How Can You Save What’s Already Gone?
Whenever Ai Hironaka, the resident minister of Lahaina Hongwanji Mission, looks at the widely published photo showing the temple burning, he thanks the photographer. After driving his family out of the fires, he tried to go back and save the Amida Buddha statue, but the wall of heat and smoke held him off. He thinks the photo was taken soon after his retreat, at the moment he looked back and saw the roof of Waiola Church, also in the frame, burning.