The 60th anniversary of the Mo'ili'ili Community Center Saturday will include taiko drummers and a Chinese lion dance and culminate in a "mortgage burning" ceremony, symbolic of the loan being paid off.

"This is a very happy day for us to burn the mortgage," said E. Rebecca Ryan, the center's executive director. "Now that we have the mortgage paid off, the board of directors will look for the future as to what we want to do. We are looking toward new horizons and visions."

The community center was built in the 1970s and includes three buildings: a three-story classroom structure, the thrift shop in the Weinberg building, and the oldest building on the property called the studio, which was built in the 1930s.

About 2,500 people a year attend programs for seniors and children at the center, which also serves as a meeting place for the community.

The community center has its roots in a Japanese language school that opened at the site in 1902.

The school was closed after the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. To save the property from being confiscated by the government, the Japanese property owners recruited sympathetic Caucasian members of the community to help form a board of directors for a community center, to which they gave the property.

Ralph Nakamura, 78, attended the Japanese language school as a youngster and today is a trustee for the center.

"I went to the Japanese language school for about nine years," Nakamura said. "The war started and it was discontinued. It was given to the community to save it."

Nakamura, whose grandfather opened Nakamura Garage in Mo'ili'ili in 1916, remembers the teachers as being very tough on the students.

"The teachers were really strict, but at least we learned something," he said. "In my case it paid off. During my travels to Japan, I could go about without an interpreter."

The celebration will include breakfast at the Japanese Cultural Center across South King Street, and distribution of pre-sold copies of the new book "Mo'ili'ili — The Life of a Community."

The book, edited by Laura Ruby, is a color coffee-table book featuring photos, maps and stories taking the reader from the early Hawaiians growing taro in the area, to the Japanese immigration and busy shopping district, to life in the urban center today.

Ryan said the burning of the mortgage and the publishing of the book are both a beginning and ending for the center, which will now look for new projects.

"It's a book of many voices from the community," Ryan said. "Everybody was very active on it. It has taken us four years and a lot of fundraising and negotiating, but we are very excited about it."

Reach James Gonser at jgonser@honoluluadvertiser.com.