March 31, 1924 – August 7, 2024
Carl Yoshimine was born in San Diego, Calif., on March 31,1924, as the second son of Henry Kakuo and Shinobu (Yato) Yoshimine. He passed away peacefully of natural causes on August 7, 2024.
With his older brother Masao, Carl grew up in a small bungalow in Ocean Beach, where their parents ran a small wholesale produce business. Carl had fond memories of growing up in San Diego – taking the family rowboat unsupervised out into Mission Bay, riding waves on redwood bellyboards off the Sunset Cliffs, spending time with his Yato and Asakawa cousins, and attending the Japanese Congregational Church.
Carl graduated from Point Loma High School in the spring of 1941 and matriculated to San Diego State College in the fall of that year. But in February of 1942, with two duffle bags and one suitcase, Carl, his brother and his mother boarded a train that took them to the Santa Anita Assembly Center. They eventually were relocated to Poston Camp Three in the Arizona desert.
Taking advantage of a relocation program administered by the Quakers, Carl was able to leave camp in 1943 to begin theological studies, receiving a Masters of Education from Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky and after the war receiving a Masters of Divinity from the Berkeley Theological Seminary in the Bay Area. Ordained into the ministry in the early 1950s, Reverend Carl served for 43 years as a pastor in the Pacific Coast Japanese Free Methodist Conference with appointments to congregations in Glendale, Venice-Santa Monica, Los Angeles, Anaheim and Clovis, many of whom joined him to celebrate his life and influence at the Anaheim Revive Church in June of this year. It was Carl’s wish to attend his seizenso (living funeral) and we are gratified that he was able to participate actively in that joyous event.
Throughout his life Carl’s conviction that Jesus is the light of the world was fundamental to his pastoral work and became a symbolic and recurring theme in his post-retirement hobbies, including his watercolor paintings.
Carl’s partner in ministry and life for 69 years was Eunice Miwako Shigekawa (1928 – 2022), whom he married in Los Angeles in 1953 and with whom he raised three sons, Jon William, Jeffrey Eric and Jordan Carl. Carl is also survived by three grandchildren, Willa Overland, Avery Yoshimine Dwyer and Devon Yoshimine; and six great-grandchildren, Truly, Stella, Castor, Tharen, Rory and Dylan. He will be memorialized in a private graveside service at Hope Cemetery in San Diego.