Code Talker

by Joseph Bruchac

Here are my clothes, still stained with the sweat and mud and blood of Bougainville. Please use these to stand for me in a protection ceremony.

  On the day when prayers and songs would be offered to ask help for me, my clothes would be there, in the hands of my family. On that day I would feel the presence of the Holy People, even though I was an ocean away from my home.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Do You Have a Navajo?

  From Bougainville the other code talkers and I went back to Hawaii. There were more changes in our code to make up, learn, and share. Words had to be added for new weapons, military terms, and situations of war. Armored, tracers, napalm. . .Each had to have its equivalent in Navajo. Among those new words was one that we’d grown to know far too well. Abí zi’aah. That means “pick ’em off.” It was our code word for sniper. Just saying it made me want to duck my head down, remembering my recent experience on Bougainville.

  Our Navajo secret code that had begun with a vocabulary of only 265 words was now almost twice that size. Code talkers were in such demand that recruiters were having a hard time finding enough qualified Navajos. Although many commanders had been hesitant at first about trusting Navajos with their most crucial messages, they’d learned to depend on us. Situations in the field had shown our worth.

  For example there was the time back on Bougainville when we Marines took a crucial enemy position quicker than anyone expected. Right after our first squad occupied that spot, shells began to hit all around us. Those shells were from our own artillery! This was back before that particular captain in charge was really confident about having an Indian on the radio. I was with them, but they had me carrying a rifle, not a radio. The radioman at the front was not a Navajo, but a white guy named McAdams. McAdams cranked up his set and radioed back: WE ARE AMERICANS! STOP THE ARTILLERY!

  But those shells just kept on coming. They’d gotten so many phony messages sent by Japanese soldiers who spoke perfect English that they thought it was just an enemy trick.

  McAdams kept begging them to quit shooting at us, but the shells just kept whistling in. Finally, a message was sent back to McAdams from the artillery: DO YOU HAVE A NAVAJO?

  “Somebody get Begay up here,” the captain yelled. “On the double.”

  I came running, Smitty right behind me. I handed him my rifle, grabbed hold of the microphone, and started talking code. I no longer remember exactly what I said, but a minute later the shelling stopped. From then on, that captain was sold on us code talkers.

  When Marine Corps headquarters asked for recommendations from their generals in the field about the code talker program, the responses were unanimous.

  “We need more code talkers now,” they said.

  Some of the things those generals wrote made me feel so good that I almost laughed out loud. Remember, grandchildren, like so many other Navajos, I had grown up hearing only criticism and hard words from the bilagáanaas about our people. We Navajos were stupid. We were lazy. We could not be taught anything. We could never be as good as any white man. To hear what was now being said truly made the sun shine in my heart.

  The Navajos have proved to be excellent Marines, intelligent, industrious, easily taught to send and receive by key and excellent in the field.

  That is what the commanding general of the Sixth Marine Division put in his official report. It was recommended that every signal company have eight code talkers. Code talkers should be in every regiment and battalion—from artillery and anti-tank battalions to engineer regiments and scout companies. Each Marine division was expected to have at least 100 code talkers.

  On Hawaii, I heard some of what had happened in the campaign to take the far end of New Britain Island so that Rabaul could be under attack from both sides. In the landing at Cape Gloucester and the fighting afterward, our code talkers did a lot. The Navajos on New Britain Island not only sent messages by radio and telephone, sometimes they even carried them by hand, running from one position to another. It was dangerous work, for not only was there the danger of enemy fire, but also the chance that another Marine might mistake a Navajo for an enemy. I was glad that I’d had Smitty and Georgia Boy watching my back on Bougainville. Otherwise what happened to Alex Williams on New Britain Island could have happened to me.

  “It was night,” Alex said to the group of us sharing stories as we sat looking at the ocean one evening. “There was a heavy rainstorm. The Japanese were attacking and I had to get a message to Second Battalion. Just then, though, wouldn’t you know it, my radio went out.

