Doloris Coulter Cogan is neither Guamanian nor Chamorro (a member of Guam's indigenous people). Until this weekend, she had been to Guam only twice. But she was a witness to a vital era in Guam history in the years between 1946 and 1950, as writer/editor of the Guam Echo, a newsletter published by the non-profit Institute of Ethnic Affairs in Washington.

At 83, she's one of few still living to tell about this decisive time in Guam's history. And tell it she has, in her new book, "We Fought the Navy and Won" (University of Hawai'i Press).

The book holds moving and, for those who know little of Guam history, startling parallels to Hawai'i history and today's world events.

In Guam, July 21, Liberation Day, commemorates the 1944 bombardment by U.S. military and the perilous landing of American Marines on Guam's beaches, which finally vanquished the Japanese forces who had held the island since December 1941.

The Japanese occupation was characterized by unforgettable brutality — forced labor, beatings, beheadings and internments, Cogan writes.

But after the liberation from Japan came another struggle — to regain control of Guam from the U.S. Navy, which had been left in control of the place.

"We Fought the Navy and Won" tells the story of the five-year battle for Guam to regain control over its own governmental system. In Cogan's telling, it was, in political terms, as fierce as any of the World War II military battles that preceded it.

Antone Guerrero of Kane'ohe, 65, a Chamorro who has lived in Hawai'i for two decades, lived through the period about which Cogan has written. Although he has not read her book, his reaction to the struggle for autonomy on Guam sums up the experience:

"It was hard," he said. "We were so grateful to America for ending the Japanese occupation, but then America wanted to take us over, too. I am so glad to hear that there is a book that tells the story of how that was not allowed to happen.

"I left Guam because of many reasons, but one was that I thought we would never be free. And even though Guam is still not independent today, it is largely controlled by Guamanians. And for that I am grateful."

FARMER'S DAUGHTER

Having passed through the Islands last week, Cogan is on Guam today, readying to celebrate Liberation Day tomorrow.

A farmer's daughter from Potter, Neb., Cogan has come far: a degree in English and public speaking earned from Nebraska Wesleyan University; graduate work at Columbia University in journalism; marriage and divorce, and raising three sons on her own; a long career in corporate public relations, during which she became the first woman in the pharmaceutical industry ever to hold a top corporate PR position.

But her years with the Guam Echo, she says, were the most meaningful of her life. She made only $50 a week, but money was the least of it.

"This is the most important thing I ever did, and writing this book and now making this little book tour is the icing on my cake. It's the climax of my career," Cogan said in a Honolulu interview last week.

Cogan, who lives now in Elkhart, Ind., was just 21 when she took the job at the Institute of Ethnic Affairs. She was idealistic and full of post-war fervor for the creation of a better world — one in which such a war could not again happen, in which democracy would prevail as a form of government, in which repression of indigenous peoples, imperialism and colonialism would disappear. The independent institute was sparsely financed by grants, Guamanian memberships and its founders' own funds.

Fortunately, she was working for an agency created by people as idealistic as she — including Hawai'i born, Punahou-educated Laura Thompson, who had written what was at that time the only comprehensive book on the island, "Guam and Its People" (1941).

Thompson, an anthropologist who studied Guam in the late 1930s, was married to the founder of the institute, John Collier, who had worked to give American Indians the right to form their own governments while commissioner of Indian affairs under the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration.

In a stirring statement that may resonate with Native Hawaiians and many other indigenous peoples, Collier wrote, "Men cannot live without a feeling, some kind of feeling of belongingness and power."

Without these, people resort to many ills — from alcoholism to apathy to violence — "mere dissolutive substitutes," he wrote, "for the spiritual nurture" of knowing and owning your place, what Hawaiians would call your kuleana.

"He was so ahead of his time," said Cogan, who dedicated the book to Collier and to the brave Chamorro people, who worked with the institute as best they could.

"What he said then is just as important and true today."

