So you're taking potentially sloppy writing and chalking it up to the character being a liar. How... groundbreaking.

I'll just add this because this thread has been resurrected.

Japan was a U.S. territory until 1959 and there was still immigration occurring between Japan and Hawaii during this period. Okinawans were, in fact, one of the largest groups of émigrés. CItizenship and military service have been very difficult to research and yes, the Immigration Act of 1924 shut down almost all legal avenues for non-European citizens to emigrate. However, it seems nothing, not even the aforementioned Act of 1924, would have necessarily prevented him from moving to Hawaii as a young man. I don't know if Miyagi would have been accepted into the military ranks, but lying join the service wasn't unheard of and over 33,000 Japanese Americans served in the war.

It doesn't seem as though the writers of TKK were that lazy, just very meticulous.

Weird source, but this is one timeline https://www.professionalroofing.net/WebExclusives/Story/Japanese-emigration-to-Hawaii--02-01-2012/420

@AlienFanatic said:

I'll just add this because this thread has been resurrected.

Japan was a U.S. territory until 1959 and there was still immigration occurring between Japan and Hawaii during this period. Okinawans were, in fact, one of the largest groups of émigrés. CItizenship and military service have been very difficult to research and yes, the Immigration Act of 1924 shut down almost all legal avenues for non-European citizens to emigrate. However, it seems nothing, not even the aforementioned Act of 1924, would have necessarily prevented him from moving to Hawaii as a young man. I don't know if Miyagi would have been accepted into the military ranks, but lying join the service wasn't unheard of and over 33,000 Japanese Americans served in the war.

It doesn't seem as though the writers of TKK were that lazy, just very meticulous.

Weird source, but this is one timeline https://www.professionalroofing.net/WebExclusives/Story/Japanese-emigration-to-Hawaii--02-01-2012/420

Thanks for that, I was actually just trying to verify that very claim. It seemed odd, as there were a large number of first and second generation Japanese living in the US by the time of the war.

Upon reading, it does look like it would have been difficult for Miyagi to enter the US, but Hawaii does seem to be the only avenue that might have worked, and would match up with him having met his wife in the cane fields. I doubt that border security was flawless, and it might well have been easy enough for Miyagi to slip into Hawaii, and get into the US through that avenue, then lie, as you suggested, to join the army. Of course, the fact that we're dedicating this level of research to a fictional character is entertainingly absurd, but great investigative exercise.

This is lifted word for word from an article on Cracked. As such, it has the same problems as the article did.

First, it is not strongly implied that Miyagi was born in America to Japanese parents. He explicitly says that he grew up in Okinawa and he has a heavy accent. He shows Daniel a picture of his pregnant wife and says, "look, look, first American born Miyagi waiting to be born."

Secondly, there is no mention anywhere in any of the movies that Mr. Miyagi ever attended UCLA or any other university. I found this thread because I did a Google search on Miyagi attending UCLA. The only mentions of this anywhere, it seems, are on the original Cracked article and on sites where people have copied it.

Third, there is nothing in any movie in the franchise that even hints at him being forced into an internment camp. His wife was held at the Manzanar Relocation Center while he was serving. That was a common situation for many of Japanese descent who were serving in the military during the war.

Border security in the US in the 1920s or 1940s was nothing like it is today - and even today it is still evidently not that difficult to beat. We are also talking about a period in time where records were kept on paper and weren't nearly as difficult to fake. Miyagi already demonstrated that he didn't exactly hold the law in high regard. He drove around for years without even having a driver's license. In those times, it would have taken very little effort for him to come to the United States, especially if he came through Hawaii, which wasn't even a state at that time, where there was already a large Japanese population that would have readily taken him in.

Pat Morita may have only been 52 when the first movie was made, but he looked a hell of a lot older than that. Miyagi was clearly meant to be a person in his late sixties or early seventies at the time of the first movie. That aligns perfectly with someone who came to the US as a young man shortly before the war.

I was gonna say, hello! Illegal immigration anyone? It was incredibly easy to enter the US illegally back then and even easier to fake papers. The OP poster's entire tirade, amusing as it is, is completely bunk.

One thing that the cracked article in question neglects is that both Miyagi and his wife likely were forced into the internment camps. The 442nd was mostly made up of Japanese-Americans whos families were in the camps, and it does make perfect sense for Miyagi to have joined up in order to prove his loyalty to his new country. Of course, none of that has anything to do with "Stolen Valour", and the OP's very contrived attempt to make that argument is, as movie_nazi said, complete bunk.

Let me get this straight when you say "cracked article", are you referring to the parody magazine Cracked? Because I will admit that what the OP said is funny and it does sound like something you would see in Cracked or Mad magazine.

Yes, this is the article here, but it was on the Cracked web site. They were owned by the same publisher who made Cracked magazine, though they sold off the web site in 2018 or so.

https://www.cracked.com/article_24970_5-movie-sequels-that-retroactively-mess-up-original-plot.html

It was published six days before this was posted. If you scroll down in the comments of the article you can see that I made the same points there, in 2017, as I did on this post in 2021.

OMG! What a total hack fraud plagiarist! Didn't have the decency to give credit where credit is due. Honestly, this is pathetic.

Thank you for that link because I read some of the other ones and they are pretty damn funny. I especially enjoyed a sublink on that page that took me to a page entitled 6 Ridiculous Ways Movies Plugged Up Famous Plot Holes which was actually more serious but still funny regardless.

Cracked used to be fun, but its quality dropped sharply around 7 or so years ago.