Code Talker

by Joseph Bruchac

  Those weeks at Camp Elliott were some of the best in my life. Much hardship and pain and sadness lay ahead of me, but during those weeks—as we prepared for war—I felt at peace. For so many years I had been in schools where I was told never to speak our sacred language. I had to listen to the words of bilagáanaa teachers who had no respect at all for our old ways, and who told us that the best thing we could do would be to forget everything that made us Navajos. Now, practically overnight, that had all changed.

  Because it was important for us to speak Navajo, we used it with each other much of the time. Unlike at the schools back on the reservation, we were not forced to speak only English. Sometimes, as we chatted with each other in Navajo, the other non-Navajos would look at us, wondering if we were talking about them. But no one ever told us to stop. We were supposed to speak our sacred language here. It felt so good to do this that sometimes it made me want to shout with happiness.

  “It is so good,” Henry Bahe said to me one day near the end of our training.

  I nodded. Those few words of his said it all. It was so good. It was good to have our language respected in this way. It was good to be here in this way. It was good that we could do something no one but another Navajo could do. Knowing our own language and culture could save the lives of Americans we had never met and help defeat enemies who wanted to destroy us.

  I think that all of us felt the same way. I could tell by the smiles on their faces, the laughter we shared, and the seriousness with which my fellow code talkers approached our work. Our hearts felt full as we studied the code, took apart and repaired radios in the field, and learned how to fight with our weapons. We were proud to be Marines and even prouder of the role that we had been chosen to play.

  Now, grandchildren, when I say we were proud I do not mean that we became self-important. We did not go around thinking we were better than everyone else. We did not boast. Our pride was quiet and humble. We remembered that the language that now could be of such great use, our sacred language, had been passed down to us by our elders. We kept our elders and our families in mind as we studied. We remembered our sacred land.

  Each morning, I thought of my home and my family. I stood facing the rising sun. I took corn pollen from the pouch I always carried at my waist, touched it to my tongue and the top of my head, then lifted it up to the four sacred directions as I greeted the dawn. That pouch stayed with me wherever I went during the war. The blessing of that corn pollen helped keep me calm and balanced and safe.

  Near the end of our training, we decided to have a special Navajo dance at Camp Elliott to show our appreciation to those who had taught us so much. We also wanted to do something special for our non-Indian buddies, who were going through regular signal corps training and knew nothing about our code. Some of them were very curious about our culture and we figured we could at least share a little of our Navajo way with them.

  We got twenty dollars from the camp athletic and morale officer to finance a ceremonial dance. We dressed in blankets and moccasins. We took off our Marine Corps caps and put headbands around our foreheads. Jimmy King, who was one of the best students in our class, played the drum as we danced. We sang the words of the Riding Song and the Bluebird Song as we circled about the camp. It was a good dance and it entertained our white buddies. Some of them clapped their hands and tried to sing along with us. A few even tried to do some dance steps, Corporal Radant and a blond Marine from Boston named John Smith among them. Smitty, as everyone called him, had become one of my own special buddies and I shook his hand when he finished dancing. There was much laughter and many smiling faces that day. Our songs were lighthearted, for we knew that a time lay ahead of us when our hearts might be heavy.

  At the end of our program, we had a special surprise. Jimmy King had translated the “Marine Corps Hymn” into Navajo and we all sang it together. Just about everyone knows that song these days, but when we put it into Navajo it came out a little differently.

  “Nin hokeh bi-kheh a-na-ih-la,” we sang. “Ta-al-tso-go na-he-seel-kai.” That meant “We have conquered all our enemies, all over the world.”

  The last verse was the furthest from the original song. We did not sing it, but chanted it together like a prayer.

  “Hozo-go nay-yeltay to,” we began. “May we live in peace hereafter.” And we ended it this way:

  “Sila-go-tsoi do chah-lakai

  Ya-ansh-go das dez e e

  Washindon be Akalh-bi Kosi la

  Hozo-g-kay-ha-tehn.”

