I Drew the Wiring Diagram Behind “Peace Education,” and My Hands Were Trembling

I am trying to draw a circuit diagram behind the words “peace education.” On March 16, 2026, two protest boats capsized off Henoko in Nago City, Okinawa, killing 17-year-old Tomoka Takeishi, a second-year student at Doshisha International Senior High School, and 71-year-old Hajime Kanai, the captain of the boat “Fukutsu.” In the first installment of this series, I wrote about the collapse of safety management. In the second, I examined the organizational structure behind the boats. In the third, I documented the media silence and a family’s decision to speak. This fourth installment asks a different question: how did a 17-year-old high school student end up on a protest boat off Henoko in the first place? I want to trace the route. Inside what was called “peace education,” who was connecting what to whom? I will record what has been confirmed as fact and what can be reasonably inferred, keeping the two strictly separate.

Every year, 350,000 students travel to Okinawa. According to 2024 statistics from the Okinawa Convention and Visitors Bureau (OCVB), the number of schools sending students on school trips to Okinawa rose 6.1% year-over-year to 2,049 schools, with approximately 350,000 students participating. Okinawa consistently ranks among the top destinations for school excursions nationwide. The vast majority of these trips center on “peace education”—visits to the Himeyuri Memorial, the Peace Memorial Park, tours of gama (wartime caves), and testimonial lectures from survivors of the Battle of Okinawa. These programs are rooted in historical fact and serve the legitimate educational purpose of transmitting the memory of a devastating war to the next generation. I do not question their value. What I do question is the assumption that everything labeled “peace education” belongs in the same category.

Boarding a protest boat at Henoko is not standard. This is the crux of the matter. Of the 2,049 schools that sent students to Okinawa in 2024, visiting the Himeyuri Memorial and boarding a vessel used for ongoing anti-base construction protests are qualitatively different experiences. The former is about learning history. The latter is about placing oneself in the middle of an active political confrontation. Doshisha International Senior High School offered the latter as one of its elective courses during its Okinawa field trip. According to reporting by Shueisha Online, the school prepared seven different courses for its trip, and “viewing Henoko from the sea by boat” was one option. Thirty-seven second-year students were divided into an advance group of 18 and a second group of 19. The advance group of 18 boarded the two boats “Fukutsu” and “Heiwa Maru.” Critically, the school arranged this boat trip directly—bypassing its travel agency entirely.

The phrase “arranged directly” is where I pause. In a typical school trip, the travel agency manages the entire program and bears responsibility for verifying safety protocols. But in Doshisha’s case, the boat excursion to Henoko was deemed “outside the scope” of Tobu Top Tours, the travel agency contracted for the trip. The school communicated directly with the captain affiliated with the Heli Base Opposition Council to arrange the boarding. What made this route possible? Doshisha is a Christian educational institution affiliated with the United Church of Christ in Japan (UCCJ). Captain Kanai was a pastor at the UCCJ’s Sashiki Church. I explored this religious connection in the second installment. But today I want to focus on a different circuit—the organizational pathways embedded within the educational tourism promotion system itself.

A fact emerged in the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly. On April 15, 2026, during deliberations in the assembly’s General Affairs and Planning Committee, it was revealed that among the advisors for the “Educational Travel Promotion Enhancement Project”—a program that the prefecture had commissioned OCVB to administer—were individuals associated with the Heli Base Opposition Council, the very organization that operated the protest boats. The Yaeyama Nippo reported this. A prefectural official responded that “the selection is not based solely on membership in a particular organization, but on whether the individual is fulfilling the required role.” Formally, this answer is defensible. But structurally, it means that a publicly funded project designed to promote educational tourism to Okinawa had advisors linked to the anti-base movement in Henoko. The “entry point” for educational travel and the “operational site” of protest activity were connected through the same individuals. This fact adds a different context to the question of whether Doshisha’s case was simply one school’s isolated decision.

