The People Behind the Protest Boats: Where Was Safety When Conviction, Party Politics, and Civic Activism Converged?

For two weeks, the identities of the two captains remained officially unacknowledged. On March 16, 2026, two protest boats — “Fukutsu” (Indomitable) and “Heiwa Maru” (Peace Vessel) — capsized off the coast of Henoko, Okinawa. Twenty-one people were thrown into the sea, including eighteen students from Doshisha International High School on a study trip. A seventeen-year-old girl and one of the captains died. As Sankei Shimbun reported, the captain of “Fukutsu” was a pastor of the United Church of Christ in Japan, and the captain of “Heiwa Maru” was a local official of the Japanese Communist Party. These facts were not officially confirmed for approximately two weeks after the accident. When I learned this, what I felt was not outrage pointed in any clear direction but something heavier and more silent. The question I want to raise is not whether the anti-base movement is right or wrong. It is this: within an organization driven by conviction, who was responsible for keeping people safe?

This is the second installment in the Henoko series. The first examined the factual circumstances of the accident and the collapse of safety management. In this article, I look at the organizational structure behind the boats. The Helicopter Base Opposition Council — an unincorporated civic association — the local branch of the Japanese Communist Party embedded within it, and the United Church of Christ pastor who purchased one of the protest boats with donated funds. I trace the history and connections of each actor based on confirmed facts, and consider the meaning of the “two weeks of silence” that followed the accident.

The Helicopter Base Opposition Council was formed in 1998 as a voluntary civic association. Its full name is the Council for Opposition to Offshore Helicopter Base Construction and for Democratization of Nago City Government. It emerged from the reorganization of the 1997 Nago City Referendum Promotion Council. Its co-representatives are Yoshiyuki Nakamura and Etsuko Urashima. The council maintains an official website and has conducted opposition activities including maritime protests aimed at blocking the relocation of a U.S. military base to Henoko. Critically, the council is an unincorporated association with no legal personality — a structural feature that inherently obscures where legal liability resides. The boats it operated were not registered under Japan’s Maritime Transportation Act. There were no written criteria for departure decisions, no passenger manifests, and no insurance coverage for passengers.

The council is also a member organization of the All Okinawa Conference. Formed in December 2015, the All Okinawa Conference is a cross-party coalition united by a single objective: opposing the construction of a new U.S. military base at Henoko. It brings together political parties including the Japanese Communist Party, the Social Democratic Party, and the Okinawa Social Mass Party, along with civic groups, labor unions, and segments of the business community. The Helicopter Base Opposition Council is one of its constituent members, and the All Okinawa Conference itself serves as the electoral support base for Okinawa Governor Denny Tamaki. In other words, the organization operating the boats that capsized occupied a structural position within the political support architecture of the Okinawa prefectural government. This structural fact cast a shadow over the response that followed.

Hajime Kanai, captain of “Fukutsu,” was a pastor of the United Church of Christ in Japan. Born in Hokkaido in 1954, Kanai graduated from Waseda University before completing a master’s program at Tokyo Union Theological Seminary. He served as associate pastor at the Fujimichō Church of the United Church of Christ in Japan and as chaplain at Meiji Gakuin before taking up a pastoral position at Sashiki Church in Nanjo City, Okinawa, in 2006. According to the Okinawa Times, Kanai also served as a coordinator at the Okinawa Christian Peace Research Institute, affiliated with Okinawa Christian University. In 2014, he raised approximately two million yen through the institute’s fundraising channel to purchase the protest boat “Fukutsu.” He bought the vessel in Osaka and sailed it to Naha port, then spent twelve years conducting maritime protest activities off Henoko. He authored a book titled “Letters from the Protest Boat Fukutsu in Okinawa, Henoko.” Okinawa Christian University issued a statement clarifying that “the university was not involved in the fundraising, purchase, ownership, or operation of the vessel” — the purchase was Kanai’s personal initiative.