Cogan's job as editor was to inform Guamanians about political developments in the struggle to wrest their island from the absolutist control of the U.S. Navy — and to persuade the federal government to enact an Organic Act, giving the island's people their own constitution and establishing executive, legislative and judicial structures similar to those in the United States.

ARGUING FOR CHANGE

The Navy's argument against change was that Guam was strategically vital to defense of the Pacific. There were also plans, little known to most, to use Pacific Islands for testing of advanced military weapons, including nuclear devices.

The institute made two primary arguments for change.

First: While Guam was strategically important to defense of U.S. interests in the Pacific, it would be wrong for any foreign body to take complete power from a native culture.

Second: The military isn't designed or equipped to perform civilian governmental functions.

There was never a suggestion that the Navy should leave Guam entirely. The island was ceded to America after the Spanish American War, and Guam continues to this day to belong to the U.S. as an unincorporated territory.

But once the Organic Act was passed, the Navy would no longer control all Guam's affairs, from pay and benefits for Guamanian laborers to the availability of homes for citizens left in makeshift shacks after the bloody and destructive battle to reclaim the island from Japan.

In those days before satellite television and the Internet, Guamanians received little news of the Organic Act efforts, so the Guam Echo, written and edited by Cogan and sent out monthly by mail, was a lifeline.

It also published the reports, essays and pleas Guamanian subscribers sent to the institute.

A KEY PERSONALITY

Sitting at a sunny table at an Ala Moana Center tea shop, Cogan, an attractive and cheerful woman dressed in bright blue raw-silk jacket over a lime green top, wearing lapis and turquoise jewelry, and as full of idealism as ever, recalls with respect and affection the late Simon Sanchez. Superintendent of schools on Guam, he was one of few officials of Guamanian heritage at the time. It was Sanchez who painstakingly made the rounds of friends and colleagues, collecting the precious $5 annual subscription fees for the newsletter and membership in the institute.

It was, recalled Cogan, a brave act on his part, given the fact that Guamanian laborers were then paid 28 cents an hour, and that no one could be sure what would happen if the Navy found out they were associated with the institute.

The institute found allies among government officials, lobbied Congress, countered every argument the Navy made about the "strategic" need to keep Guam under military rule and gave Guamanians like Sanchez both an information source and a voice, Cogan said.

Sanchez would often sign his submissions to the Guam Echo simply, "A. Guamanian."

"There were times when they weren't sure whether there would be repercussions. He was probably the main quiet activist on the island," said Cogan.

But she writes of many others, naming those who participated in the effort, and giving them their due.

In September 1946, Sanchez wrote, "We love the American people. We are truly loyal to them. We believe the principles of democracy as practiced in America and backed by the Constitution of the United States (are) the best form of government in the world. We have inexpressible appreciation of the Americans for freeing us from the hands of the Japanese."

After much politicking and arm-twisting, the Organic Act was passed in 1950.

"Guamanians are running things from top to bottom now, from the governor's office down. This is exactly what we hoped would happen," said Cogan.

Sanchez and much of his generation is gone. How do Guamanians feel about Americans today? And how ironic is it that Guam, just three hours by jet from Japan, has cultivated a tourism industry catering to thousands of Japanese visitors each year?

Cogan, who last visited Guam eight years ago, has worked with children of the World War II generation in researching the book.

She says, "My impression is that they still are very loyal to America. They just don't always love what the United States does."

MARINES REDUX

The latest news is that the U.S. will move thousands of U.S. Marines and their families to Guam from Okinawa in the near future, a controversial decision that many Guamanians worry will stress the resources of the island, just 30 miles long and 12 miles wide at its widest point.

The action will no doubt bring back echoes of the tense time covered in Cogan's book.

"Some will say, 'You're overrunning our island,' " Cogan predicts.

Today, she likens the Guam story to our present situation in Iraq, a post-9/11 conflict that was beginning to play out in 2004 when she was writing the book.

Her years at the institute, where she learned how the Philippines was returned peacefully to independence in 1946, and how Guam, in contrast, was deprived of self-rule, convinced her "you don't institute democracy at the point of a gun, or by occupying a country."