Source: Los Angeles Times
On November 14, 1998, the Los Angeles Times published an article on the growth of Buddhism in Southern California. According to J. Gordon Melton of the Institute for the Study of Religion at UC Santa Barbara, Southern California is the only place in the world where all of the more than 100 types of Buddhism are practiced. Melton states: "Over the past 10 years, we've had a fairly high level of immigration from Buddhist countries to the Southern California area...What this means is that 40% of all Buddhists in the U.S. live in Southern California." Despite the growing number of immigrants, a large number of practitioners of Buddhism in Southern California are non-Asian. Soka Gakkai International, the largest Buddhist organization in Southern California, has approximately 20,000 members with a racial breakdown of 41% white, 23.4% Asian, 14.6% black, and 5.7% Latino. Many traditional sects of Buddhism from Korea and Japan are beginning to decline in the region as succeeding generations from immigrant families "assimilate and weaken ties to the faith of their ancestors." Speaking in reference to the Japanese community in Southern California, Rev. Noriaki Ito of the Higashi Hongwanji Temple in Little Tokyo states: "We're starting to realize, with the assimilation of the Japanese community almost complete, that we can no longer depend on the ethnic members to sustain us in the future."