There is an unmistakable consistency of conviction in Kanai’s path from theologian to boat captain. Why did a pastor move to the front lines of maritime protest? In a lecture published in the Kosei Shimbun, a newspaper affiliated with the Buddhist organization Rissho Kosei-kai, Kanai himself addressed the question: “Why do religious practitioners engage in the movement against the Henoko construction?” According to Christian Shimbun, Kanai had been “accepting requests from schools and students a few times a year to guide them around the waters off Henoko.” His actions were clearly grounded in conviction. But the strength of conviction and the adequacy of safety management are separate matters. Whether the decision to take high school students onto the sea in an unregistered, uninsured vessel can be justified by conviction alone is a different question entirely.

The relationship between the United Church of Christ in Japan and Doshisha is essential to understanding the structure of this accident. The United Church of Christ in Japan is the largest Protestant denomination in the country, with approximately 150,000 members and over 1,800 pastors. Doshisha University and Doshisha International High School are classified as “affiliated schools” of the denomination. The school was founded by Jo Niijima as a Christian educational institution. Regarding Kanai’s connection to Doshisha, Christian Shimbun reported that he had been “accepting requests from students a few times a year to guide them around the waters off Henoko.” A school and a pastor connected by the same Christian lineage — legal scholar Shuya Nomura noted on X that “the leniency born of personal connections is concerning.” This institutional affinity may have been the background for the school’s decision to arrange the boats independently, bypassing the travel agency. The Construction Site Shut Down, but the Boat Still Went Out

Takeru Shokita, captain of “Heiwa Maru,” was a local official of the Japanese Communist Party. According to reporting by the Daily Shincho and Sankei Shimbun, Shokita held the position of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries Policy Director of the Communist Party’s Northern District Committee and had previously run for the Nakijin Village Assembly as an official party candidate. After the accident, when confronted by Daily Shincho reporters, Shokita reportedly stated: “I wasn’t the one who decided to set out” and “You’d have to raise the dead to ask them” — an apparent reference to the deceased Captain Kanai. A statement that deflects responsibility for the departure decision onto a dead man inadvertently reveals the absence of any clear chain of command for safety management within the organization.

For approximately two weeks after the accident, the Communist Party did not officially acknowledge its role as a constituent member of the council. The chronology of this “two weeks of silence” is revealing. After the March 16 accident, party officials gave evasive answers when asked about the relationship between the captain and the party at press conferences. On March 23, as Sankei Shimbun reported, Secretary General Akira Koike said: “That boat is the only way to monitor the base” and “Various people are involved.” He added: “It is not appropriate to say various things based on information that is not entirely accurate,” attempting to deflect reporters’ questioning. Video of this press conference spread rapidly on social media, garnering 69,000 likes and over 10 million views on X.

On April 2, Party Chair Tomoko Tamura finally made an official acknowledgment. “The local Communist Party organization participates as a constituent member,” she stated. Sankei Shimbun reported the press conference in detail, noting that while Tamura expressed condolences and pledged to “respond sincerely as a constituent member,” she also stated that “it would be inappropriate to identify who the captain is here” — avoiding confirmation of Shokita’s identity even though it had already been widely reported. This official acknowledgment came on the seventeenth day after the accident. Throughout this period, the fact of the Communist Party’s involvement as a constituent member was already widely known through media reporting. The silence did not succeed in suppressing information; rather, it exposed the organization’s posture of reluctance to accept accountability.

The unregistered protest boats had previously carried prominent politicians and media figures. According to the Daily Shincho, Secretary General Koike and Upper House member Sohei Nihi rode on “Heiwa Maru” in 2022. Lower House member Seiken Akamine boarded “Fukutsu” in 2024. Communist Party Chairman Kazuo Shii, Social Democratic Party leader Mizuho Fukushima, and a reporter from the Okinawa Times are also reported to have boarded the vessels in the past. The fact that these individuals had ridden on “unregistered boats” only became a matter of scrutiny after the accident. Whether they were aware of the Maritime Transportation Act violations at the time of boarding is unclear, but a pattern emerges: the people who were in the best position to know the operational reality of the protest boats overlooked the deficiencies in safety management.

