Six months after fatal boat accident in Okinawa, student’s parents want answers

Six months after Tomoka Takeishi died during a controversial study trip in Okinawa, her grieving parents are still seeking answers as to why the 17-year-old student never returned home.

“Why did our child have to be caught up in all this and lose her life on a school trip?” Tomoka’s father told The Japan Times in a recent interview. “The sadness has not faded. We have spent the past six months living with that pain.”

Tomoka, a second-year student at Doshisha International Senior High School in Kyoto, is remembered as a bright and diligent young woman who had aspired to one day attend college in the U.S.

But those dreams were cut short on March 16, when she and 34 other schoolmates joined an elective course offered as part of the school’s Okinawa “peace trip.”

Tomoka Takeishi during her studies in the U.S. in June 2025 | Courtesy of the Takeishi family

The first batch of students boarded two small boats off Henoko, a coastal district where construction is under way on a replacement facility for the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma.

As the boats returned to shore in rough seas, they capsized one after the other. Takeishi and one of the boats’ captains, 71-year-old Hajime Kanai, died, while 16 students suffered injuries. No teacher was aboard either boat.

“I could not fathom what exactly had happened,” Takeishi’s father said as he recalled that chaotic day.

Before the family could begin to come to terms with their loss, details that emerged in the following months deepened their anguish.

Henoko itself has long been at the center of a bitter dispute over the relocation of the Futenma base. The Japanese government has sought to relocate the air station there from densely populated Ginowan, maintaining that the plan is the only viable way to remove the dangers associated with its current location.

Successive Okinawan governors, however, have resisted the idea.

The boats used in the school trip were operated by the Heli-base Opposition Council — a local civic group that opposes the relocation of the military base — and had been routinely deployed in anti-base demonstrations.

In May, the education ministry concluded that the school’s program violated parts of the Basic Act on Education, which bars schools from engaging in political activity. The ministry cited, among other factors, the use of boats routinely employed in anti-base protests and the school’s failure to sufficiently present differing views on the relocation issue.

The operators apologized for failing to ensure the students’ safety, but clarified that the students themselves were not involved in protest activity. Doshisha had only begun taking students on the boat program in 2023.

Takeishi’s father did not object to students learning about Henoko or hearing different views on the U.S. military bases in Japan. What troubled him was the gap between what parents believed the course would involve and what the school intended.

“Parents had understood that the course would showcase Henoko’s sea and coral and include a visit to a local aquarium,” he said. Instead, the program was centered much more heavily on the anti-base movement, he said.

The transport ministry also discovered that the captain who died in the mishap, Kanai, had been transporting students and teachers without the business registration required under the Marine Transportation Act. The ministry concluded that the boat operations violated the law and filed a complaint with the Japan Coast Guard.

Takeishi’s parents said equally troubling for them was what they saw as Doshisha’s unwillingness to provide a full public account of what went wrong, and its focus on shielding itself from responsibility.

A third-party committee commissioned by Doshisha concluded in July that the institution had breached its duty of care. The school had never conducted an on-site inspection of the boating program, adequately assessed the risks involved or sufficiently explained the course to the families of students.

The school has since replaced its principal and established a safety management office, and the chair of the school’s board has said he intends to resign after overseeing corrective measures.

But Takeishi’s father said, “in terms of progress, I would say we are not even halfway there.”

In late July, Takeishi’s parents filed criminal complaints against four school officials and seven people connected to the operation of the boats, accusing them of professional negligence resulting in death and injury.

The complaints allege that the school officials and boat operators failed to adequately investigate the risks involved in the activity, draw up sufficient plans and take steps to avoid exposing the students to danger.

The Japan Coast Guard’s investigation remains under way.

Beyond the scrutiny surrounding the school’s program, the March accident also emerged as a factor in Okinawa’s recent gubernatorial election.

An NHK exit poll found that about 60% of voters said the accident and subsequent developments were taken into consideration when casting votes, although the survey did not show how they affected their choices.

In the Sunday election, ruling Liberal Democratic Party-backed Genta Koja defeated two-term incumbent Denny Tamaki, a staunch opponent of the Henoko relocation.

Takeishi’s father said he hopes the incoming administration would enforce safety rules consistently in the prefecture, including for protest groups, arguing that tolerating unlawful operations had contributed to the neglect of basic safeguards.

Her mother, when asked what she might tell the deceased high schooler now, said people across Japan were working to ensure that her death would not be in vain.

“Little by little, things are beginning to change,” she said. “We want to create a safe future so that, if Tomoka were someday born into this world again, she would never have to face the kind of danger that robbed her of her life.”