Photograph of Jack Soo on the Barney Miller set

Color print of a photograph of Jack Soo in the role of Nick Yemana on the set of the television series Barney Miller. The photograph, printed on textured paper, shows Soo holding a phone receiver while expressing shock or exasperation.

Jack Soo was a groundbreaking Japanese American entertainer who fought the entertainment industry’s reductive and narrow opportunities for people of color. Soo built an incredible career as a singer, comedian, and actor in nightclubs, radio and television appearances, and films from the 1940s-1970s. He is best remembered today for his role as Detective Nick Yemana on The Barney Miller Show, which aired from 1975-1982.

Jack Soo was born Goro Suzuki on October 28th, 1917, to Japanese immigrants to the United States, his father a tailor and his mother a seamstress. He grew up in in Oakland, California, where Goro enjoyed performing from a young age, often imitating famous singers and participating in amateur theater around San Francisco. According to friends, he excelled as an athlete, singer, and dancer, and was also a gifted writer. At age 17, Goro was awarded the gold medal by the Japanese American Citizens League for a paper he wrote titled “Why I’m Proud to be an American.” Suzuki attended the University of California Berkley, graduating with a degree in English and minor in Journalism, but his studies were cut short after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 in 1942, authorizing the detainment and forced relocation of people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast of the United States to government-run concentration camps. Suzuki was ordered to report to the Tanforan Assembly Center before being relocated to Topaz War Relocation Center in Utah. Though little is known about Goro’s life in the camp, he would later speak about the joy he felt when performing in amateur theatrical productions and talent shows at Topaz. Suzuki earned a reputation as a skilled emcee, singer, and comedian. He produced shows that satirized the daily experiences of camp life. At one point, Suzuki organized a group of performers within the camp to put on a program at the local Delta High School. Remarkably, he was able to not only persuade the camp administrators to let them leave the premises, but also provide a bus to the high school for their outing.

By 1944, Suzuki had left the camp, taken the more familiar Chinese-sounding stage name Jack Soo, and was working as a nightclub emcee in northern Ohio. Soon, he was working the “Chop Suey Circuit,” a network of nightclubs and performance venues where Asian performers found rare opportunities for employment, but also often catered to White audiences’ romanticized fantasies of Asian culture. He was a popular fixture at The Forbidden City nightclub in San Francisco’s Chinatown, where he earned an opportunity to appear as a fictionalized version of himself in the Rogers and Hammerstein musical Flower Drum Song.

Flower Drum Song was a landmark work of musical comedy for its depiction of Asian American life and roles it has provided for Asian American actors, dancers, and singers. Based on the novel by C.Y. Lee, the story follows a family of wealthy refugees from Communist China who struggle with American assimilation. In the original Broadway production, Soo was originally cast as Frankie Wing, a nightclub announcer, as well as the understudy to Larry Blyden’s character Sammy Fong. In December of 1959, Soo then took on the role of Sammy Fong following Blyden’s departure, a role he reprised in the 1961 film adaptation.

Today, Soo is best remembered for portraying Detective Nick Yemana on The Barney Miller Show. Celebrated for its multi-ethnic, multi-racial cast, The Barney Miller Show featured Puerto Rican, Jewish, Black, and Asian American cast members as law enforcement officers in a fictional Manhattan precinct. Soo portrayed Yemana as a world-weary and wryly sarcastic realist. The series featured multiple plotlines in which Detective Yemana is wrongfully sidelined and stereotyped, to which he responds with deadpan, dry humor. The comedy aired from 1975 to 1982, though Soo’s involvement ended in 1979, midway through season five, following his untimely death from esophageal cancer; Soo was 61. As part of a tribute to Jack Soo, at the end of episode 24 of season five, actor Hal Linden, who played Captain Barney Miller, fondly recalled the way in which Soo imbued Yemana’s character not only with humor about his Japanese American heritage, but also with dignity and pride.

Jack Soo had a profound influence on American and Japanese American culture, persevering through adversity like his wartime incarceration, standing strong against typecasting and racial prejudice, and representing the full humanity and potential of Japanese American life.

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