Saving Hawaii’s history from the ashes, one object at a time

On a crystalline morning, with humpback whales leaping in the indigo waters offshore, a group of archivists, curators, conservators and volunteers gathered in a makeshift field station at the Lahaina Jodo Mission, a once-magnificent Japanese Buddhist temple compound that was largely obliterated in the wildfires of Aug. 8, 2023. They were there to take on a “CSI”-like challenge: identifying, cleaning and cataloging the surprising array of artifacts that survived the fires, some nearly unrecognizable beneath flaking metal, scorch marks, ashes and soot.

Theirs was a daunting and humbling task.

On Sundays, Nancy Fushikoshi, one of the volunteers, used to come to the mission with her grandchildren to visit the three-tiered pagoda holding the cremated remains of her husband, Lane, who died 24