Biographical
Sab Shimono is an accomplished actor and voice performer with numerous television, film, and stage credits to his name and an important figure in Asian-American arts and culture. He was born on July 31, 1937, in Sacramento, California, to restaurant owners Masauchi Shimono and Edith Mary Otani Shimono. During World War II he and his family were incarcerated at the Sacramento Assembly Center, then at Tule Lake Segregation Center, California and Camp Amanche (also known as the Granada War Relocation Center) in Colorado. After graduating from Sacramento High School (where he was student body president) in 1956, Shimono went on to the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied acting under Henrietta Davis. His first professional theatre role was a summer stock production of Flower Drum Song where he played Wang Ta. In 1966 he debuted on Broadway as Ito in the original production of Mame starring Angela Lansbury and directed by Greg Saks. After working on a number of off-Broadway projects including multiple productions with La MaMa, Shimono returned to Broadway in 1976 as Manjiro in the original production of Stephen Sondheim's Pacific Overtures. In addition to the stage, he has appeared in numerous films including, Midway (1976), Gung Ho (1986), Presumed Innocent (1990), Hot Summer Winds (1991), Suture (1993), The Shadow (1994), Waterworld (1995), Paradise Road (1997), The Big Hit (1998), and Southland Tales (2006). He guest starred in many television shows, including 2 ½ Men, Friends, Seinfeld, M*A*S*H, Mad Men, and Hawaii, Five-0. He voiced the role of Uncle for five seasons on Fox's Jackie Chan Adventures, and was the voice of Chow Lo in Disney's Mulan. Shimono has worked extensively with a number of acclaimed Asian-American playwrights including Philip Kan Gotanda, Wakako Yamauchi, and Ken Narasaki. He has appeared in several plays or movies that reference the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans, including Alan Parker's Come See the Paradise(1990), Michael Uno's movie version of the Philip Kan Gotanda play The Wash (1988), and independent shorts Day of Independence (2003) and Half Kenneth (2009). Shimono also starred in a short film for the National Museum of American History's exhibition, A More Perfect Union: Japanese Americans and the U.S. Constitution, which ran from 1987 to 2004. He has been honored on numerous occasions with awards for outstanding performance from the LA Weekly and Dramalogue, and received the 1975 Clio Award for Best Actor. Shimono has also been active in the push for LGBT equality, working extensively with a number of organizations dedicated to LGBT rights, particularly within the Asian-American Pacific Islander communities. He lives and works with his husband, Steve Alden Nelson, in Los Angeles, California.
Source
Densho Encyclopedia
