The power of Hollywood, as we know, is that it can create these images in people's minds, and they live with those images for their whole life.

There were times when I purposely didn't go to school because of Pearl Harbor Day, because certainly there was enough media about it every year to remind everybody. So when I heard they were going to make the movie, I thought, "Oh, no, please not another Pearl Harbor mention!"

In fact, I think new media is going to make a big difference with injecting more people of color into Hollywood and non-Hollywood.

Playing Japanese characters and being in environments that are Japanese, like a character's apartment or whatever, if you have directors or art directors who just don't know what' s what with Japanese culture, then pretty soon something's just passed through. I've been through many times where I've pointed out the incorrectness of so much of what's been done to a set.

Half my family was from the Imperial Japanese Navy, and the other half was U.S. Army, and I was raised on Army posts during my childhood, so I pretty much began my life with a split-brain sort of thing.

I used to be a street performer, and performances on Venice Beach, it's like playing the Apollo: They let you know if they don't like you!

I've been in a lot of cult movies, but I've been very fortunate to have been involved in projects that people remember.