Morita developed spinal tuberculosis (Pott disease) at the age of two and spent the bulk of the next nine years in the Weimar Institute in Weimar, California, and later at the Shriners Hospital in San Francisco.[11] For long periods, he was wrapped in a full-body cast, and he was told that he would never walk. During his time at a sanatorium near Sacramento, Morita befriended a visiting priest who would often joke that, if Morita ever converted to Catholicism, the priest would rename him to “Patrick Aloysius Ignatius Xavier Noriyuki Morita.”

He began working as a stand-up comedian at small clubs in Sacramento as well as San Francisco, taking the stage name “Pat Morita,” in part due to the presence of comedians including Pat Henry and Pat Cooper, in addition due to memories of the priest he had befriended as a boy.