Young Chang If you go east on...

Young Chang

If you go east on Sunflower Avenue until you get to Main Street,

you’ll see hundreds of acres of something you rarely see in urban

settings like Newport Beach and Costa Mesa.

You’ll see farmland.

Everything east of the Orange County Performing Arts Center, all

the way to the Costa Mesa Freeway, was and is the property of the

late Roy Katsumasa Sakioka.

During a time when immigrants from Japan were far fewer in number,

Sakioka moved from Japan in 1916 and arrived in Los Angeles.

Eventually he moved to Costa Mesa and became one of the city’s most

influential farmers and land developers. And though he was known for

his thousands and thousands of acres of land throughout Orange

County, the quiet pioneer was also known for quirkier things.

He cross-planted to make his own type of celery.

He was one of the first people to figure out how to send fresh

fruit to the East Coast via refrigerated trains, said former mayor

and city historian Bob Wilson.

“But he always loved land and he kept buying and selling and

buying and selling until he got wealthy,” Wilson said. The Sakiokas

“have always been first-class people. They have just been great for

the community.”

Sakioka, who died in 1995, grew up on a farming village in Japan.

Once he had arrived in California and World War II broke out, he

and his family were sent to an internment camp with other

Japenese-Americans. During this time, a friend safeguarded Sakioka’s

farm tools and machines, which they had used on their land in L.A.,

according to Wilson’s history book, “From Goat Hill to City of the

Arts: The History of Costa Mesa.”

Eventually Sakioka’s land swapping spilled into Orange County

beginning in 1947, when he started to buy land here.

“Don Dungan and Arlie Swartz and Bob Unger worked real close to

him to get him to come to the city of Costa Mesa with his property,”

Wilson said, of the efforts of early city leaders.

Buy 1960, the family owned 1,000 acres in Orange County, including

some in Costa Mesa. Today, the acreage is considerably less, as most

of the land has been condemned or swapped. But the family still owns

large amounts of land in Ventura County, according to Wilson’s book.

The main farm, which includes the head-of-the-family’s house on

Sunflower Avenue, is still in Costa Mesa and spans to the San Diego

Freeway. Nearby, the Lakes apartments, the Wyndham Hotel and the

Marriott Suites stand on land that Sakioka’s family leases out.

Today, his surviving relatives run his farming and industrial

company, which is located near his Sunflower Avenue house.

* Do you know of a person, place or event that deserves a

historical Look Back? Let us know. Contact Young Chang by fax at

(949) 646-4170; e-mail at young.chang@latimes.com; or mail her at c/o

Daily Pilot, 330 W. Bay St., Costa Mesa, CA 92627.