George Kobayashi

Sept. 22, 1929 - May 28, 2024

George Kobayashi, 9/22/29 - 5/28/2024. Michael Rosen. June 2024. George passed away two weeks ago on Tuesday 5/28/204 at about 1:00 in the afternoon. He had been sleeping a lot and not eating. Hospice said that was indicative of end of life. He passed peacefully shortly after my sister Carol and I returned from his Hospice admittance. He and Mom have been living at Rogue Valley Manor, Medford, Oregon, since leaving Calabasas in 2004. A disciplined Nutritarian (Dr Furhman, Eat To Live), for the past 30 years, his diet consisted was strictly plant-based and excluded added salt, oil and sugar. He walked vigorously well into his 90s and sustained independence until only the last few months of his 94th year. He credits this lifestyle for curing him of hypertension, achieving appropriate weight and all manner of healthy responses. His was a life of careful measure. Nutrition, however, was something he was very enthusiastic about. He was born on 9/22/1929 in Hawaii. I don’t know anything about his parents but he had several brothers and sisters: Rod, Estuko, Reiko and Hester. The first three have passed. I spoke to Hester about both his hospice admittance and passing two weeks later. She’s at a memory care facility in Gig Harbor, Washington. In 2021 George and I went up to visit her. Rod’s adult children, Michiyo and Hiromatchi, are aware of his passing. Reiko’s son Daniel has passed as well. Hester has no children. Etsuko is in Japan and passed already as well. He graduated from Wallace Rider Farrington Highschool of Honolulu Hawaii in 1950. His highschool ring still shows the motto: “Enter to learn, go forth to serve.” Following high school, he studied Accounting at the University of Hawaii graduating with his BA in 1954. I know nothing of his story growing up Japanese in Hawaii during the War but I bet it left a mark. By 1957 he had relocated to southern California where he worked through a series of management positions with several companies, eventually landing at DPC in 1969. His story intersects mine in the mid 1980s when he was the Corporate Tax Manager at Dataproducts Corporation in Woodland Hills, California. Mom and Dad had divorced several years earlier and Mom was working at DPC as a secretary and starting to date again. “He puts me in touch with my roots” I remember her saying. Mom’s parents were the nisei, the quiet generation of Japanese parents whose kids didn’t speak Japanese. She had always wanted to know more about her heritage. George spoke to that. Early on, he had a circle of Japanese friends in Gardenia where he had lived for many years with his mother. In the lead-up to the wedding, I recall him taking me out to buy tailored shirts at a local tailor there, 1980 or so. We were accompanied by a group of Japanese-American guys who I took to be his friends. Joking in a mixture of English and Japanese. The first 20 years of their married life together were in Calabasas. George and Mom married about the same time as me and Ana, late 1980s and they remained there until 2004. This is the house my sister and I grew up in and you can still see it on Google Maps. Initially they both continued with DPC as it was absorbed by one Japanese conglomerate after another. Somewhere fairly early in the process, mom was laid off. George guided tax preparation until he retired in the 1990s. For many years they traveled to National Parks and hosted grand kids in Medford. In 2001 or so they took off for a month and visited George's family in Japan. In particular, his older sister Etsuko lived there. This was my mom’s first trip to Japan. I’ve linked many of our family photos of him, including the ones from this trip. Concerned about the burden of elder-care, George, Hester and Mom had agreed to move up to RVM. This is a “Continuing Care Community” where as you need additional support, it’s available in the same community and for reasonable costs. However,it’s in Medford, Oregon, 1000 miles north of Calabasas. Shortly after the move, Hester decided RVM wasn’t for her and moved on. But Mom and George remained at the Quail Point Terrace cottage from 2004 until 2020 when mom needed more support. For the past four years, Mom has been in the Skilled Nursing facility and George has been 100 yards away, upstairs in Independent Living. His files, with few exceptions, reflected an expectation of thoroughness: full of old appliance manuals and bank statements. One exception was a file of printed correspondence with his sister Hester. By 2021 he was having the same communication struggles with Hester as I was with him. None of this came as a surprise to him. The Funeral Portal strips out the links. Here they are: Farrington High School: https://www.farringtonhighschool.org/info/history/ Jameson Drive: https://www.google.com/maps/place/22650+Jameson+Dr,+Calabasas,+CA+91302/@34.1393223,-118.6195188,3a,75y,138.26h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1swLZ4xhRWJXFhkMdRw-G4DA!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DwLZ4xhRWJXFhkMdRw-G4DA%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.share%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26yaw%3D138.2629%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D90!7i16384!8i8192!4m15!1m8!3m7!1s0x80c29efdc878ba8d:0xf980cd3b116fe6c6!2s22650+Jameson+Dr,+Calabasas,+CA+91302!3b1!8m2!3d34.1391556!4d-118.6193413!16s%2Fg%2F11c18dfd95!3m5!1s0x80c29efdc878ba8d:0xf980cd3b116fe6c6!8m2!3d34.1391556!4d-118.6193413!16s%2Fg%2F11c18dfd95?coh=205410&entry=ttu Photos Album: https://photos.app.goo.gl/7PUjVjW9Mh9tLd7g6