by Andrew Hall

Chapter 4: The Hawaii Temple Trip and Preparations for a New Mission, 1965-1968

A key event for the Japanese church members in the 1960s was the first Hawaii Temple excursion in 7.1965. Very few members had gone through the temple by that time. Brother Yamanaka Kenji, a tour director who had been baptized in 1963 at the age of 60, first came up with the idea of taking a group of members together to Salt Lake City. President Anderson was intrigued by the idea, but had the destination changed to Hawaii to save money for the members. President Anderson asked each branch president to see how many members would like to participate, and received 170 positive responses. In order to build up a travel fund the members began selling pearl tie pins and an album of popular songs and hymns, titled "Seito wa utau", both of which were arranged by Brother Yamanaka. President Anderson was able to work out a deal with Japan Air Lines to charter a flight for about half of the normal fare. The fact that the Church was the airline's single biggest customer in 1964, with more than $70,000 in business, helped to get the church such a good deal.

The Church set a price of one hundred and eighty thousand (18 man) yen per couple for the entire excursion. Despite the large discount, the price was about half the annual salary of an average salaryman at the time. Since at this same time the church was in the middle of its first building program, and members were actively involved in raising and donating money into the building fund, this was another large hurdle for the members to overcome. While the sales of the tie pins and albums helped, they were almost all bought by the members themselves, so there was not much money coming in from outside. Besides the monetary preparation, there were two other key areas of preparation. The first was each member's individual genealogy work. The second was the translation of the temple ceremony into Japanese. President Anderson sent Sato Tatsui, the first post-war convert, to go to Hawaii in 1.1965 to do the translation.

The trip began July 22nd, 1965. 163 Japanese members took part, including 134 adults and 29 children. President Anderson accompanied them, and they were welcomed in Hawaii by former Mission Presidents Clissold and Andrus, and Elder Gordon B. Hinckley. President Clissold was the Hawaii Temple President at the time. He said that he had never seen a group of Saints better prepared to enter the temple than the group from Japan. Besides attending the temple, the members got to participate in meetings in wards on Oahu, and receive leadership training. Each Japanese member spent time with a Hawaiian member who was his or her counterpart as far as Church callings. They participated in Family Home Evenings in the Hawaiian members homes. Many of the members also received patriarchal blessings from the Hawaiian Patriarchs. Altogether it helped to solidify the faith of the church members.

A second Hawaii Temple trip occurred 1967. 125 members participated. The following chart shows the number of members from each branch in western Japan who participated in the first two temple trips.

                              1965        1967
      Nishi Chuo D       62           29
      Nagoya               16             7
      Kanazawa            2              3
      Kyoto                  4              5
      Okamachi           12             7
      Abeno                11             1
      Nishinomiya         0              4
      Sannomiya           6              0
      Okayama             0             0
      Hiroshima            4             2
      Yanai                   3             0
      Fukuoka              4             0
      Naha                   4             1
      Futenma              0             1
 

The Third Hawaii temple trip occurred in 7.1969, after which it became an annual summer event, at least until 1975. The last Hawaii temple trip was in July 1979, not long before the Tokyo Temple was completed. 350 members from Japan also went to Salt Lake City to visit the temple and attend General Conference in 10.1970.

This brings up a question. Japanese members had been called as missionaries since 1952, but I assume most of them were not endowed, at least until 1965, and probably until 1980, when the Tokyo Temple was dedicated. Those of you who served before 1980, is this right?

President Anderson returned to a teaching position at the Church College of Hawaii (now called BYU Hawaii) in 8.1965. He said, in a farewell message, that when the church reopened in the late 1940s it was mostly high school and college kids, who often went inactive when they went back to their home towns. The Church felt like a school club meeting, and attendance didn't grow much. Since that time, however, the Church had changed and matured.

Adney Komatsu arrived as the new Mission President in 8.1965. He grew up in Hawaii, the son of Japanese who had immigrated from Hiroshima. He had served in the US Army in Tokyo in 1946, and was one of the people who helped to find meeting places for the newly reorganizing church at that time. He was the first person of Japanese descent to serve as a Bishop (in Hawaii), Mission President, and eventually a General Authority. Unlike the earlier Presidents he had not served a full-time mission as a young man, as he was in the army during that part of his life. He continued President Anderson's focus on training local leaders and increasing the stability of the branches.

