KOLOA — There was no temple to greet the bishop, but he said the place felt like a temple, Sunday. Bishop Thomas Okano of the Honpa Hongwanji joined Kaua‘i ministers of the Jodo Shinshu sect to officiate at the 100th
KOLOA — There was no temple to greet the bishop, but he said the place felt like a temple, Sunday.
Bishop Thomas Okano of the Honpa Hongwanji joined Kaua‘i ministers of the Jodo Shinshu sect to officiate at the 100th anniversary celebration of the Koloa Hongwanji.
“The joyous service commemorating 100 years of your temple activities is a testament not only to the diligence of your membership today, but also to the efforts of the countless many of yesterday, whose dedication to the temple made this observance possible,” Okano said. “The years surrounding 100 significantly denote a major milestone in the life of an organization. This is because while start-up required great energy, it takes inordinate effort to sustain an organization for 100 years, a period spanning several generations.”
When the Koloa Hongwanji was founded on Oct. 16, 1910, Koloa was a plantation town with a large Japanese population, the people meeting at each others’ homes for religious service because there was no church.
The community structure has gone through changes, and so has the organization, Okano said.
After securing a lease from the Koloa Sugar Plantation, the temple was constructed at a cost of $3,835.77, the actual building taking seven months and 17 days to complete.
The church’s Young Buddhists of America social hall was built in 1938 under the tenure of the temple’s sixth minister, the Rev. Kyosho Naitoh, and served as the focal point of the 100th-anniversary celebration.
“You have endured some challenging times to obtain the land, building a temple in 1910, building the YBA hall in 1938, and watching your temple burn beyond repair, but you never gave up,” said Alton Miyamoto, president of the Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawai‘i. “While the physical assets and location may have changed, the dedication and commitment of the members and its purpose still lives on.”
On March 30, 1994, the Koloa Hongwanji Mission was gutted by a fire, four years after the temple celebrated its 80th anniversary.
The booths that were facelifted for the temple’s 75th anniversary were sold to The Koloa Early School for its preschool efforts, and due to the change in functioning space, the temple collaborated with other Buddhist temples on Kaua‘i’s Westside to form the current West Kaua‘i Hongwanji, currently being served by the Rev. Kojun Hashimoto.
Diane Kent, vice chair of the Koloa centennial celebration, said things weren’t always easy, but wonderful memories and the unmistakable bond of kinship have certainly built a solid foundation which allowed the church to continue.
