Nisei comic Pat Morita isn't a campaigning politician, but if he were, and applause meant votes, he would have been unanimously elected at the Yokota NCO Club Monday night.

Morita, who calls himself the "Hip Nip," easily stuffed a stag night audience into his back pocket with rapid-fire spoofing and mimicry.

The 5-foot-3, 150-pounder stepped warily before the packed crowd in a wild, multicolored shirt, beat-up hat and white pants like a beach bum suffering from amnesia. He later told why:

"I was playing it by ear. This was the first all-male audience I'd ever faced." His material (he writes his own stuff) pokes fun in all directions.

"I know there are a lot of Texans here, there always are," he began. "I worked in Texas and I found out the letters LBJ really mean: let's buy Japanese."

"You may have heard that back in the States there are some people who are smoking grass. I don't know how you feel, but it's sure easier than cutting the stuff."

Turning to history, "The Japanese couldn't have been all bad during World War II. Look at all the movies Hollywood was able to make on account of them. The Indians weren't the only bad guys. Thanks to the Japanese and Geronimo, John Wayne became a millionaire."

On his visit to Japan, his second: "I had hoped that I could learn more of the language of my ancestors but the Japanese spotted that I'm an American so they all insist on talking in my language to brush up on their English. I haven't learned a word of Japanese but the trip is sure helping my English."

Pat, 35, learned early the need for humor. From 2 to 11 he couldn't walk because of spinal tuberculosis. He was a patient at Weimar Sanitarium, Colfax, Calif.

Spending endless hours flat on his back, "I had to find things to laugh at. We used to throw spit balls at the ceiling to try to make them stick."

Life inside the hospital made him an outsider to other Nisei. When he was released in 1943, in the middle of World War II, he was bewildered at joining his parents in a Japanese-American relocation camp.

He was further befuddled by having to go to school with beginning 6-year-olds since he didn't understand Japanese, the language used in school.

After the war, he took up comedy in high school "to attract attention and make friends" by acting and singing in plays. Years later, despite the security of a $12,000 job in the computer department of Aero-Jet General in Sacramento, Calif., he felt the same need. "When those computer machines started telling me what to do, I said, 'Later, Man."'

Pat started at a Japanese night club, Ginza West, in San Francisco, five years ago. He was "discovered" at the Horn in Los Angeles, 3½ years ago. He's guested on the "Tonight Show" and "Hollywood Palace," appeared in top night clubs from coast to coast and just finished a stint in the movie "Thoroughly Modern Millie," starring Julie Andrews.

Commenting on the hippie scene ("of which I'm really not a part. 'Hip Nip' just sounds groovy. A drummer laid it on me."), Pat says, "I don't knock. That's not me. Let's just say I appreciate flower power, but I don't arrange."

Pat can't label his act. "I'm neither angry, nor sick. But sometimes the people in my audience become both — that's when the waiter gives then the check."

Catch Pat at the Yokota Officers Club Thursday, Tachi Officers and Civilian Clubs Friday and the Yokohama Seaside and Officers Clubs Saturday.