When Eric Moto attended Pā‘ia Mantokuji Soto Zen Mission as a kid, the beach fronting the historic Buddhist temple on Maui’s north shore was much more robust, “with waves breaking further out and a sandy beach that had limu to harvest.”

Now, massive sandbags temporarily hold the waves at bay as the temple and nearby cemetery with over 400 graves teeters on the edge of the eroding red-clay banks. 

“We’re greatly challenged now by what’s going on along the shoreline,” Moto, the 66-year-old president of the mission’s administrative board, told the Hawai‘i Journalism Initiative.

The sandbags were installed in 2021 as an emergency measure, and the state has allowed them to stay in place for years because of the critical level of erosion. On Friday, the state Board of Land and Natural Resources approved another one-year extension for the sandbags while the mission works on a long-term plan that could include returning sand to the beach or building an artificial reef offshore.

“We were hoping for three (years) to give us a little bit more time for alternative solutions, but we’re happy to have any kind of extension right now,” Moto said. 

The mission, which was built on the current site in the 1920s, has long struggled with erosion along a shoreline decimated by decades of sand mining. In 1933, Maui County granted an easement for sand to be taken from the makai portion of the property for public works construction projects, which Moto said included the Kula Sanatorium.

“It’s reached a point where the bay does not naturally replenish,” said Michael Cain, administrator for the state Office of Conservation and Coastal Lands.

In May 2021, the Department of Land and Natural Resources issued Pā‘ia Mantokuji a three-year emergency permit to install ElcoRock containers, essentially massive sandbags, along 112 feet of the shoreline, according to department documents.

The department approved an extension in March 2024 that would allow the emergency erosion control structure to stay in place until May 30, just three weeks away.

In October, the department also allowed the mission to expand the line of sandbags by 49 feet “in response to flaking erosion at the east end of the existing structure.” 

On Friday, the temple was seeking a three-year permit extension to give it more time “to develop longer-term, alternative, nature-based solutions to restore, preserve and protect our bay,” Moto told the board in written testimony.

“The work is not just for Mantokuji, but also for the turtles who come to rest, for local fishers and divers, for members of our community, and for visitors to the Mantokuji Bay,” Moto said.

The temple has become a mainstay on the outskirts of Pā‘ia town, where about 140 members gather for monthly services and special events like taiko drum performances, summer obon festivals and the temple’s annual bazaar fundraiser.

Rev. Sokyo Ueoka, who left his village in Hiroshima prefecture to minister to Japanese immigrants in Hawai‘i, founded the mission on Nov. 7, 1906, and construction of the temple began in March 1907 on a half-acre leased site next to the present Pā‘ia Fire Station. The head temple in Japan officially christened it “Machozan Mantokuji.”

In 1912, the mission purchased the current 8.3-acre site with a loan and set aside 3 acres for a Japanese cemetery. Construction on a new temple started in early 1921, and later that summer a dedication ceremony took place for the main hall and installation of the Buddha image.

Cain said the department recommended the extension for the mission “because we do recognize that this is a critical situation and a cultural resource.” If the permit didn’t get approved and the structure had to be removed, “we know the building fails” the next time winter rolls around, he said.

“But I also need to be upfront that I don’t know what the long-term solutions are or if what’s being proposed is practical.”

Cain also said the mission received a notice of warning from Maui County after placing bags filled with gravel “between the uplands and the permitted sandbags,” a potential violation of the special management area rules that govern the shoreline. 

Ken Cheung of the sustainable engineering firm Oceanit said the company thought the work it did was within its permit. But its team is now talking to county planners to either replace, modify or remove it.

“But that won’t be a problem,” he told the board.

Cheung said there is no long-term plan yet, but Oceanit envisions a two-part solution. One would involve installing a “living breakwater,” a submerged artificial reef that would replace the previously smothered reef and help break the wave energy near the mouth of the bay. Another would involve replenishing the beach with sand dredged from Kahului Harbor or an inland location if the harbor sand doesn’t meet standards. 

Relocation is also in talks, but Cheung said the mission doesn’t have the funds. Every year, it has spent money on repairing the erosion control structure after strong winter swells.

To date, about $1 million has been spent on the installation and repairs, with about three-quarters of that coming from government grants and the rest from the mission’s savings, according to Moto.

In 2023, Oceanit worked with architects and structural engineers to look at the feasibility of relocating the mission and estimated it would cost about $2 million to $3 million to move it elsewhere on-site, and likely more to move it off-site.

The problem is that the aging temple is so fragile that “you’d have to fix it as you go,” Cheung said. 

“You need to fix termite damage and then take it apart piece by piece,” he explained. “Typically when they relocate you can kind of quarter the structure and move it in sections. It’s not going to work for this case.”

