Paia and Its Cemeteries

Paia Hongwanji Cemetery (Forrest and Kim Starr)

SFGate travel writer Eric Brooks stumbles upon abandoned graveyards. On the pathway to Baldwin Beach Park near Paia, Maui

There, just beyond some overgrown grass, was what looked like a group of headstones. Next to that, another 5 to 10 feet away, were more headstones. I rounded the corner to see an entire graveyard surrounded by sand and unmaintained brush. I estimated maybe 100 headstones in all...

Baldwin Beach Park and much of the surrounding land used to be owned by Maui’s Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Company, or HC&S, a titan of the top industry in Hawaii for many years, according to Lucienne de Naie, author and docent at Hale Hoikeike at the Bailey House, a local history and art museum located in nearby Wailuku.

“The big boom in sugar cane came in the 1880s and 1890s,” de Naie told SFGATE.

That’s when plantation owners, keen to take advantage of the growing sugar cane business, began to import contract workers from countries like Japan, China, the Philippines and Portugal. “There were little camps of Japanese workers; the plantations tended to segregate their workers,” said de Naie, a resident of Maui since the 1970s who knows Paia very well. “The Chinese workers would live in another, the Philippine workers would live in another and so on. The camps had communal activities.”

...Citing a book called “Island of Maui Cemetery (Map & History) Directory,” de Naie was able to pinpoint the original name of the cemetery as the “Paia Hongwanji Cemetery.” It was associated with a Buddhist group called the Makawao Hongwanji, she added, which opened a temple in the area in 1908. The group moved not too far northeast to Upper Paia in 1917, later relocating about 7 miles southeast to Makawao in 1968, according to their website...

“Paia is the cemetery capital of Maui,” de Naie added. “For a small town, it probably has nine to 10 recognized cemeteries. It’s amazing how many cemeteries are there. Catholic, Protestant, Chinese and Mormon cemeteries. It’s a very easy place to dig, with the sand dunes. You put them where you can easily dig.”

Paia boy Fred, my father-in-law

My father-in-law (1922-2001) and his seven siblings were born in Paia. On a trip 35 years ago he showed us his old two-story house, now a tourist shop, and the old Maui High school buildings in a defunct sugar cane field. He regaled us with stories about the best fishing spots, the mischief he and his brothers got into, and life in old Paia town with Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese and Filipino children. (I won't use the names they actually called each other because they would offend modern sensibilities.)

Later we drove along the narrow cliffside rode to the Hotel Hana/a>, where my inlaws honeymooned. Then we visited his half brother George in Kahului, and we flew back to Honolulu. Little did I know that it would be the last time I would visit central Maui.

Carpe diem.