Honoring His Enduring MAS*H Legacy

Patrick’s career unfolded in moments of understated brilliance. As the young Prince Chulalongkorn in The King and I, he inhabited the space between empire and innocence with a subtle grace that defied the shallow roles often assigned to Asian children in Hollywood. In that performance, he conveyed curiosity, dignity, and the weight of expectation, giving audiences a character who existed fully within his own inner life rather than as a prop to others’ stories. It was a revolutionary act in its quietest form: showing that a young Asian actor could possess depth, vulnerability, and autonomy on the screen.

Years later, on MASH*, Patrick brought the character Ho-Jon to life with a similar mastery of nuance. There was no grand monologue or theatrical gesture, only a presence that carried the invisible burdens of war and displacement on a gentle face. Through Ho-Jon, he told a story that was rarely spoken aloud—the cost of conflict on ordinary people, the quiet resilience demanded by circumstance, the human toll of being caught in a world not built for you. Patrick’s strength was never in dramatic flamboyance; it was in the patience of his performance, the deliberate attention to subtle expressions, the ability to make the audience feel the character’s heart without ever pointing to it with a spotlight.