  It meant “If the Army and the Navy ever see Heaven, the U.S. Marines will be there living in peace.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Shipping Out to Hawaii

  While we were learning to be code talkers, the war had gone on. By the end of August 1943, as our training ended, Admiral Nimitz was getting ready to stage amphibious assaults on the Gilbert Islands with the First and Second Marine divisions. The First and Second had finally managed, after a long and bloody struggle, to secure Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. Most people in America, including those in the military, had thought the Canal would be easy for the Marines to take. A few weeks, perhaps a month or two. The Japanese had been tougher than anyone expected. It took no less than six months of furious battle on land, on sea, and in the air. Now those Marines were back on Hawaii, resting and training for their next mission. Among them were the thirteen Navajo code talkers who’d been assigned to the First Division and saw combat on the Gilberts.

  Hawaii was where I was going, too. There I’d have further training work with those code talkers who’d experienced battle. I was excited at the thought. Not only was I going to meet other Navajo Marines who’d been under fire, I’d actually be going to one of those faraway exotic tropical islands that had previously only been names on a map for me. Hawaii. People said it was wonderful, like paradise on earth. Just thinking about it made me wonder what other wonderful places I’d get to see. Little did I know how many of those tropical islands would become all too familiar to me in the two years that lay ahead. And most of them would be the opposite of paradise during my stay.

  I was assigned to the signal corps of the Third Division. Second Regiment, Third Battalion. We were part of the South Pacific forces commanded by Admiral Halsey. Scuttlebutt around the base was that the Third’s job would be to take Bougainville, an enemy air base in the Solomon Islands where the Japanese were dug in deep.

  No one ever knows for sure where those rumors come from. But any Marine worth his salt can tell you that it’s not a bad idea to listen to the scuttlebutt. It may be closer to the truth than what your commanding officers say. Bougainville. I wondered, could it be as bad as the Canal?

  Our two instructors, John Benally and Johnny Manuelito, were shipping out with us. They were excited and happy.

  “I did not join the Marines to stand in front of a blackboard,” Johnny Manuelito said as a group of us sat around together in the mess hall on our last day at Camp Elliott. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a new piece of chalk. With a big smile on his face, he handed it to Jimmy King. Jimmy and three other men in our second class had been chosen to be the new instructors who’d stay behind and teach the next group of code talkers.

  “Now,” Johnny said, “it is your turn to try to turn stubborn Navajo sheepherders into signal men!”

  Jimmy accepted that piece of chalk with as much seriousness as if it had been a medal. “Thank you, Corporal,” he said with a nod. “Next time I see you, I will probably have to call you T’áá tá’í Béésh tigai, One Silver Bar.”

  I shook my head. “No,” I said. “Not just a Lieutenant. He will surely be Naaki Béésh tigai, Two Silver Bars. Captain Manuelito.”

  Johnny looked down at his plate and smiled. He was honored and a little embarrassed by the way we had teasingly praised him.

  We did not know how wrong we were. As far as I know, not one Navajo code talker was ever raised above the rank of corporal, just as none of us were ever given any
kind of official recognition or honor from the time we enlisted until the surrender of Japan. In fact, most of us never even got to wear one of those dress blue uniforms like that first one I saw on the Marine Corps recruitment poster. We were kept invisible. It was partially because our true duty was kept such a secret from so many. But I think it was also because we were Indians in what was still, even in the Marines, a white man’s world. It was easy to forget Indians.

  I never thought much about promotions at the time, though. There was too much else for me to concern myself with. First there was the journey we were about to take. My initial excitement about the trip had turned to worry. It was a long way from California to Hawaii with a lot of ocean in between. I was going to have to spend many days on a great boat out on the wide waters of the Pacific Ocean. I was not so worried about the Japanese as I was about getting onto that boat and all that water.

