Frank Hiroshi Ogura: 1937-2010
When God calls His people to do something, He calls them out of their worldly occupation into a spiritual vocation, but He uses the skills and abilities they have developed in their occupation to apply to their vocation. Take the apostles, for example: Jesus called those fishermen to become fishers of men. In the same way, Frank Ogura, a vegetable farmer, used his farming skills to cultivate a loving Christ-centered community at the San Diego Japanese Christian Church.
Frank Ogura was born in San Diego in 1937 to Masataro and Masae Ogura, both immigrants from the Miyazaki Shingu Wakayama prefecture in Japan. His father spent six years fishing in the tuna fleet before moving to Solana Beach to grow strawberries. His mother packed avocados until the Ogura farm’s success required her efforts there. His older sister, born twelve years before Frank, lived with severe mental deficiencies and required family care for the duration of her life.
As a kid Frank went to school, got in fights, ate sand and enjoyed drowning stray cats as much as the next little boy. But he would also wake early to help on the farm before school and come home and work with his parents until dark, and then complete his homework. His parents taught him how to care for crops and how to be attentive to the people around him, and he developed a strong and admirable work ethic that he maintained throughout his life.
In 1942, when he was five years old, Frank and his family were relocated from Solana Beach to Poston, Arizona for the duration of World War II. Because he was five Frank remembers things like playing King of the Hill, and losing to everyone except Makoto Harada, who became his best friend in camp. As he puts it, he “fooled around a lot” during the Poston years. “In a way it was an adventure because I was little. If I had been college-aged it would have been a disaster. Those college kids were being denied an education.” When they returned from Arizona the Ogura family settled in Spring Valley and Mr. Ogura began a successful vegetable farm, which Frank eventually took over.
Frank attended Grossmont High School and played football and ran track. When he graduated he went to Mesa College, took horticultural classes and began applying what he learned to his father’s farm. Frank remembers working on the days that his parents died: “There were crops rotting on the vines and it’s what they would have wanted me to do. I was being an obedient son.”
Frank implemented several innovative farming techniques, including contour farming and the use of organic fertilizers. These techniques, and others, saved his crop from a frost that devastated the region one year, and his bell peppers sold for $10 a pound. “I could grow bell peppers better than anyone else,” he explains, matter-of-factly, which must have been true because he was asked to move his operation down to Mexico, where he would be responsible for a larger and more profitable vegetable crop. He declined the offer; had other “crops” to tend to in San Diego. “Farming has seasons,” he explains. “When I wasn’t busy farming I had time to do other things.”
Frank invested whatever time he didn’t spend farming in the church. When he was eight years old Frank’s mom met and befriended Mrs. Mukai, who encouraged her to take the family to church. The Mukai family were the first to convert and join the OMS Holiness church in San Diego, and when Frank was eleven years old the Ogura family were baptized by Reverend Yahiro and they began attending regularly as well. Frank remembers running around the building with his friends Art Segawa and Henry Uyeda as a kid.
At the church Frank had an entire community of Christians willing to spend time with him to help him grow in Christ. Reverend Yahiro traveled to visit with the Ogura family at their farm, something Frank admired because it demonstrated that Reverend Yahiro met and cared for his church members wherever they were in life. Tom Mukai, twenty years older than Frank, became a good friend to him. Frank says, “it’s a good idea to have a friend who’s twenty years older than you. You’d be surprised at what you pick up. I was.” Kiyoshi and Alice Yamate hosted youth potlucks, skits and Bible studies at their house for years and Frank admired their hospitality. Even through his adult life people like Brian Nakamura and Ichibei Honda continually encouraged Frank to grow and trust in God.
Frank understood that being a part of a church community meant participating in its activities to make it a success. Throughout his life Frank served the church as: Board Chairman, Sunday School superintendent, Sunday School teacher, youth advisor (and subsequently the youth group chauffeur), and maintenance man. He started the Crisis Fund, which provided funding for people who were facing financial difficulties, and he kept a photographic record of all church members and activities. But Frank’s most important contribution may have been the amount of time he spent truly getting to know people. He was easy to talk to: “People can talk to me for hours and I’ll never say a word. I’m like a little cuddly bear I guess. Some people attract mice, some attract flies, I attract people. I think I take after my mom.”
Frank endured his share of hardships. He lost both parents in a short amount of time, he suffered a slipped back disc in his twenties and had to have major (and experimental) back surgery, he rolled a tractor while farming, he was treated for chemical poisoning caused by farming toxins, and toward the end of his life he fought liver cancer. But to Frank, all that mattered was living to serve others. He firmly believed that all things work together for the good of those who love God, and nothing else mattered. “Jesus is the only way. Having everything and getting rich isn’t it. Life is about what you do with it,” he explained.
We rarely consider the influence other people have on the way we live our lives. As it turns out, Frank Ogura had devoted his life to tending to the church in the same way that he tended to his bell peppers. Humans, it seems, aren’t all that different from vegetables: care for them with time and attention and watch them grow well. Just as the success and abundance of his bell peppers testified to Frank’s skill as a farmer, so the church testifies to his devotion to God and commitment to serving Him. Look at the result of Frank’s presence in this church; it’s all around you. You are the result.
