![\"Ralph](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/SUT-L-TEMPLE-092112.jpg\")
Ralph Honda is a community leader at the Buddhist Temple of San Diego. It turns 100 this year and marked the occasion on Sunday. (Denis Poroy for The San Diego Union-Tribune)<\/p>\nOne hundred years ago, in the spring of 1926, Ralph Honda\u2019s and Karen Matsumoto Copeland\u2019s grandfathers, both immigrants from Japan, helped build San Diego\u2019s first Buddhist Temple in downtown San Diego.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, descendants of the temple\u2019s founding families joined newer generations to celebrate that milestone and launch the temple\u2019s Jodo Shinshu Buddhist community into its next century. After a rare Kieshiki ceremony, a once-in-a-lifetime ritual where people receive a Buddhist name, there was a group photo, a procession of children and clergy in traditional Japanese Buddhist ceremonial outfits, a religious service and a luncheon.<\/p>\n
Sunday was the culmination of two weeks of special events and two years of planning.<\/p>\n
LuAnn Lee, the event\u2019s chairperson, said the temple has preserved traditions over the years while adapting and modernizing. It welcomes a diverse population, not just Japanese immigrants and their descendants. Some members speak Spanish, she said.<\/p>\n
Even as the temple has grown, many of the same families are a constant presence. People who came Sunday, Lee said, included friends she grew up with.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe centennial is a great feat,\u201d Lee said, \u201cbut it\u2019s not to stop. It\u2019s to continue. It\u2019s a launchpad. It\u2019s our turn now, to make it last, so my grandkids and their grandkids, and their kids, can carry it on and have a place where they can gather, as our ancestors did.\u201d<\/p>\n
Matsumoto Copeland, 77, grew up in Chula Vista and regularly views the temple\u2019s services over a livestream from Bandon, Ore., where she lives now. She comes in person several times a year. She flew in for Sunday\u2019s celebration because the temple has been a steady presence in her family\u2019s life over three generations.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy grandfather emigrated from Japan, arrived in California on the day of the (San Francisco) earthquake in 1906,\u201d she said. He ended up traveling to Washington state and worked on a railroad alongside Chinese immigrants. \u201cThey didn\u2019t ask questions. He needed money.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eventually, he became a farmer in Mission Valley and helped build the temple, her mother told her.<\/p>\n
Later, he was sent to the Poston Internment Camp in Arizona. A treasured family photo shows her grandmother\u2019s funeral in 1936, at the temple.<\/p>\n
The centennial means a lot to her, she said, both because of her family\u2019s involvement and because the temple has been \u201csuch an important part of the community.\u201d<\/p>\n
Honda, 69, who heads the temple\u2019s operations (and who is a former Union-Tribune editor), heard his father speak about his grandfather\u2019s effort to help build the temple. That helped bridge the language barrier with his grandfather, who mostly spoke Japanese. Between his father\u2019s stories, community conversations and studying archival photos, Honda understood his grandfather and others sacrificed a lot to get the temple going.<\/p>\n
Ralph Honda is a community leader at the Buddhist Temple of San Diego. It turns 100 this year and marked the occasion on Sunday. (Denis Poroy for The San Diego Union-Tribune)<\/p>\n
San Diego\u2019s Japanese immigrants, many of them farmers, started to come together in prayer after heavy rains caused deadly flooding of their farms in Otay Valley, Honda said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was kind of the starting point of families gathering in homes, to have religious services and to remember the loved ones who passed away.\u201d Ten years later, in 1926, the temple opened at Sixth Avenue and Market Street in downtown, he added.<\/p>\n
Three years after that, it moved to its present location in Grant Hill, in a building whose cornerstone, visible from the sidewalk, says \u201cAugust 1930.\u201d<\/p>\n
The temple\u2019s early years overlapped with the Great Depression, and soon after came the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, Honda said.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/SUT-L-TEMPLE-092113.jpg\")
A cornerstone is on the corner of The Buddhist Temple of San Diego shows when the building was constructed. The temple turns 100 this year. (Denis Poroy \/ For The San Diego Union-Tribune)<\/p>\n![\"Rev.](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/SUT-L-TEMPLE-092110.jpg\")
Rev. Marvin Harada gives a blessing during a Buddhist naming ceremony at The Buddhist Temple of San Diego as part of the temple’s 100th anniversary celebration. (Denis Poroy for The San Diego Union-Tribune)<\/p>\n