Haleʻiwa Jodo Mission Bon Dance 2026

Founded in 1912 by Rev. Jitsujyo Muroyama, Haleʻiwa Jodo Mission was the first Jodo Mission established on Oʻahu, built to serve the Japanese plantation workers of the North Shore's sugar and rice fields. The mission relocated to its current beachfront grounds in 1913, taking over the former Haleʻiwa Seaside Hotel site. During World War II, the temple's ministers were interned, and in 1946 a tsunami destroyed the on-site Japanese language school and heavily damaged the temple building itself.

The two-night bon dance culminates in a toro nagashi—a floating-lantern ceremony the mission began in 1976—where over a thousand paper lanterns bearing ancestors' names are released directly into the ocean from the temple's rare beachfront site. Hundreds gather each evening for bon dancing, local and ethnic foods, and other Japanese cultural traditions, with the lantern float serving as a way to honor the departed and guide their spirits back to the Pure Land.