The early life of Thomas Morita was fraught with difficulty. His parents immigrated to the United States from Japan before the Great Depression. During the Depression, his father was unable to find work and eventually died. His mother died soon afterward, leaving only Thomas and his sister, Nancy. Morita traveled to his parents' homeland to train as a samurai and learning of the Japanese-American internment only further fueled his hatred of America. At some point during his training, he underwent some unexplained mystical process that imbued him with the power to transform into animals.