Following the money reveals another circuit. The Henoko Fund was established in 2015 with the stated objectives of closing the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, halting the construction of a replacement facility in Henoko, and withdrawing Osprey deployments. Total donations reached approximately 550 million yen (roughly $3.7 million), mostly from small individual contributions averaging about 6,000 yen each. Overseas donations, according to the fund, consisted of a single contribution from Europe—no donations from China. Among the fund’s list of endorsing organizations is the Japan Teachers’ Union (Nikkyoso), the nation’s largest teachers’ union representing public school educators across the country. In Okinawa, Nikkyoso’s affiliated local branch is the Okinawa Prefecture Teachers’ Union (Okikyo-so), which states on its official website that its founding principle is “Never again send our students to the battlefield.”

Where did the Henoko Fund direct its support? Independent media outlet Jigensha analyzed the fund’s financial disclosures and found that the Heli Base Opposition Council was among the recipients. In 2017, the fund provided “support for the gate-front protest activities” (rain and shine umbrella support), and in 2018, it covered the “annual mooring fee for the boat storage site.” “Boat storage”—the very infrastructure required to berth protest boats. The Henoko Fund’s secretariat has disputed this characterization, stating it was “not involved,” but the expenditure records themselves are documented in Jigensha’s reporting. What emerges is a structure in which the Henoko Fund, endorsed by Japan’s largest teachers’ union, was financially supporting part of the physical infrastructure that sustained the protest boats.

Here I stop and state explicitly: no primary source evidence exists showing that Nikkyoso’s funds were directly allocated to the operation of the protest boats. “Endorsing organization” does not necessarily equate to “financial contributor.” How much Nikkyoso contributed to the Henoko Fund, and how those contributions were allocated across expenditure categories, cannot be traced through publicly available records as of this writing. Therefore, this article will not assert that “Nikkyoso’s money ran the protest boats.” What I am recording is a structure. Nikkyoso is an endorsing organization of the Henoko Fund. The Henoko Fund paid mooring fees to the Heli Base Opposition Council. The Heli Base Opposition Council operated the boats on which high school students were placed. Each of these is an individually confirmed fact. Connect them, and a pathway becomes visible. But the thickness of that connecting line—how directly the money flowed—remains obscured.

There is another route to trace from a different angle. Doshisha International Senior High School began incorporating sea-based observation at Henoko into its school trip in 2023. Shore-based observation had been part of the program since around 2015, but the sea-based component was introduced at the suggestion of Captain Kanai. Kanai was a UCCJ pastor at Sashiki Church in Nanjo City, Okinawa, and had served as the captain of the protest boat “Fukutsu” since 2014, when he purchased it through a fundraising campaign organized via the Okinawa Christian Institute for Peace Studies. The Christian Shimbun reported that he had been “accepting requests from schools and other groups a few times a year, volunteering to guide them from the boats.” This suggests that other schools, beyond Doshisha, may have boarded Captain Kanai’s boats. But because no accident occurred on those occasions, they were never reported.

And here lies a financial discrepancy. Doshisha paid each of the three captains 5,000 yen, for a total of 15,000 yen. The Sankei Shimbun first reported this monetary exchange, and the Yomiuri Shimbun confirmed the same. The Heli Base Opposition Council, however, had maintained that the service was provided “free of charge as volunteer work.” The council later acknowledged the money as a “donation,” but the explanations from the two sides clearly did not align. The amount itself is modest. But the issue is not the sum—it is how this payment is classified under the Maritime Transportation Act, which requires business registration for transporting passengers regardless of whether the service is paid or unpaid. The oscillation between “free volunteer service” and “5,000 yen donation” reveals that the operation occupied a gray zone both legally and organizationally.

I want to render these connections as a visual diagram. Below is a structural map of the organizational relationships confirmed through reporting and public records. Solid connections are based on confirmed facts; dashed connections indicate reasonable inference. Each label specifies whether the link has been confirmed by primary sources or is estimated.