  “So I had to take the message to them on foot,” Alex continued. “That wasn’t so bad, but on my way back I got lost. I was crawling around in the dark trying to find my way when I ran into another Marine. He stared wide-eyed at my face. ‘Password,’ he growled. The password that night was ‘Lame Duck.’ So I said it. But he still thought I was a phony. ‘You blankety-blank son of a gun,’ he snarled. Then he stuck me right in the back with a bayonet. Before it could sink in I rolled headfirst into a foxhole. Luckily I landed on top of Sergeant Curtis, followed close after by that bayonet-wielding jarhead thirsty for my blood. ‘What the hell is this?’ Sergeant Curtis growled. ‘This guy thinks I’m Japanese,’ I said. I was glad that Sergeant Curtis was a big man, because I was able to keep him between me and that other Marine.” Alex shook his head as he reached to rub his shoulder blade where that bayonet had grazed him. “Sergeant Curtis told the guy I was all right, but I still spent the rest of the night in that foxhole.”

  At times, while I was back on Hawaii, I felt as if the things around me were not real. It was too quiet and beautiful. There were no guns being fired, no shells exploding around me, no muddy foxholes. I was with other Navajos and we were speaking our sacred language together. I should have been happy, but instead it made me feel ill at ease. I found myself wondering what was happening to Georgia Boy and Smitty. Because they were not Navajos, they had not been sent to Hawaii as I had been. But I no longer thought of them as bilagáanaa strangers. They were friends and fellow Marines and I wished they could have enjoyed some of the beauty and peace that was around me at Pearl.

  Another of the hard things about being in a war, grandchildren, is that although there are times of quiet when the fighting has stopped, you know you will soon be fighting again. Those quiet times give you the chance to think about what has happened. Some of it you would rather not think about, as you remember the pain and the sorrow. You also have time to worry about what will happen when you go into battle again.

  I am sure that is why so many Marines drank heavily when they were in the midst of those quiet times. When they were drunk, they no longer could think of those things. Some of our Navajo code talkers joined in that heavy drinking. After the war, they still kept on with that drinking to try to keep that terrible world of war out of their minds. Never think that war is a good thing, grandchildren. Though it may be necessary at times to defend our people, war is a sickness that must be cured. War is a time out of balance. When it is truly over, we must work to restore peace and sacred harmony once again.

  I was not one of those who tried to forget through drinking, although I was tempted. One or two beers or sometimes just a cold bottle of Coca-Cola was enough for me. What helped me through those times of uncertainty were thoughts of my home and family. It comforted me to know that my family was praying for me during those times. I felt close to them when I rose each morning and used corn pollen at dawn. In that way, even when I was sad and afraid, I kept it in mind that the Holy People would not forget me. Being a Navajo and keeping to our Navajo Way helped me survive not just the war, but all those times of quiet and anxious waiting that were not yet peace.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The Next Targets

  Almost before I knew it, it was June of 1944. The Marianas Islands were the next targets in our island-hopping campaign that had begun at Guadalcanal. The official name for that Marianas campaign was Operation Forager. Our new objectives were Saipan, Tinian, Guam, and Peleliu.
They were to be the next stepping stones toward our final destination, Japan itself.

  Operation Forager was under the command of Admiral Nimitz, and Marine General Holland Smith was in charge of the amphibious landings. “Howling Mad” Smith was what everyone called him. I met Major General Smith several times during the war. Though he seemed like a mild-mannered man, more like a middle-aged storekeeper than a Marine, I also saw what he looked like when he was angry. His face became red as fire and he seemed to grow twice as tall.

  We were divided into two task forces. The Northern Task Force was made up of the Second and Fourth Marine Divisions. The Southern Task Force was made up of the Third Marine Division and the First Army Brigade. I was in that Third Marine Division and found myself reunited with several of my former Signal Corps buddies, including Smitty and Georgia Boy—who once again tried to crack my ribs with one of his southern bear hugs.

  “Chief,” he drawled, “I am so all-fired glad to see yew.”

  Smitty pulled back the sleeve of his shirt and held his brown arm next to mine. “Look here,” he said, “while our boy Ned has been up in shady Honolulu we’ve been down here in the sunny South Pacific working on our tans.”

  Soon, the talk turned to where we were headed. Would it be Saipan or Guam? We didn’t have long to wait. Our orders came down the next day. The Northern Task Force would be taking Tinian and Saipan. Our objective was Guam.

  All these years later, I am still thankful that I was not sent to Saipan. The other code talkers who landed there all came back alive, but they still do not know how they survived. Their D-day was June 15, 1944. There was much resistance against our first waves that came ashore, and the sea was rough. Boats were tipping over before they even came close to the beach.

  Jesse Smith, Wilfred Billey, Danny Akee, Frank Thompson, and Carl Gorman. They were some of the code talkers who landed on Saipan. They said that it was the worst place they had ever been. Of course none of us had yet seen Iwo Jima.