The flow of funds also warrants examination. The Henoko Fund, established in 2015, provides material and moral support for activities aimed at halting the construction of the new Henoko base. Total donations have reached approximately 550 million yen. The fund’s list of endorsing organizations includes the Japan Teachers’ Union (Nikkyoso). According to an investigation by Jigensha, the Henoko Fund’s list of supported organizations includes the Helicopter Base Opposition Council, and in 2018, support was provided specifically for “annual boat storage rental fees.” The Henoko Fund’s secretariat has countered that it is “not involved.” The facts that Nikkyoso is an endorsing organization of the Henoko Fund and that the Henoko Fund provided support to the Helicopter Base Opposition Council are confirmed. However, no primary source evidence currently exists showing that Nikkyoso’s funds were directly used for the operation of protest boats. This distinction must be clearly maintained.

An institutional channel also existed between educational tourism and the opposition movement. As the Yaeyama Nippo reported, it was revealed at the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly’s General Affairs Planning Committee on April 15 that among the advisors for the “Educational Travel Promotion Enhancement Project” — which the prefecture had entrusted to the Okinawa Convention and Visitors Bureau (OCVB) — was a person affiliated with the Helicopter Base Opposition Council. A prefectural official explained that “we do not make judgments based solely on affiliation with a specific organization; what matters is whether they are fulfilling the required role.” Whether the advisor’s role included facilitating students’ boarding of protest boats is unknown, but the institutional connection between the promotion of educational travel and the opposition movement raises questions about how the content of “peace education” has been shaped.

Here, I want to pause. I am not in a position to judge the merits of the anti-base movement itself. The people who oppose the relocation of a military base to Henoko hold their own convictions, and in their years of taking to the sea there is something that deserves a measure of respect regardless of political orientation. In the twelve years that Pastor Kanai piloted “Fukutsu,” there was a commitment that cannot be explained away as mere political performance. The local Communist Party members who continued their activities on the Henoko waters had their own sense of mission. I do not take lightly the weight of people who went to sea day after day alongside their ordinary lives.

But does a cause take precedence over safety? This is the one question I cannot leave suspended. The Helicopter Base Opposition Council operated unregistered, uninsured boats. It had no written departure criteria. It kept no passenger manifests. On a day when a wave advisory was in effect, it sent high school students to sea without their teachers aboard. As Sankei Shimbun reported, on the same day, construction work at the Henoko base site was partially suspended because waves had exceeded the operational threshold. The sea conditions were deemed too dangerous for construction — yet a small boat carrying high school students departed. This fact speaks plainly to how safety was positioned within the movement. 90,000 People Turned to a Bereaved Mother’s Blog

After the 2022 Shiretoko sightseeing boat disaster that killed twenty-six people, Japanese society should have understood viscerally the danger of unregistered maritime operations. In the wake of that tragedy, enforcement of the Maritime Transportation Act was tightened and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism issued preventive measures. But the Helicopter Base Opposition Council’s boats existed outside the reach of those lessons. A structure in which activities grounded in political conviction are placed beyond the framework of legally mandated safety standards — from the inside, this may have been sustained by the logic that “we are not commercial operators, we are volunteers.” But when a boat capsizes and a person dies, that logic loses its meaning in an instant.

