As Japanese riot police dragged stubborn protesters from the road, Kaiya used her phone to broadcast the repression online. She asked the elders how she could help and says they told her, “Tell people what’s happening.” Despite widespread local opposition to building this base in Henoko, the Japanese government sides with the U.S. in supporting the project, and activists feel the issue is widely overlooked outside of Okinawa.

Watching “inhumane” arrests at the sit-in “was the moment that really broke my heart,” Kaiya recalls. “I knew what was going on, but actually being there made me almost break down. I couldn’t just fly back to Oregon and act like I didn’t watch all that happen to my relatives.” She remembers thinking, If the media isn’t going to do anything, then why don’t I become the media?

When Kaiya returned home, she connected with others in the Uchinanchu diaspora, seeking advice about who to interview for a documentary about Henoko. She was a filmmaking novice, but her teacher offered tips on lighting, and implored her to “just get it done.” Friends in Kaiya’s high school Pacific Islander Club sold baked goods to help fund her return to Okinawa. In February, more than 72% of Okinawans voted to reject the Henoko base in a nonbinding referendum.

Kaiya filming in Oura Bay Kaiya Yonamine

To make Our Island’s Treasure, Kaiya spent her spring break trekking around Okinawa, filming interviews in Japanese, and working “late into the night every day.” She recorded the ocean-loving sentiments of local students, lifelong activists, and even Denny Tamaki, the island’s governor, who has taken a strong stance against the Henoko base. The most important perspective was that of World War II survivor Fumiko Shimabukuro, who Kaiya calls “the matriarch of the whole movement.” Shimabukuro “will grab the mic and talk directly to the camera [about] why she doesn’t want to repeat history, and why the military base is a symbol of that,” Kaiya says.

The film’s name comes from what Kaiya says is a well-known Okinawan nickname for the sea. Since Kaiya completed the Our Island's Treasure, in mid-2019, it’s been screened in Honolulu, Chicago, Oakland, San Francisco, and Portland. In addition to panoramas of Oura Bay, candlelight vigils, and sit-ins, Kaiya’s film features a Q&A format in which her Portland classmates ask questions of young Okinawans, and ends with youth on both sides of the ocean uttering a rallying cry: #RiseForHenoko!

Kaiya implores people touched by her work to contact their elected representatives, because “acknowledging the pressing need to reduce the presence of the United States Marine Corps on Okinawa” is currently being considered in the Senate’s version of Congress’s annual defense spending bill. “People in America need to do our part,” she says. “If the U.S. doesn’t want the base, Japan won’t build the base.” She hopes others will do their own research, including looking up photos of Oura Bay to “see how beautiful it is, while knowing that it’s being taken away from people.”

“In the documentary, you see the pain that’s in those people’s hearts,” Kaiya says. For her and her Uchinanchu relatives, Henoko is just the latest episode in a 75-year history of U.S. military intrusion onto their land. “It’s not just an Okinawan issue. It’s an American issue,” she adds. “People there were telling me, ‘We shouldn’t be the only ones in this fight.’ If you were in others’ shoes, what would you do?”

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