The actor you're thinking of is James Hong (I think he's actually from either St.Paul or St.Louis), and he's been great in a lot of other films. He was also in The Forbin Project, played a bad guy in one of my favorite Outer Limits episodes, "The Hundred Days of the Dragon", was Tia Carrere's dad in Wayne's World 2, and had a memorable guest role as a posh maitre'd in a Seinfeld episode.
Thanks for the info--James Hong is a wonderful character actor. I like character actors better than stars by a long shot.