George Tanaka, Longtime O.C. Farm Patriarch, Is Dead at 75

George Tanaka, the founder of Tanaka Farms who worked the land in Orange County for four decades, has died from heart failure at age 75 after an extended fight with Parkinson’s disease.

“It’s the end of a chapter in local history, but hopefully [Tanaka’s] kids will carry on,” said Peter Changala, vice president of agriculture for the Irvine Co., which has leased land to Tanaka for the past 15 years.

Tanaka, of Lake Forest, was part of an agrarian heritage; for 40 years, his father farmed acreage in California and Utah.

In recent decades, as growers saw their land sold for commercial and residential development, Tanaka’s fields also shrank. But his love of farming never wavered, friends said. In the 1980s, as Parkinson’s disease undermined his strength, he passed the business on to his son, Glenn Tanaka.

The Tanakas still work 65 acres, down from 200 acres at the peak of the family business, and sell strawberries, cabbage, turnips, asparagus spears and other produce at three roadside stands. Still, George Tanaka worried that the crush of development would snuff out the business before his grandson, Kenny, ever got a chance to take farming to a fourth generation.

John Magarro struck up a friendship with the elder Tanaka in 1955, and the two growers shared a love of golf and desert motorcycle riding through the years. Magarro said his friend will be remembered as an innovator who always sought faster and better ways to work his crops, but never let that drive turn to a cold competitiveness.

“He always had an open hand and an open heart, even with his competitors,” Magarro said after services for Tanaka at the Orange County Buddhist Church in Anaheim. “If someone had a broken tractor, or needed money, he helped them. He always had a smile for everyone.”

Tanaka is survived by his wife, Shirley, and three children, Terry Tanaka, Eileen Tanaka Minami and Glenn Tanaka.