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The increasingly divisive politics in East Asia today are accompanied by the militarization of the regional communal life, or vice-versa. In today’s Japanese context, “national security is a prerogative matter of the state government” is the mantra repeatedly justifying the fortifications of the islands, especially the Ryukyu Archipelago. To restore the agency of those borderland island communities such as Okinawa and to focus on its people’s activism as a form of “De-Cold War” practice from below, The Translocal Island of Okinawa: Anti-Base Activism and Grassroots Regionalism, which was written based on numerous conversations with friends from Okinawa, Taiwan, South Korea and elsewhere, traces the journeys undertaken by the late Okinawan thinker and activist Arasaki Moriteru and others who conceive Okinawa as a catalyst to peace in East Asia. This talk wishes to reflect on this critical agency fostered by the island communities for the pacifist cause.