A half-century after being uprooted for a remote US naval base, these islanders are still fighting to return

POINTE AUX SABLES, Mauritius - The memories remain fresh in her mind: the fishermen tramping in from the surf with armfuls of fresh catches, the Saturday night dance parties under swaying palms, the long Sundays swimming in crystalline waters until her parents called her in for dinner.

"I will never forget those days," said Noella Gaspard, 55, describing her childhood on the island of Diego Garcia.

The footprint-shaped atoll lies in the middle of the Indian Ocean, at the tip of a chain of coral islands whose tropical beauty belies a difficult history.

When Gaspard was a girl, the archipelago was named Chagos. It was part of the British colony of Mauritius and home to 2,000 people who made their living on coconut plantations.

But in a 1965 military deal with the United States, Britain detached Chagos before granting independence to Mauritius three years later. Renaming the islands