusatsu (born September 13, 1948) is an American actor of Japanese descent. Life and career Clyde Kusatsu was born in Hawaii and attended Iolani School where he began acting and in Honolulu summer stock. After graduating with a theatre degree from Northwestern University, he got his first TV role on Kung Fu where was in four episodes. On M*A*S*H he played three roles in four episodes. Kusatsu also played Rev. Chong on several episodes of All in the Family. During this period Kusatsu was also a member of East West Players, the oldest Asian-American theatre company in Los Angeles. Kusatsu has been a regular on several television series, beginning with Bring 'Em Back Alive on CBS (1982–83) and the Hawaii-set medical drama Island Son on CBS (1989–90), playing the Richard Chamberlain character's best friend, Dr. Kenji Fushida. 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 about 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 was 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 docudrama And the Band Played On (1993). Kusatsu also had a recurring role as Vice Admiral Nakamura on Star Trek: The Next Generation. In comedy he also portrayed Principal Shimata in several episodes of the 1990s ABC situation comedy Family Matters, the usual foil of that series' main protagonist Steve Urkel. He later was in Margaret Cho's short-lived ABC series All American Girl (1994–1995), the first Asian-American family sitcom in the U.S., as Cho's character's father. In films he has worked with Toshiro Mifune in Midway (1976) and again in John Frankenheimer's Black Sunday (1977) and The Challenge (1981). Kusatsu had roles in Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story (1993), In the Line of Fire (1993), and in American Pie (1999). Other films include Shopgirl as Mr. Agasa, and in Sydney Pollack's The Interpreter (2005) as Lee Wu, chief of security for the United Nations Headquarters. He also had a role opposite Glenn Close in Bruce Beresford's World War II drama Paradise Road (1997).