As the Kaneohe Higashi Hongwanji Mission celebrates its 100th anniversary this month, Mary Matsuda, who grew up at the temple while her father was minister, reflected on the large role Buddhist temples played in supporting Japanese members struggling with their American identities in the wake of World War II.
“The temple was in its own way a microcommunity where you had all these families going through transitional times and were able to find social, emotional and psychological comfort by being with like people,” Matsuda said.
“It would be wonderful to bring that sense of community back, the relying on each other, being kind to each other,” an integral part of the temple’s legacy, according to Matsuda, who has been involved in Higashi’s leadership most of her life.
The anniversary was celebrated with an Oct. 5 bon dance at Windward Mall and a special service and luncheon Saturday at the temple.
Joining Matsuda and sister Joyce Matsumoto, both Oahu residents, in preparing for the celebration were two other sisters: June Weled of Tacoma, Wash., and Reiko Hatakeyama of San Francisco. As youngsters they helped their parents with all the programs offered — among them Sunday school, youth clubs, bazaars, bon dances, cooking and language classes — and cleaned the temple every Saturday.
“Everybody has really fond memories of growing up in Kaneohe when it really was a rural town” in a farming community, Matsumoto said. They especially remember the Japanese language classes held after regular school, a program that also offered sports and other activities, she said.
Hatakeyama said, “We really enjoyed it, watching the people who came, the camaraderie of all the members.”
Weled said she wasn’t a devout Buddhist when she married and moved to the mainland as a young woman. But with age and experience has come some wisdom.
“I finally hear my father and mother … , (what they said about) the dharma, the teachings of the Buddha,” she said. Her voice choking with emotion, Weled said her return visits to the temple for special occasions are to honor her parents and how hard they worked, and all the ministers who followed.
Hatakeyama said she admired her father for drawing everyone together in 1963 to raise funds and build the temple, which stands today on Keaahala Road, with their own hands. She remembers her mother cooking lunch and dinner to feed the volunteer workers.
“Everybody worked hard in their own way,” she said.
Matsumoto added, “It was a real labor of love to build a new temple.”
According to Matsuda, one of the members, Tomitaro Iida (whose family operates T. Iida Contracting Ltd. today), acted as the general contractor. The members contributed their construction skills and general labor, aided by friends and supporters, many of them non- Buddhists. It was true dedication for the volunteers to give up their weekends, putting in 200,000 hours of labor, rain or shine, over 14 months, she said.
Matsuda said their father, the late Rev. Nobuo Matsumoto, immigrated from Japan in 1939. Shortly after World War II broke out, he and wife, Tomoko, were held in Japanese internment camps on the mainland. As the temple’s first resident minister in 1952, he served for 28 years.
(In 1952, the temple was housed in an old cottage, which had been taken over by the military to be used as a medical headquarters/infirmary during the war. Hawaii had been under martial law because there were so many Japanese residents whose loyalty to the U.S. was questioned, she recalled.)
“When we arrived, the whole Japanese community in general was reeling from an identity crisis, with the language barriers to Americanization, (and) the challenge of getting their children to become Americans,” said Matsuda, who was about 6 years old at the time.
After attending English school, over 300 children would go to the Higashi temple for Japanese language classes so they could still communicate with their grandparents and parents. It also provided “us, as war babies, a way to finding our own identity” as Americans.
“The temple offered normalcy and encouragement, family stability, a safe haven for the children to be confident in their own identity, because in English school we were not comfortable with our identity because we didn’t speak well or we didn’t understand a lot of things that American children did,” Matsuda said.
“I was the meek nobody in English school,” she added, but she flourished as a person at the temple.
Their father was wonderfully progressive, emphasizing the importance of university educations for his daughters, and was “very, very likeable,” she said.
She has immense gratitude for their upbringing and the example set by her parents. “They lived Buddhism, which is not a religion but a philosophy of life.” As children, they learned to emulate their parents’ values, morals and behavior just by watching them.
“There are millions who struggle to understand life and seek release from suffering (citing) Buddha’s Four Noble Truths. … The temple’s mission, in my mind, is to offer a place to help people find their way, to provide a place to find truth, comfort and find the meaning of the Buddha’s immeasurable light and wisdom,” Matsuda said.
Only a handful of members keep the temple running on a voluntary basis, largely with the help of Matsuda’s co-chairman of the board, CharlAnn Nakamoto, who also acts as treasurer and a lay minister. Nakamoto conducts chanting at the weekly service and informal dharma discussions, among other responsibilities. Guest ministers and staff from the main Higashi temple in Liliha help fill the gaps.
The temple is experiencing dwindling membership, as are other temples in Hawaii, and has been without a regular minister since May, Nakamoto said. Current membership includes 48 families, and the majority are in their 70s — about 60 to 65 people total. She said COVID-19 significantly reduced attendance.
“A few strong members, a handful of us, said we’re going to do our best to keep the temple open,” Nakamoto said. “We were one of the only temples that stayed open (with safety protocols in place), and the minister was full on board. I said, let’s keep it open because people are so isolated at home … . I was really pushing for that because to lose even the core group, it’s going to be so difficult to get anybody back.”
Nakamoto envisions the temple offering a variety of activities and classes to draw the community, and hopefully, young people to carry on the legacy. The temple has a large social hall, a converted Quonset hut built by the military during the war, that could be utilized for fitness activities for older adults. Adjoining classrooms could hold Japanese language, ikebana, sewing, lauhala weaving and other cultural classes.
“It’s going to take a lot of energy and support,” said Nakamoto, who hopes the 100th anniversary celebration will “ignite awareness and be the start of a brighter future.”
