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In Remembrance: Lane Nakano

Seen various places and pieced together from various sources.

Lane Nakano, Singer and actor

Singer and actor Lane Nakano died April 28, 2005 in Sherman Oaks/Studio City, California of emphysema. He was 80. Born in Los Angeles, he grew up in the Boyle Heights area.

Nakano starred in "Go For Broke," the first major Hollywood film to feature Japanese-American actors. "Go For Broke" was the dramatic story of the Japanese American soldiers who fought in Europe during World War II.

Nakano was ideally cast for the film: He had served in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, made up entirely of Niseis (American citizens of Japanese descent), which went on to become the most highly decorated combat unit in World War II. Lane and his brother Lyle volunteered after he and his family were taken from their home near Los Angeles to Heart Mountain internment camp in Wyoming following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

After the war, he became a prominent singer in the Japanese-American community, singing at the Hollywood Bowl and at the La Scala Opera House. Nakano, who had played a bit part as a rickshaw driver in the 1949 movie "Tokyo Joe," was cast by Director Robert Pirosh as the lead Japanese-American role of Sam in 1951 film "Go For Broke," about the 442nd Combat Team and its role in saving the Texas "Lost Battalion" in France. The movie also starred Van Johnson as a bigoted Army lieutenant from Texas who undergoes a change in attitude after being assigned to lead and train the volunteer Japanese American unit.

Nakano starred in "Three Weeks of Love," a 1965 American film shot in Japan and Hong Kong, but mostly he had small parts in films such as King Vidor's 1952 film "Japanese War Bride." Nakano also had small roles in episodes of TV shows such as "Hawaiian Eye" and "Route 66."

Nakano retired from show business in the late 1960s and had a long career in the aluminum awning and greenhouse businesses in Los Angeles.

He is survived by his wife, Fumi; two sons, Dean and Desmond; a brother, Frank; and two sisters, May Okamoto and Lucy Wada. His son Desmond is a screenwriter (Black Moon Rising, White Man’s Burden).