Japanese Center Dedicated at Hawaii Temple

A visitors information center designed especially to serve Japanese tourists to Hawaii has been formally opened on the grounds of the Hawaii Temple in Laie. It is a section of the presently existing Hawaii Temple Visitors Center.

Presiding over the recent dedication service was Elder Gordon B. Hinckley of the Council of the Twelve.

Elder Hinckley told the more than 500 guests that “the purpose of this center is to communicate, … to teach people … to love and appreciate one another, because we are all sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father; we are all members of his eternal family.”

Also speaking at the dedication was Adney Y. Komatsu, regional and mission representative for the Japan Central and Japan West Missions.

The center, with its Japanese-speaking guides, many of them students at the nearby Church College of Hawaii, and Japanese language movies and displays, will host an estimated 41,000 visitors during the balance of 1973. More than 320,000 people visited the grounds in 1972. Of these, more than 30,000 were from Japan.

Wesley N. Peterson, director of the Hawaii Temple Visitors Bureau, said, “We’re proud of our beautiful temple, and our new Japanese Visitors Center will explain clearly to our many Japanese guests, who themselves come from a land famous for beautiful shrines and sacred areas, why the Church has built this temple in Hawaii, and why it is sacred to members of the Church.”

More than 30,000 Japanese-speaking tourists are expected to visit the newly dedicated Japanese section of the Hawaii Temple Visitors Center this year. Here visitors view a portrait of President Heber J. Grant, who led the first missionaries to Japan in 1902.