When Lena Suzuki heard in September about the desecration of graves and trash strewn across the grounds at the Waianae Japanese Cemetery, where her husband’s relatives are buried, she organized a cleanup and asked for the community’s help.

“I’m amazed by how much work was done in one day,” Suzuki said last week after the cleanup. “I feel humbled.”

The Waianae community pulled together, and on Oct. 4 well over 50 people — from keiki to kupuna — showed up, armed with weed whackers, chainsaws, rakes and trash cans to clean up the old cemetery.

“I was really impressed and happy that the Waianae community came out,” said Myra Fujii, who alerted the public in September about the discovery of more than 20 overturned headstones, people living amongst the kiawe trees and using cemetery water, paid by the Waianae Hongwanji Mission, to shower.

“They want to take pride in what was here before the vandalism,” she said.

“Everyone was very upset,” she said. “They said, ‘Let the dead rest in peace.’ They wanted to make it right. They wanted to preserve what was damaged.”

Helping with the cleanup were families, individuals and community groups — including Pu‘uhonua O Wai‘anae, a homeless encampment, and Kaala Farm, a Hawaiian cultural learning center. Some of those who helped had no ties to the cemetery and others were from the Waianae Hongwanji temple, whose aging and shrinking congregation helps care for the graves.

One touching moment was when members of Pu‘uhonua O Wai‘anae, mostly women, aided the Doi family by lifting up and returning a heavy gravestone to its foundation, Fujii said.

Suzuki said they filled six trucks and a large trailer from Junk Trucks LLC, whose services were donated, with mattresses, trash and debris that had littered the area.

Suzuki’s husband’s grandparents and great- grandparents are buried there.

“Prior to this, my husband wanted to relocate them” to another cemetery, she said. “My daughter, Anel, disagreed, and said her ancestors wanted to be buried here.”

So Suzuki and her husband, Joseph Suzuki Jr., asked if she would help care for the graves, and both Anel, 16, and her 11-year-old sister agreed they would “malama their kupuna who are there.”

“We always stand in aloha first, and things will fall in place,” Suzuki said. “This cleanup is a testament to that. You just have to surround yourself with like-minded people.”

The cemetery, tucked away behind houses near the start of Waianae Valley Road, is hidden from the view of passing motorists.

The volunteers found three homeless encampments in the shade of large trees, two were apparently abandoned and one young man took down his tent and left.

Roland Matsuda, a member of the Waianae Hongwanji, had been paying the cemetery’s water bill, Fujii learned after the news of the overturned gravestones.

Matsuda pointed out a burned out area where campers had apparently “had a party,” started a fire in early September with kiawe branches, and it had “gotten out of control,” burning a few trees and stacks of branches.

That’s when they probably left, he said. He pointed out where they found dozens of beer cans and concrete pieces and an over­- turned headstone that looked like it had been used as a table.

The history of the cemetery is murky, but the state now owns the cemetery and the Department of Accounting and General Services is in charge of its maintenance. A DAGS official said last month that it is short-staffed and that the Waianae Japanese Cemetery is one of two cemeteries it took on in July 2018 from the Department of Land and Natural Resources, and now has six state cemeteries where it performs groundskeeping and maintenance.

Due to the pandemic, vacant positions were frozen, and DAGS was unable to hire more workers, Central Services Division administrator Dean Shimomura said.

Fujii said after talking with DAGS officials, the agency has agreed to take care of the water bill for the cemetery, which it owns.