From DiscoverNikkei.org
Mako
Mako
Actor (1933-2006)
Makoto Iwamatsu was born on Dec. 10, 1933, in Kobe, Japan. When he was a young child, his mother and father moved to New York to study art, leaving Mako in the care of his grandparents. He joined his parents in New York after World War II.
Intending to become an architect, Mako began his studies at the Pratt Institute. One day, a classmate asked him to help design and build a stage set. Mako quickly succumbed to the theater’s hypnotic pull — so much so that he seldom went to class and, as a result, lost his student draft deferment. After two years in the United States Army, he enrolled at the Pasadena Playhouse, where he studied acting.
In the 1950’s and well beyond, there were few roles for Asian actors on the American stage or screen. Those parts that existed were often demeaning. Typically written in pidgin English, they portrayed stock figures like houseboys, coolies, laundrymen and white slavers. Mako, who began his career playing small roles on television shows like “McHale’s Navy” “77 Sunset Strip” and “I Spy,” was often similarly cast.
-- Margalit Fox, "Mako, 72, Actor Who Extended Asian-American Roles, Dies". New York Times, July 25, 2006
- Filmographies:
- Profile (Wikipedia)
- Obituaries
- Playbill (July 23, 2006)
- Rafu Shimpo Online (July 25, 2006)
- New York Times (July 25, 2006)
- The Independent (July 25, 2006)
- Fan site created in 2001; includes extensive documentation.
- Audio: "Tribute to Asian American Actor Mako (1933-2006)". Asia Pacific Forum, August 1, 2006. (MP3)
- Interview with Tim Dang, Producing Artistic Director of East West Players, the Los Angeles theater company co-founded by Mako in 1965.
- Mako was the founding artistic director of East West Players (1965), the United States' premier Asian American theater organization. The EWP web site includes an "in memoriam" section on Mako.
- Wayman Wong, "Actors remember Pacific Overtures". The Sondheim Review 4, no. 4 (Spring 1998).
- Interview with actors Mako, Soon-Tek Oh, and Sab Shimono on their experiences as members of the ground-breaking all-Asian cast of Stephen Sondheim's musical, Pacific Overtures, in 1976.