Patrick Adiarte, Actor Seen in Musicals and on ‘M*A*S*H,' Dies at 82

New York Times

25-04-2025

Patrick Adiarte, who was imprisoned as a baby in the Philippines during World War II and then found a new life in the United States as an actor and dancer on Broadway, in Hollywood and on television, died on April 10 in Los Angeles. He was 82.
The cause of death, in a hospital, was complications of pneumonia, said Stephanie Hogan, his niece.
Mr. Adiarte had a varied career, in which he played many characters, of various ethnicities, before he was cast in the first season of 'M*A*S*H' as Ho-Jon, the Korean helper of the wisecracking doctors Hawkeye Pierce (Alan Alda) and Trapper John (Wayne Rogers).
As a child, Patrick portrayed one of the children of the king of Siam (now Thailand), who are tutored by a widowed schoolmistress in the original 1951 Broadway production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical 'The King and I.' As a teenager, he played an assimilated Chinese American character in another of their shows, 'Flower Drum Song' (1958).
He also appeared in the movie versions of both shows, in 1956 and 1961.
In the 1960s and early '70s, he was seen on several TV series. On 'Bonanza,' he played a Native American named Swift Eagle; on 'Ironside,' he was a Samoan boxer; on 'CBS Playhouse,' he was a Viet Cong guerrilla. He played a Hawaiian tour guide in two episodes of 'The Brady Bunch,' filmed in Hawaii.
In 'High Time,' a 1960 film directed by Blake Edwards, he played an Indian exchange student who rooms with Bing Crosby, whose character returns to college in his 50s.
Mr. Adiarte also appeared frequently as a dancer on the musical variety show 'Hullabaloo' from 1965 to 1966. He told The Associated Press in 1965 that the most difficult dances for him to learn were the Watusi and the swim.
'Sometimes it takes me as long as four or five weeks to pick up something that is really simple for the untrained,' he said.
He also had a brief career as a singer. He recorded a single, 'Five Different Girls,' in 1966, and sang it on the show. One newspaper headline called him the 'Hullabalooest Hullabalooer.'
In 1972, Mr. Adiarte appeared as the orphaned Ho-Jon on 'M*A*S*H,' first in the pilot and then in six more episodes.
Ho-Jon figured prominently in the pilot, in which Hawkeye and Trapper raise money to send him to medical school in the United States. In another episode, Ho-Jon confesses to stealing valuables to sell so that he can bribe border guards to let him bring the rest of his family out of North Korea. After the 11th episode, the character was gone, without explanation.
'Ho-Jon is one of those characters that 'M*A*S*H' fans remember quite fondly,' Ryan Patrick, one of the hosts of the podcast 'M*A*S*H Matters,' said in an email. 'Many 'M*A*S*H' fans simply assume that Ho-Jon traveled to the States to live with Hawkeye's father while going to medical school.'
After 'M*A*S*H,' Mr. Adiarte's career focus changed. He worked as a choreographer of several productions of a musical revue, 'Starting Here, Starting Now,' and as a dance teacher at Santa Monica College from 1985 to 1997.
Patrick Napoleon Adiarte was born on Aug. 2, 1942, in Manila. His mother, Purita (Rodriguez) Adiarte, was an actress and dancer, and his father, Isidro Adiarte, was a captain attached to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
In February 1945, Patrick, his mother and his sister, Irene, were imprisoned on the island of Cebu. When Allied forces fought to reoccupy the island, the Japanese set fire to the prison compound and threw grenades that caused severe burns to Irene and lesser wounds to Patrick as the family tried to escape, according to a report by a U.S. congressional committee. In March, his father was captured and put to death.
Patrick, his mother and his sister immigrated to the United States in 1946 and settled in New York City, where Irene underwent surgery on her face. The family was at risk of being deported for overstaying their allotted time as visitors. But in 1956, the U.S. Senate passed a bill, written by John F. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, that granted citizenship to them and others.
Meanwhile, Patrick, who was given dancing lessons by his mother, joined the cast of 'The King and I' on Broadway as a replacement in 1951, earning $85 a week as one of the children of King Mongkut, a role made famous by Yul Brynner. Patrick played the crown prince when the show went on tour, and in the film.
'I sort of grew up from one of the little princes to the role of crown price,' Mr. Adiarte told The Associated Press. 'It took about four years.'
In the film version of 'Flower Drum Song,' he wore a baseball uniform and sang and danced to the song 'The Other Generation' with two other young actors.
During the Broadway run of the musical, Mr. Adiarte promoted it by performing a tap dance with its director, Gene Kelly, on 'Omnibus,' a cultural TV series on NBC, in late 1958.
'Patrick is a mighty fine dancer,' Mr. Kelly said before he and Mr. Adiarte demonstrated old and modern styles of tap. 'If there's going to be another Fred Astaire, I think it might as well, might well be Pat.'
In addition to Ms. Hogan, Mr. Adiarte is survived by his companion, Shirley Kong, and a nephew, Mike DeVito. His marriage to Loni Ackerman, a singer and actress, ended in divorce.