In 1966 Elder Gordon B. Hinckley, who was the member of the Twelve in charge of supervising the church in East Asia throughout the 1960s, and Elder Marion D. Hanks, who joined him in that work in 1965, recommended that Japan be divided into two missions. Although the recommendation was not approved that year, in November 1966 Elder Hinckley asked President Komatsu to begin preparing to open a new mission headquartered in Kansai. From 1962 to 1966 the mission had around 180 missionaries, but in 1967 it reached 200.

The first chapel built by the Church in Western Japan was the Abeno Building, completed in April 1966. The old building the branch had been using was torn down in 7.1964, and construction on the new building began. The effort was led by Evan Larson, who served as a building missionary in Japan in 1964-1968. Both he and his wife were missionaries in Japan in the late 1950s, and he served as a mission president in Okinawa in the early 1990s. A 7.1966 Seito no Michi article said that at first the members thought Brother Larson had a short temper, but then they saw he was simply very dedicated to the work, and loved the members enough to strive for excellence. Meetings were held in a variety of different community halls until the new building was completed. Church meetings were first held in the building on Easter Sunday, April 10th. One article claimed that the members in Abeno gave more hours of voluntary labor into building the chapel then any other built so far in Japan. In 4.1967 President Hugh B. Brown, First Counselor in the First Presidency, along with Elders Hinckley and Hanks, came to Osaka to dedicate the building. At that meeting he made the following prophesy, "Now I want to tell you people here tonight something that I have not said before. Some of you who are listening to me tonight will live to see the day when there will be a Japanese man in the Council of the Twelve Apostles of the Church. And I do not know when it will be. I will not live to see it. But some of you young people will see it. Then you will realize that God loves the Japanese people. And you will join with other nations in forming a great united Church all over the world. . . . I feel it in my heart tonight and I dare to make this prediction in the name of the Lord." The callings of Elder Komatsu and Elder Kikuchi as Assistants to the Twelve (later changed to the First Quorum of the Seventy) in 1975 and 1977 are seen as at least partial fulfillment of that prophesy. President Brown also prophesized that Japanese missionaries would someday serve in Russia, a prophesy which began to be fulfilled in 3.1993, when Mizuno Hiroaki, from the Tokyo North Stake, entered the Kiev Ukraine Mission. That night President Brown also spoke privately to Elder Hinckley about what he had said, and told him "You are the apostle to these people and will be until one of their own is named as an apostle." In his journal Elder Hinckley noted, "This has been a sobering experience."

Beginning in 1966 President Komatsu began opening up new proselyting areas throughout Japan, something which had not happened much since 1958. In late 1966 he opened up the first areas in Kyushu besides Fukuoka, those being Nagasaki, Kumamoto, and Kita Kyushu. In 1.1968 the Kyushu District was created, with Brother Ishikawa as District President. Nagasaki, Kita Kyushu, and Kumamoto, which had been called "Dendo-sho," became official branches at that point.

President Komatsu first sent missionaries (Elders Chang and Darville) to Shikoku in 6.1967. They opened up a branch in Takamatsu. 

In 6.1967 Abeno B was the largest unit in Western Japan, and the fourth largest in Japan, with 537 members. Okamachi was fifth largest with 515, Nagoya 7th with 406, Naha 9th with 382, Hiroshima 10th with 342, Sannomiya 13th with 303.

In 9.1967 there were 250 missionaries, each baptizing an average of 2.5 converts a year.

The Nagoya Kita Branch was created in 12.1967, with Brother Tsuchida as President. It shared the Nagoya Ward's building, and although it only lasted 11 months, it gave the Nagoya members the opportunity to serve in more leadership positions, preparing the area for more permanent splits later on.

In 1968 the Church changed the General Authority supervision of Asia, with Elders Ezra Taft Benson and Bruce R. McConkie replacing Elders Hinckley and Hanks. In 6.1968 Elder Benson told President Komatsu to begin preparing to divide the mission by creating a second mission home staff and having an equal amount of missionaries serving in each half of the country.

In July 1968 Walter Bills replaced President Komatsu, and in August Edward and Chieko Okazaki arrived. On September 1, 1968 the Northern Far East Mission was split into two missions, the Japan Mission, headquartered in Tokyo, and the Japan-Okinawa Mission, headquartered in Kobe. Edward Okazaki was the first President of the Japan-Okinawa Mission. It covered the Western half of Japan, from Okinawa to Nagoya and Kanazawa.

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