Histoire des isles Marianes (History of the Mariana Islands), was published in Paris in 1700 with authorship attributed to French Jesuit priest Charles Le Gobien, S.J. It provides a detailed glimpse into a tumultuous and critically significant period in the history of the Mariana Islands and the CHamoru people--the period commonly referred to as the CHamoru-Spanish Wars. It includes detailed accounts of the first 30 years of the Jesuit mission in the Marinas. It also features speeches by CHamoru chiefs, including the famous speech by Maga'låhi Hurao that is etched onto the wall at the entrance of the Guam Museum. Using research conducted in several national and international archives in Madrid, Barcelona, Rome, and at the Richard F. Taitano Micronesian Area Research Center in Guam, Alexandre Coello de la Rosa produced this English translation of the first Spanish edition of Le Gobien's text. This present edition also stems from a manuscript preserved in the Arxiu de la Companyia de Jesus a Catalunya archive in Barcelona, with authorship attributed to Spanish Jesuit priest Luis de Morales, S.J., who had been part of the Jesuit mission to the Marianas in the late 1600s. Thus, this text calls into question Le Gobien's authorship. This edition opens with an in-depth introduction analyzing the context of the publication's history, as well as its significance over time. The book also features annotated notes that expand the narrative by providing details about the history of the Jesuit mission in the Marianas.

Offering rare insight to Chamorro and Carolinian cultures, this book contains legends, poems, folklore, history, traditions, rhymes and riddles, and scary stories collected from the elders and the youth of the Marianas Islands.

Hold the Marianas is the first English language account of the World War II battle of the Marianas from the Japanese perspective. Employing diaries, messages, and oral histories in the English, Japanese, and Korean languages, the author demonstrates that the Japanese commanders were their own worst enemy. Despite the importance of the Marianas to the survival of the home islands, they were slowly reinforced and defended at the beach line, a terrible choice, in light of American naval and air bombardment capabilities. The book explains why the leadership held to this flawed defense. Hold the Marianas describes how the Japanese high command finally came to realize its errors. The result was better dug-in troops at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, prolonging the battles and inflicting higher American casualties. Had an in-depth defense been used in the Marianas, American casualties might have been four or five times greater.

In 1975, after three centuries of colonial rule, the people of the Northern Marianas exercised their right of self-determination to become U.S. citizens in a self-governing commonwealth under U.S. sovereignty. An Honorable Accord is the remarkable account of their tenacious efforts to shape a political future separate from other Micronesian peoples, of the negotiations that produced the Covenant defining the commonwealth relationship, and its eventual approval by the Northern Marianas people and the U.S. Congress.

In 1941 the Japanese military attacked the US naval base Pearl Harbor on the Hawaiian island of O‘ahu. Although much has been debated about this event and the wider American and Japanese involvement in the war, few scholars have explored the Pacific War’s impact on Pacific Islanders. Cultures of Commemoration fills this crucial gap in the historiography by advancing scholarly understanding of Pacific Islander relations with and knowledge of American and Japanese colonialisms in the twentieth century. Drawing from an extensive archival base of government, military, and popular records, Chamorro scholar Keith L Camacho traces the formation of divergent colonial and indigenous histories in the Mariana Islands, an archipelago located in the western Pacific and home to the Chamorro people. He shows that US colonial governance of Guam, the southernmost island, and that of Japan in the Northern Mariana Islands created competing colonial histories that would later inform how Americans, Chamorros, and Japanese experienced and remembered the war and its aftermath. Central to this discussion is the American and Japanese administrative development of "loyalty" and "liberation" as concepts of social control, collective identity, and national belonging. Just how various Chamorros from Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands negotiated their multiple identities and subjectivities is explored with respect to the processes of history and memory-making among this "Americanized" and "Japanized" Pacific Islander population. In addition, Camacho emphasizes the rise of war commemorations as sites for the study of American national historic landmarks, Chamorro Liberation Day festivities, and Japanese bone-collecting missions and peace pilgrimages. Ultimately, Cultures of Commemoration demonstrates that the past is made meaningful and at times violent by competing cultures of American, Chamorro, and Japanese commemorative practices.