  Yes, one of my favorite pastimes when I was in Indian school had been to look at the map of the Pacific in my geography book and silently mouth the strange names of those distant islands. Hawaii. Rarotonga. New Zealand. Okinawa. Those daydreams helped me escape from the boredom of boarding school. But I’d never really imagined I’d actually go to such far-off places.

  My teachers in Indian school had certainly never encouraged me to think about travel. In fact, they tried hard to discourage such daydreaming. I still remember the day in sixth grade when my teacher, whose name was Mr. Lawson, caught me studying that map of the Pacific when I should have been doing my math. He stood me in the front of the room balancing that heavy geography book on my head.

  “Class, do you see this foolish little Indian boy?” Mr. Lawson said, rapping his knuckles so hard on the book that it made my head feel like a bell being rung. “He is wasting his time looking at places on a map that he will never go instead of studying his math. He knows nothing about the world. He will never be smart enough to do anything but herd sheep.”

  Mr. Lawson was right about one thing. When I joined the Marines I pretty much did not know anything about the world outside of our reservation. Before being sent to San Diego I’d never seen any body of water bigger than a small lake. Of course, I had been taught how to swim. But that was in a swimming pool. A big lake or an ocean was different. Deep water! It scared the pants off me. That Pacific Ocean was huge!

  When I was young all Navajos were warned to stay away from deep water. It was always associated with danger. Our old stories tell of water monsters. Things that lived underwater were suspicious to all traditional Navajos. So, even when we got in the Marines, we tried never to eat anything that we knew came from the water. The other Marines thought it was funny at the mess hall on Fridays to watch us Navajos come up to be served.

  “Got anything else other than fish?” we’d always say.

  A few of us did learn to eat fish, especially on those Pacific islands where there was sometimes little else to eat. But wherever we were, we Navajos were better at finding real meat than any other marines. After we left an island, there were always fewer chickens and goats and pigs than there’d been when we Indians got there.

  The morning before I shipped out, I rose before dawn and prayed with my corn pollen. I asked the Holy People to remember me and help keep me safe on the ocean from the monsters that hid beneath its surface. My fear was not such a foolish thing, grandchildren. Many men got on board those transport ships and never set foot on land again. The Japanese often attacked American convoys with airplanes sent out from their aircraft carriers. Their submarines stalked our ships, sinking them with torpedoes.

  Despite my prayers, when the day of embarkation came and they took us down to the pier, I felt as if I was being sent to my doom. Bill Toledo, another of the Navajos in our platoon, saw how nervous I was as we waited for the order to go on board.

  “Look up,” he said.

  I did, raising my eyes to the tall superstructure of the big boat where a U.S. flag was waving.

  “No.” Bill pointed with pursed lips. “Higher, up there.”

  I leaned way back to gaze at the blanket of blue sky where a few small clouds hung, white as the fleece of a new lamb.

  “Even out on the ocean,” Bill said, “Father Sky will be above us. We will never be forgotten by the sky.”

  At that moment, I felt my fears leave me.

  Our voyage to Hawaii was not so hard. The seas were calm and the sunrises beautiful. Father Sky smiled on us. No submarines attacked us and we were kept busy on board practicing our code and all the other skills we needed as signalmen.

  I should explain to you, grandchildren, how our teams were set up to use the code. Usually, two Navajos would be out in the field together. One of them would be on the radio, headphones over his ears and the microphone in his hand. He would tune the set to the right frequency. Then he would speak a few identifying words of Navajo into the mike, saying that he was either ready to send or receive in code. As soon as he got the “Roger” from the other end, he would start talking. I was usually the one on the radio set. The second Navajo in the field team would be holding a pad and a pencil. As the radioman got his message in Navajo code, he would speak it out loud to the pencil-and-pad man, who would write it down. After it was written, it could be translated. Then another coded message was sent back.

