Aloha Buddha – The story of Japanese Buddhism in Hawaii.

Aloha Buddha – The story of Japanese Buddhism in Hawaii.

In the early 1900s, Buddhism was a major religion in Hawaii, with close to half of the population holding their family memberships with any one of the 170 temples located on the islands of Hawaii. Today, according to the census taken in 2010, fewer than five percent of our population professes to be Buddhists. What has happened over the past 80 years to the people of Hawaii to cause such a shift, and whey, with the tremendous upswing and interest in Buddhism on the mainland US doesn’t Hawaii increase its membership even today? The answers to this are simple, yet complex at the same time, and a final question remains: is there any way to save the foreseeable death of Buddhism in Hawaii from happening?