Mr. Takuma Higashionna, 53 years old, is a Member of the Nago City Council on Okinawa, and a member of Anti-Helicopter Base Council.

When Mr Takuma was a child, there was no big road in front of his house, and no paved ones either. There was relatively little infrastructure on the island but after Okinawa's reversion to Japanese administration, there was a rush to develop. He vividly remembers how this development totally changes the face of Okinawa and disrupted the natural environment.

As the plan to build a US base near his house was revealed, he decided to leave his job as a construction worker. He could not understand why a new US base needed to be built over reclaimed sea, and why the base needs to be built in his community.

He started to distribute hand-made leaflets in the center of Nago, and asked people to work together with him against the new base. That was the first form of activism he took part in.

He noticed back in those days that a lot of kayaks were kept in people’s balconies in urban areas of Okinawa, and he thought they would be a useful tool to use to take direct action out in the sea against the military base expansion. In 2004 those kayaks stopped authorities from finished drilling research in the sea but now, the central government has learned how to stop kayak activists to enter to the construction site by surrounding the exclusion zone with orange buoys.