I’m going to post this ahead of the Memorial Day weekend as a book I immensely enjoyed that is very appropriate for the weekend as part of my nonfiction leisure reading review…why? Because Pastors also need a break from heavy theological reading…and also to appreciate the generations of people who have served in the past in the military and have given so much.
Chester Nez. Code Talker: The First and Only Memoir By One of the Original Navajo Code Talkers of WWII. New York, NY: Berkley Caliber, September 6th 2011. 310 pp.
5 out of 5
Purchase: Amazon
This is an incredible book on the legendary Navajo Native American who served in the United States Marines during World War Two. Apparently this is the only memoir of the original first group of Navajo “Code talkers.” The book is about the life and service of “Code Talker” Chester Nez who co-authored it along with Judith Avila, a historian of these incredible Marines. In the beginning of the book Avila noted that at first Chester Nez was reluctant to write this book since he felt that others also have done their duty and also because he feared people would not find his life interesting. Avila disagreed and encouraged him to tell his story. I’m in agreement with Avila; Chester Nez and other “Code Talkers” lived an interesting life both in the Marine Corps and outside the Marine Corps. I’m really glad this book was written.
The book begins with an opening chapter with Chester Nez giving a first person account of storming a beach in a Pacific landing but then it goes back to Nez’ past of his childhood growing up as a Navajo. Sometimes we think the United States have treated immigrants badly throughout different point in our history which is true but here we learn that the United States’ government have also treated the first people in America badly as well. I’m not just talking about the various Indian wars and frontier battles in the West; I’m talking about the government treatment of Native Americans even during the twentieth century where Native Americans were forced to march to their reservation. From this book I learned that Native Americans weren’t even given the right to vote in New Mexico until 1948 (note: I looked it up since some would say Native Americans had a right to vote in the United States in 1924 however the book was right that this right wasn’t granted in the state of New Mexico until 1948, the state where Nez was form). Which is crazy because Navajo young men were serving in the military and risking their lives and in some instance even killed in combat for the sake of America’s security and way of living. You also read in the book Nez’ upbringing of how Navajo children were forced to attend boarding school that deliberately attempt to destroy the Navajo way of living, culture and language. Ironically what the government meant for evil later turned out to be something for good: Because of these boarding schools Navajo like Nez knew both English and their own language which later served America well during World War Two in the war against the Japanese. The book’s description of Nez’ upbringing as a Navajo is interesting and informative in its own right. For instance I learned about the Federal Government’s war against Navajo livestock in which FDR implemented a policy of killing millions of goats and lambs that the Navajo possessed; this act was an illegal government seizure of private property and impoverished the independence of Navajo families. I never have heard about this atrocity before and personally further confirm my view that FDR is more tyrannical and unhelpful in his economic policies than what is popularly believed. For the Navajo this was the second worst thing that the American government has committed against the Navajo.
The book also described how the United States nationalized all Japanese assets in the United States during the summer of 1941. I don’t think many history books talk about that. This act enraged Japan and led to Japan aligning with the Axis power. Of course it eventually contributed to the steps both countries took to war. Once Japan attacked Pearl Harbor there was a suggestion made by an American civil engineer of using the Navajo language as a code for our military. The man himself was a White American who grew up in a missionary family that worked with Navajo and he was among the few White Americans that understood the language. He pitched his idea to both the Army and the Marines but it was the Marine Corps that bought the idea and started the Code Talker program. So a program was underway to enlist Navajo into the Marine Corps for a secret project, ones which the recruiters themselves didn’t know what exactly it was. I thought it was neat to read of Nez’ patriotism and desire to join the elite Marine Corps. I love his description of entering the Marines’ boot camp and readers get a view of what the “Old Corps” Marines were like back then. I was surprised that Nez’ first platoon of Navajo recruits scored highly on the rifle range and made it into the newspaper since their platoon consisted of one Rifle expert, fourteen sharpshooter and twelve Marksman. These days so many graduate boot camp with Rifle expert but of course this is a Marine Corps that have scoped rifles in Boot Camp (I served in an era where that was not the case). Nez described how the quality of food was never a problem for him and his fellow Navajo since the food was better than what they grew up with both in the reservation and the boarding school. Nevertheless Nez describe an interesting portrait of how the cultural factor made it harder for the Navajo since their culture was less direct such as not looking at one’s eye when you talk, not yelling directly, etc. But that does not mean the Navajo’s toughness were ever questioned as the entire book made clear.