  At the other end, back at the main command post and away from the front line, at least one or two other Navajos would be receiving the messages and doing just what we did. Speaking it, writing it down, translating, and responding. We practiced at working together as smoothly as a well-oiled machine. With all that practice, the trip went faster than I had expected. Almost before we knew it, we reached Hawaii.

  I smelled the island before I saw it. The dawn breeze that came from the land was full of the scent of strange flowers and a moist earth that my feet had yet to walk upon. Then I saw Diamond Head for the first time, raising its stone face above Honolulu Bay.

  All of the code talkers, both those who had been in the first All-Navajo Platoon and our new group of recruits, were brought together as soon as we left ship at Pearl Harbor. Because we had made changes in the code, we all needed to make sure everyone was well briefed.

  Throughout the war, as the code grew, we kept doing that. Code talkers not in combat would be flown in to Pearl or some other convenient location to update everyone on any changes or additions made in the code. It was also a great time for us to catch up on news and learn what had been going on in the war. Because we shared so much information among ourselves and because our code was used for the most important and secret messages, I doubt that any other group of Marines knew more about what was really going on than we Navajos.

  When that first afternoon briefing ended I sat outside with Sam Begay and Bill McCabe, one of the code talker teams who’d already seen combat. The wind was coming in from over the ocean and the palm trees were swaying. A little bird with a curved beak was flying around our heads. It was as blue as the sheen of water and it just kept buzzing back and forth among the bloodred flowers of a tall bush that arched over me. It was all so beautiful I could hardly believe it was real.

  “What was it like when you got to the Canal?” I asked.

  Sam laughed. “None of the officers on our landing craft knew what to do with us Indians. They’d been told we had our own special orders. So we just sort of strolled off the LC onto the beach like two sheepherders looking for a lost lamb.”

  “We were supposed to report directly to the commanding officer,” Bill added, tapping his knuckles on the table. “General Vandegrift. Nobody else. But the landing zone was chaos. We were so green that we didn’t wait till we knew things were clear. We just wandered off.”

  “Happy-go-lucky,” Sam said. “Anybody seen a general around here?”

  “Wehee,” Bill chuckled. “That was us. Dumb as sheep dung. Next thing we knew, we were up near the front line perimeter. We heard this whining sound coming out of the sky like the world’s biggest mosquito. Looked up and it was a Japane
se Zero.”

  Sam shook his head. “Diving in low over those coconut palms on a strafing run. Well, we hit the ground, holding on to our helmets while bullets splattered all around us.”

  “With all the sand we ate,” Bill said, smiling, “I figure each of us was about ten pounds heavier by the time we got up again.”

  They finally found the general and were sent by him to his signal officer, Lieutenant Hunt, who had also been cleared to know about the secret code. Even though it was late at night, Lieutenant Hunt decided to give the Navajo code a try. With Bill McCabe on one end and Sam Begay on the other, they sent a sample message over the radio. It was received, but not just by Sam Begay.

  “Every American radio operator on Guadalcanal heard our message,” Bill said. “Wehee, did they! They started phoning in to report to headquarters that the Japanese were broadcasting on our frequency. They’d never heard Navajo before and assumed it had to be the enemy. Everybody was so upset and it was such a mess that Lieutenant Hunt called off the test for the night. From then on, every time a message was sent out in Navajo code we had to start it off by saying ‘ARIZONA’ or ‘NEW MEXICO’ in a loud voice to alert the other radio operators that we weren’t the enemy.”

  Sam tapped me gently on the arm. “You guys will have to do the same.”

  “Next day,” Bill said, “we picked up where we left off. We still had to prove ourselves. You see, neither the general nor Lieutenant Hunt believed what we were doing would work. No way, no how. Before our code, the only way a coded message could be sent was the white code. You know, that cylinder thing you set a coded message on and then send out by radio . . . tick, tick, tick, like that. Real slow.”

  “When Lieutenant Hunt gave us the message, I asked him how long it would take with white code,” Sam added. “He said at least four hours. I told him we could do it in about two minutes.”