A Boat Accident in Okinawa

Ichiro Suzuki

On March 16, 2026, a fatal accident took place off the coast of Henoko in Nago City, Okinawa, involving students from Doshisha International High School. The accident happened on a ‘peace education’ field trip, resulted in the death of a 17-year old school girl as well as the 71-year old captain of one of the two boats. 

Two boats carrying 18 students and crew members capsized while observing construction work for relocation of a U.S. Marine Corps air station. A surf advisory had been issued for the area that morning. The sea was rough, with whitecaps present. It is reported that one of the boats capsized first and the second one flipped while attempting to rescue the students from the the first boat. 

The Kyoto-based high school’s students were participating in a “peace studies program”. They were on boats commonly used by civic groups protesting the U.S. Marine airbase’s relocation. In fact, the group had been sabotaging construction work that was supposed to have been finished two decades ago, should the project proceed according to its original plan. It is widely known that the group is linked to the Japan Communist Party and other left-leaning parties were in sympathy with them. Teachers’ union reportedly has been donating to the group. This group’s sabotaging activities often violated laws, but law-enforcement on this particular issue has not been stringent in Okinawa. In Japan, head of a prefecture’s police is the governor, and governor of Okinawa is also opposing the relocation vehemently. 

The accident brought to light that the group had not been registered to carry passengers and hence operated not entirely legally, with lax safety standards. The high school never checked the details of their operations. A tourist agency organized the entire trip to Okinawa except the boat journey at Henoko that was inserted into the trip by the school, which probably knew who the group was. Toward the end of WWII there were many tragic events in Okinawa, where hundred thousand civilian lives were lost. Okinawa offers a variety of locations to let students learn about the horrors of wars. Then, why did the Henoko boat journey had to be added to peace education confronting the country’s national security policy? Did the high school overstep to expose the students to leftist thoughts and activists? Many questions had to be answered on this tragic accident. 

The accident would have been a perfect material for Japanese networks’ ‘wide shows’, daytime infotainment television programs blending news, gossip, celebrity scandals, and human-interest stories, but this incident was linked to left-leaning political parties and activists who oppose the government’s policy. Japanese TV networks and newspapers that own the networks are proud of their liberalism almost always against what the ruling Liberal Democratic Party does. In addition, it was revealed that the group was receiving contributions from the private TV networks’ labor union, as well as teachers’ union. The networks, therefore, have opted to keep minimum coverage on this accident, never digging it deeply, exercising their right to choose what to report. This is their version of freedom of speech. The only exception is conservative Fuji Television Network, and they are trying to investigate what really brought the tragedy in Henoko. Amid the media’s lack of interest in this accident, father of the 17-year old girl who died opened a website and is letting the public know about what he thinks. While the media might want to bury this issue, letting the time go by, flows of information aren’t one way in the 21st century. Many inconvenient truths are going to be revealed, probably in the process of law suits, which the father is likely to file sooner or later. In addition, this accident on the sea falls under the jurisdiction of the Japan Coast Guard, which belongs to the Ministry of Land, Transportation, Infrastructure and Tourism, not the Okinawa police that reports to the leftist governor. The JCG’s investigation is expected to be more rigorous than that of the Okinawa police.

The following is more details about relocation of Marine Corps airbase to Henoko.



On April 12, 1996, Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto and U.S. Ambassador to Japan Walter Mondale reached an agreement to return Marine Corp Air Station (MCAS) at Futenma to the Prefecture of Okinawa in the next five to seven years. Located in the middle of densely-populated City of Ginowan, MCAS Futenma is the most dangerous U.S. base in the world, according to local media. In December 1996, a replacement facility plan was made, to move the base by expanding the Marine Corps’ Camp Schwab in the City of Nago, Okinawa.

The plan immediately ignited fierce opposition among left-leaning residents in Okinawa, who had been opposing U.S. bases. One of the reasons behind opposing the Henoko project was its potential environmental damages the construction work was going to inflict. The expansion plan required reclaiming land in water where corals are living. The opposition group grew quickly, drawing activists who moved legal residence from the mainland to participate in protests on a full time basis. The captain who died in the March accident was originally from Hokkaido, it was reported. Participants in the protests were often paid, funded by labor unions, left-leaning political parties, etc. In the meantime, citizens of Ginowan became receptive to the project in part because of economic benefits the expanded base brings. On a prefecture basis, relocation of MCAS Futenma divided Okinawa. In 2009, the Democratic Party of Japan won a general election, defeating the LDP that was ousted along with many incumbent parties in other democracies amid the deepest recession since the 1930s. Campaigning in Okinawa, the DPJ’s Yukio Hatoyama promised people down there to move the proposed base to outside Okinawa at the very least though he had no concrete plan. In 2010, on his first visit to Japan, President Barack Obama pressed PM Hatoyama on the relocation which was already several years behind the original schedule. Hatoyama replied to Obama “I have a plan” but he had none of it. This exchange made the bilateral relationship strained throughout the DPJ’s three years in power. 

Two governors in Okinawa since 2014 have been opposing firmly to expansion of Camp Schwab in Henoko. Before his death in 2018, Governor Takeshi Onaga even visited Washington DC, without any appointments, to plea reconsideration of the project. Issues of U.S. military bases are national security matters that are in the realm of the government in Tokyo and not of head of a local government. No one in Washington met him. Denny Tamaki, who succeeded Onaga as governor, was more leftist than Onaga who once belonged to the LDP. Protest activities grew larger under Tamaki’s governorship, further slowing construction work at Henoko that was already more than ten years behind the original schedule at the time when Tamaki succeeded Onaga. 

In December 2016, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Japanese government, setting the stage for construction to proceed, still albeit slowly. Governors Onaga and Tamaki have kept defying the ruling, openly challenging the rule of law on this front. Though people in Okinawa has been divided on this issue, they never overwhelmingly opposed the construction work. While Governor Tamaki was only narrowly reelected as Okinawa governor, Nago citizens kept electing pro-construction mayors. In national politics, anti-construction left-leaning parties, such as Communists, Social Democrats and Constitutional Democrats have been losing ground. In the February 2026 general election,  the left suffered a wipe-out, with the LDP winning all the three seats in Okinawa. 

About the author: Mr. Suzuki is a retired banker based in Tokyo, Japan.