As a former Marine ratio operator I really enjoyed the book’s description of Navajo’ communication duties. It actually reminded me a lot of my days doing communications. I went to field radio operator’s course with one Navajo in my class and the movie “Wind talker” just came out back then and the respect of everybody was clearly expressed for the guy and also for those that came before him. But to think of how the Navajo Marines had to invent a whole new language and encode it was incredible and above and beyond what later generation had to do. The book described how upon boot camp graduation the Navajo were not allowed the standard boot camp leave but instead were locked up in a room to confidentially develop codes from their language. This language was further an asset for communication security given how complex it was linguistically with parsing and declension, etc. Furthermore while the Axis powers before World War Two intentionally sent spies to America to learn certain Native American languages the language of the Navajo was not one of them. The Navajo didn’t just use their language to speak but made codes to ensure further security from the Japanese. At first the original “Code Talkers” came up with 220 terms but later it grew into 700 words. The “Code Talkers” had to memorize all of the code since none of it was in writing when they were deployed to ensure further security of the code. Thus these “Code Talkers” were the code machines themselves.
I loved how the book described how these “Code Talkers” operated in real life. At first Americans hearing the language of the Navajo thought their communications’ frequency were compromised by the Japanese; later they learned it was actually American codes. Marines’ leadership at first were skeptical but when they experimented in Pacific they were amazed. Previous encryption method was the “shackle protocol” with a jumble of numbers and letters that took four hours but the Navajo code was able to communicate accurately and quickly in two and a half minutes. What is amazing to discover from the book was that the Navajo codes came at the right time for the Japanese kept on managing to break all the American codes during that time until the Navajo codes were used. To this day this code was never broken. Somehow though the Japanese did learned that it was Navajo and even when they tried to get other Navajo prisoners of war to translate it these non-“Code Talkers” Navajo service member weren’t able to understand the code.
Lots more could be said (and I said a lot in this review) but it is buying and reading. It made me appreciate so much more the Navajo Marines that fought and served in World War Two and kept their mission a secret for decades before the government finally publically acknowledged what they have done.
Pastor Jim, I enjoyed your review a lot and thank you for your service to your country! This chapter of WWII history is wonderful and instructive.
Aww thank you for your kind words; I’m amazed at the generation that went through the Depression and World War 2 which I imagine is your parents generation?
Praise God that we all can encourage one another!
Yes, my husband’s Dad was in the 640th tank destroyer battalion in the Pacific theater, and my own Dad was in the army in England and France. Because my Dad was a German immigrant (at 12 years old) he was fluent in German and he made use of this in the service. If he had not come to the U.S. he would likely have served in Nazi Germany. This is a wonderful Providence!
Thanks for the review, another book I would thoroughly enjoy reading. So much racism and bigotry in the country’s history that was widely accepted as “that’s just the way it is.” I grew up in the 1960s when institutionalized racism was challenged and the older generations resented the “rabble rousers.” Interesting story utilizing the Navajo language as a communication code. Minority soldiers were serving their country even though their country wasn’t doing right by them.
Tom what a time period it must have been to grow up in the 70s, not just with Silver Age comics but to see so much social and cultural changes, both for good and for bad. As a minority who loves America I can’t imagine what it might be like to live in certain period of American history…but that’s true with many ethnic groups even those we call “Whites’ today as you are well aware since you know your Polish and Polish American history…
We watched the national news as a family while eating dinner and my father would become livid because of all the upheaval. Watching his reaction was more interesting than watching all the different groups protesting.
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