Plus, Moto said, that’s just the cost of moving the temple. There’s also a columbarium housing urns, a recently restored bell tower structure, the minister’s residence and the cemetery.

Over the years, headstones have collapsed onto the shoreline as the soil below washed away. Moto said some headstones have even been found by divers offshore. But he said he’s not aware of any bones or remains that have been lost to sea.

Moto did not have an exact headcount for the gravestones that collapsed from erosion but said they have been relocated to a different section of the cemetery. 

The graveyard also limits on-site relocation of the temple. The mission doesn’t own any other land.

Cheung said the state Department of Health regulates gravesites, and the mission will have to consult with the agency on any construction or design plans. The mission is also waiting for Department of Health approval on plans to remove a fuel tank exposed by erosion.

Last year, state lawmakers approved a $250,000 grant for a study on long-term solutions for the mission. The grant is supposed to run through the end of the fiscal year on June 30, but Cheung said they just received the funding in March and will likely need more time. By then, he at least hopes the study will be “well underway and hopefully have some results.”

This session, lawmakers had proposed a pair of bills (Senate Bill 3169 and House Bill 2490) that would create a five-year pilot program for the preservation of Mantokuji Bay and exempt it from certain regulatory requirements. Supporters of the mission had advocated for the bills, but others raised concerns that the program would bypass safeguards meant to protect shorelines. Neither measure passed.

Moto said he’s attended Pā‘ia Mantokuji his whole life and remembers stopping by the beach to swim or to collect ogo, a crunchy red seaweed, when his family came for services. He said his parents and others of the Nisei generation — the children of first-generation Japanese immigrants — were “strongly involved in building up what their parents has established.”

So when it comes to “our responsibility to try and maintain the temple and its traditions, we take it to heart,” Moto said.

Some Maui residents also see the mission as an important cultural resource, but say it’s taken too long to come up with a solution to the worsening erosion.

Kai Nishiki, a shoreline access advocate and executive director of the Maui Nui Resiliency Hui, said she grew up coming to the mission and the beach with her dad and later brought her own kids there. She said “there’s a lot of people who care deeply about this place” and there are government agencies willing to fund solutions.

Last month, Maui County Council Member Nohe U‘u-Hodgins, whose residency district includes Pā‘ia, proposed giving Pā‘ia Mantokuji a grant of up to $2.5 million for “shoreline restoration and rehabilitation” in the fiscal year 2027 budget, which starts July 1. Council members backed the proposal and will vote on the full budget on first reading on May 15.

Nishiki told state lawmakers earlier this year that the loss of gravestones in a place where families have buried their loved ones for generations “is a profound cultural and spiritual crisis.”

She wants to see solutions that still protect the natural environment and asked the land board on Friday for a shorter time extension to provide accountability.

“If you grant them three years, we will be back here in three years talking about this again, because they need to have a sense of urgency,” Nishiki said. “I’m heartbroken that we are still here. It could have already been accomplished.”

Hanna Lilley of the Surfrider Foundation’s Maui chapter said the organization recognizes “the difficult position of trying to protect an irreplaceable cultural resource while also navigating significant chronic erosion.”

But, Lilley said, emergency permits are meant as temporary measures, not “indefinite holding patterns.” She said the sand nourishment and reef breakwater solutions don’t appear “anywhere close to implementation” and would likely take years of review, permitting and funding efforts. 

“So at some point, it just becomes necessary to ask whether the emergency permit process is being used as intended or whether it is instead becoming a runway for increasingly ambitious long-term concepts while temporary armoring remains in place,” she said.

Board members also were concerned with the lack of a long-term plan and timeline for the potential projects, which would likely require federal, state and county permits. When the board asked how long Cheung thought it would take to do “the things that you have control over,” he said, “I think we would be fortunate if it took two years or less,” including at least a year for an environmental impact study.

James Carpio, who represents Maui Nui on the board, said he struggled to understand “why you would actually change the natural occurrence to try to mitigate instead of try to just work with nature and move.”

“I say that with the utmost cultural respect for everyone involved,” Carpio said. “I feel that we cannot change nature.”

Denise Iseri-Matsubara, who represents O‘ahu, wondered if there was enough time to carry out the projects, given the environmental conditions. In another two years, Cheung told the board, the wall of red dirt above the beach where turtles like to gather will likely end up in the water, along with the nearest graves perched on the hillside.

“I think we will take what we have,” Cheung said. “I think if we can get some kind of construction going, whether it’s restoration or retreat within the period of this extension, I think we would take that.”

As a condition of the extension, the mission has to provide a status report in six months.