08/28/2026
Our sister temple in San Diego celebrates their 100th anniversary this September.
San Diego's Buddhist temple exists because of a dam failure. 🏮
The Buddhist Temple of San Diego was formally established on May 26, 1926, but the conversation that led to it started ten years earlier, in grief. The 1916 Otay Dam failure killed eleven Japanese farmers, and the discussions around their funerals convinced local Buddhists they needed a church of their own rather than borrowing space and clergy for the moments that mattered most.
Services began on the second floor of a building at Sixth Avenue and Market Street. In 1928 the congregation built its permanent temple at Market and 29th, where it still sits at 2929 Market Street.
Then the community was taken from it. About 2,000 San Diego Japanese Americans were removed to the Santa Anita Assembly Center and then on to camps during World War II. In 1943, with the congregation imprisoned, vandals set fire to the temple, badly damaging the altar and the second floor. The community came back and restored it.
Every summer the block fills with taiko drums, circles of folk dancing and food stalls for Bon Odori, held by a congregation that reached its centennial in 2026.