What does the Communist Party’s “two weeks of silence” signify? The party’s status as a constituent member of the council was not, by its nature, information that needed to be concealed. Participation in the Henoko opposition movement was an official party policy; the party newspaper Akahata had prominently covered the 8,000th day of the Henoko sit-in protest. That the party nonetheless declined to officially confirm this fact for approximately two weeks meant that, as an organization, it deferred the question of how to accept responsibility for the accident. Secretary General Koike’s statement that “various people are involved” sounded like an attempt to relativize the fact that the party was one of the constituent organizations. Chair Tamura’s statement that “it would be inappropriate to identify the captain here” amounted to deliberately avoiding confirmation in a context where Captain Shokita’s identity had already been widely reported.

I do not seek to condemn this silence. How a political party should assume legal responsibility for an accident is a genuinely complex question, and exercising caution in public statements while an investigation is ongoing carries a certain rationality. But from the bereaved family’s perspective, the silence carries a different meaning. As the bereaved family communicated on X, even well after the accident, there had been no direct apology from the operating organization to the family. The gap between an organization’s defensive posture and a family’s demand for truth grows deeper with each passing day.

The tension between a movement’s cause and safety management is not unique to Henoko. Social movements operating in legal gray zones is a phenomenon observed worldwide. In the tradition of civil disobedience, acting beyond the law is sometimes justified — and the history of protest from the American civil rights movement to the anti-apartheid struggle is full of moments where legal boundaries were crossed in the name of a higher principle. But there is a critical distinction between activists who knowingly accept risk for themselves and an organization that exposes third parties to risk. When those third parties are minors whose judgment is not fully developed and who were brought to the boats as part of an educational program arranged by their school, the moral calculus shifts fundamentally. The Helicopter Base Opposition Council spent years taking experienced activists onto its boats for maritime protests — adults who understood the risks and chose to accept them. The decision to place high school students on the same vessels represented a qualitative discontinuity that demanded special precautions. Where within the organization the responsibility lay for recognizing that discontinuity and implementing appropriate safety measures is a question that remains unanswered.

The broader context of Okinawa’s peace education industry adds another dimension to this story. Each year, approximately 2,050 schools send roughly 350,000 students to Okinawa for educational trips focused on peace studies. The standard curriculum centers on the Battle of Okinawa — visiting Himeyuri Monument, the Peace Memorial Park, and hearing testimony from war survivors. These programs are well-established, professionally managed, and focused on historical reflection. What happened at Henoko was different. The boat excursion to observe the ongoing base construction protest was not part of any standard peace education program. It was an independently arranged activity that placed students directly into the operational infrastructure of a political movement — boats that existed for the purpose of protest, captained by movement participants, operated outside the legal framework that governs maritime passenger safety. The distance between the established peace education ecosystem and the ad hoc arrangement that led to this accident is vast, and it deserves examination that goes beyond assigning individual blame.

Among people who move by conviction, who guards the safety of others? Pastor Kanai took his seventy-one-year-old body to the sea off Henoko for twelve years. In that act there is something that moves the heart regardless of political allegiance. Captain Shokita, as a Communist Party official conducting activities on the Henoko waters, must have carried his own form of resolve. I do not diminish the weight of the council’s members who went to sea day after day alongside their daily lives. But if, within the accumulation of conviction and resolve, the unglamorous and tedious work of safety management was left behind somewhere, then the credibility of the movement itself is undermined. The moment a cause takes precedence over safety, a movement loses sight of what it was meant to protect.

I do not have an answer to this question. I lack the standing to judge whether the anti-base movement is right or wrong, and I have no authority to condemn people who lived by their convictions. Every person involved in this story — the pastor, the party official, the council members, the school administrators — believed they were acting in service of something larger than themselves. That belief deserves to be taken seriously even as its consequences are examined honestly. But before the fact that a seventeen-year-old girl lost her life, the logic that “there was a cause, so it could not be helped” does not hold. The investigation continues. When the Japan Coast Guard’s criminal investigation and the Japan Transport Safety Board’s accident inquiry produce their findings, the way safety management was handled within this organizational structure will become clearer. In the next installment, I will consider why this accident was not adequately covered by mainstream media — and the structural reasons for that silence.