When I finished drawing this diagram, what I felt was not anger but something closer to bewilderment. Each individual connection, taken on its own, is neither illegal nor improper. A teachers’ union endorsing a peace movement is an exercise of free association. A fund disbursing money to a supported organization is legal. A prefectural program selecting an advisor is within institutional norms. But when these are assembled into a single diagram, the contours of “peace education” begin to shift. At the far end of a massive flow—350,000 children traveling to Okinawa each year—a highly specific and structurally unsafe site was connected: protest boats with no business registration, no passenger insurance, and no written safety criteria. This connection was not coincidental. It was made possible by multiple circuits running between organizations.

What has been exempted in the name of “peace”? This question demands careful handling. I have no intention of denying the value of peace education itself. Transmitting the memory of the Battle of Okinawa to younger generations is an educational imperative beyond dispute. But when the word “peace” functions as an absolution—when safety failures, legal non-compliance, and organizational ambiguity are all absorbed within the phrase “because it was for peace”—a dangerous exemption takes hold. On the day of the accident, construction work at the Henoko base site had been partially suspended because significant wave heights exceeded operational thresholds. Professional contractors determined that conditions were too dangerous for work. In those same conditions, 17-year-old students were sent out on unregistered boats. Was the logic behind this decision an unconscious hierarchy in which the execution of “peace education” outranked safety?

The Okinawa Teachers’ Union also sits within this structure. Okikyo-so is Nikkyoso’s Okinawa affiliate and has been deeply involved in promoting peace education under the banner of “Never again send our students to the battlefield.” Much of its work likely carries legitimate weight as historical education. However, I was unable to find primary source evidence confirming that Okikyo-so was organizationally involved in the protest boat boarding program at Henoko. Because I cannot confirm it, I record the gap. Documenting both what can be confirmed and what cannot is essential to a responsible examination of this accident.

Let me examine Nikkyoso and the Henoko Fund more closely. The fund lists approximately 1,280 endorsing organizations. Nikkyoso is one of them, as is the Japan Federation of Commercial Broadcast Workers’ Unions. Being an endorsing organization does not necessarily mean being a primary financial contributor. The bulk of the Henoko Fund’s donations appear to come from small individual contributions, not large institutional transfers. But “endorsement” is itself a substantive act—it lends an organization’s name and credibility to a movement’s legitimacy. The fact that Japan’s largest teachers’ union endorses the Henoko Fund means that an institutional-level relationship of approval exists between the education sector and the anti-base movement.

On the word “liberal,” I will share a brief observation. Classical liberalism is a tradition committed to protecting individual rights and freedoms, accommodating diverse values, and checking the excesses of power. Seeking peace and opposing war are legitimate expressions within this tradition. But when I look at the Henoko structure, what I perceive is the possibility that the vocabulary of liberalism—“peace,” “anti-war”—has been incorporated into the mobilization apparatus of a movement directed toward specific political objectives. A teachers’ union indirectly supports protest infrastructure through a fund. An educational travel promotion program includes advisors linked to anti-base organizations. The downstream consequence is that minors end up on boats with no safety management. Looking at this route, was “peace education” genuinely education, or was it a circuit for mobilization? I will not issue a verdict. But I will leave the question.

At the same time, I am aware of the danger in drawing this structure. People who oppose the base relocation in Henoko have deeply personal motivations. Noise pollution, accident risks, environmental damage. The reasons residents of Nago City oppose the construction cannot be reduced to ideology alone. Among those who boarded protest boats to monitor construction from the sea, there were surely citizens motivated purely by the desire to protect their coastline. Dismissing all such effort as “anti-Japan lobbying” or “deception” would be dishonest toward the facts. Equally, examining whether the organizational structure of this movement contained circuits that connected education to political ends is not dishonest either. To see both simultaneously—that is what I believe my work requires.

The Henoko Fund has addressed the question of “foreign funding” directly. According to the fund, overseas donations consist of a single contribution from Europe, with no inflow from China. Some conservative commentators have asserted that “Chinese money is flowing in,” but I have found no primary source evidence to support this claim. Without evidence sufficient to overturn the fund’s own statement, I will not adopt this assertion. What the data does show, however, is that the fund’s approximately 550 million yen in donations were predominantly small individual contributions—suggesting a broad base of support rather than dependence on a few large sponsors. This is important context for understanding the nature of the movement.

What this circuit diagram represents is not a conspiracy. It is a record of how multiple organizations—loosely connected under the shared banners of “peace,” “education,” and “anti-base”—created a structure in which the most fundamental responsibility, safety management, was assigned to no one. Nikkyoso may have supported the Henoko Fund, but it had no involvement in the protest boats’ safety standards. The Henoko Fund may have paid mooring fees, but it did not verify whether the boats were legally registered. The OCVB advisor may have promoted educational travel, but was in no position to oversee individual schools’ safety arrangements. Doshisha may have trusted Captain Kanai, but did not check his Maritime Transportation Act registration status. Each party executed its “good intentions” within its own domain, and in the gaps between those domains of good intention, a vacuum of safety management formed. A 17-year-old life fell into that vacuum.

“Never again send our students to the battlefield”—this is the principle that Okinawa’s educators have upheld for eighty years since the war. I do not doubt its weight. But those who vowed never to send their students to a battlefield placed them on boats without safety management. When organizational goodwill is believed to substitute for institutional safety, goodwill ceases to be a shield protecting children and becomes a curtain that renders danger invisible. To continue flying the banner of “peace education” without confronting this structural contradiction is to preserve the very conditions under which the next accident can occur.

Several developments have followed this accident. On April 15, the Liberal Democratic Party compiled a set of policy recommendations for the government, calling for thorough investigation, safety assurance, and proper vetting of educational content. The Japan Transport Safety Board’s investigation is ongoing, and the Japan Coast Guard continues its criminal probe into potential violations of the Maritime Transportation Act. Doshisha announced the establishment of a third-party committee on March 31. But all of these are responses to the “outcome” of the accident. What ought to be examined is the “pathway” that led to it. Why was a school able to arrange protest boat trips directly, bypassing its travel agency? Why were individuals linked to anti-base organizations serving as advisors in the prefectural educational travel promotion program? Why did the endorsing organizations of the fund that supported unregistered boat operators include the nation’s largest teachers’ union? Until these questions are confronted, “prevention of recurrence” will remain a formality.

I did not draw this circuit diagram to condemn anyone. Each organization has its own principles and motivations. Nikkyoso holds educators’ convictions. The Henoko Fund carries a wish for Okinawa’s autonomy and peace. The Heli Base Opposition Council aspires to a life without military bases. Pastor Kanai was driven by a faith-based commitment to peace. Doshisha had the educational passion to show its students the realities of the world. None of these motivations, in themselves, can be denied. But the rightness of one’s motivation does not exempt one from ensuring safety. If an unspoken understanding that safety standards can be abbreviated “because it is for peace” flowed somewhere through this circuit, then that was structural irresponsibility dressed in the language of peace.

Tomoka Takeishi’s mother wrote something on her note account that I cannot forget: “I trusted the school.” These words are a quiet indictment of betrayed trust, and at the same time, they reveal how fragile the infrastructure of trust at the foundation of education truly was. The parent trusted the school. The school trusted the captain. The captain misjudged the sea. The organizations refused to accept responsibility. Nowhere along this chain of trust was there verification, inspection, or oversight.

In the fifth installment, I will shift the timeline. One month has now passed since the accident. How have the responses of each party changed? What has been resolved, and what remains unaddressed? The progress of investigations, the direction of the third-party committee, the family’s continued voice, and the political fallout. Time reveals some things and conceals others. I will follow that in the next piece. But there is one question I want to leave here today. Within the massive annual flow of 350,000 children crossing to Okinawa, how many “unverified circuits” remain embedded in the infrastructure of peace education?