  “Shells were hitting the water all around us,” Jesse Smith told me later. “Some people had to cut off their packs to keep from drowning and then struggle in to shore without guns or any equipment.”

  “But when things got a little quieter,” Wilfred Billey added, “those of us who lost our stuff were able to go back down to the beach and get packs and guns from the men who got killed and were washed up on shore. There was more than enough.”

  Saipan was fourteen miles long and five miles wide. Before war came to it, it must have been a beautiful place with its palm trees and sugar plantations. It was the first island the U.S. Marines invaded where there was still a population of Japanese civilians, including many women and children. Having those women and children to defend probably made the Japanese soldiers resist even harder. They fought on the beaches and from caves where their soldiers were dug in. Just as had been the case so many times before, our naval bombardment and air assaults hadn’t been very effective in knocking out the coastal defenses. Hundreds of Marines died in the water and on the beaches. As our Marines moved farther inland, the Japanese kept sending wave after wave of banzai attacks against them. But Howling Mad Smith refused to order his Marines to retreat. This is one of the messages that Wilfred Billey sent for General Smith:

  D-ah a-kha t-a-tah da-az-ja: Tses-nah tlo-chin ha-ih-des-ee ma-e ná’áshjaa’ gah ne-tah al-tah-je-jay. Le-eh-gade do who-neh bihl-has-ahn.

  To all units: Be on the alert for banzai attacks. Dig in and report positions.

  The enemy screamed and threw hand grenades and emptied their weapons as they ran forward. There were thousands of Japanese, soldiers and civilians both, in those attacks. Some were armed with nothing more than sharpened sticks. They believed their only choice was to die for their empire. It is hard to describe how loud and frightening and terrible such attacks are. But all those banzai attacks failed. From dug-in positions, the Marines stopped them with machine gun fire. The enemies fell like tall grass cut by a scythe.

  “The saddest part of Saipan,” Wilfred told me, “was those Japanese civilians.”

  The Japanese women and children ran from the Marines in terror. They’d been told that Americans were devils who would kill and torture them. The Japanese government propaganda frightened those poor people so much that they didn’t allow themselves to be captured. They blew themselves up with grenades. They climbed to the tops of cliffs and threw their children off before hurling themselves onto the rocks below. Hundreds jumped from the cliffs near Marpi Point or waded into the ocean and drowned before our shocked Marines could reach them. There were tears in Wilfred’s eyes as he remembered it.

  On Saipan, over 3,000 Americans died between June 15 and July 13, when the Marines were pulled back. The entire Japanese garrison on Saipan of 20,000 men was wiped out. No one knows how many civilians took their own lives.

  “There was no way,” Wilfred said, “to celebrate after that victory.”

  Rough as it was, there were still some things we Navajos found to smile about. Danny Akee always seemed to have a funny story to tell, even about D-day on Saipan. He and Sam Holiday, another of us code talkers, had just finished digging in. Shrapnel was raining down all around them. The ground was shaking from the explosions and they were ducking down. All of a sudden something heavy went Splat! right on Danny’s helmet.

  “I’ve been hit, I’ve been hit!” Danny yelled. Then he noticed Sam was looking at his helmet and laughing. What Danny thought was shrapnel was actually a big frog that had jumped into their hole and landed on his helmet.

  Then there were the chickens. During the landing, Danny had noticed them flying around.

  “That was one of the ways I found out how life is different for an Indian and a white man,” Danny said. “Those chickens. You know those C-rations, they were not very good. We might go two or three weeks without a hot meal. But after a while, we see those chickens that belonged to the natives on that island there. So I say to Samuel, ‘You make a slingshot.’ Samuel, he was a good shot, and he killed one right away. Those white men, they did not know how to make a chicken stew. But we found a big can and boiled water and cut up that chicken and put it in.

  “Of course everybody is watching us. ‘What you doing, Chief?’ they ask us. ‘Well, we’re gonna make chicken stew.’ And we did, you know. We cook it and everyone wants a taste of warm soup there. Even the colonel he said, ‘Grab me one, Samuel.’ Everybody was boiling chicken soup right around there all day.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Guam

  While the Marines of the Second and Fourth Divisions were taking Saipan, our Third Marine Division boarded our own ships and set sail, ready to hit the beaches. The landing on Guam was set for June 18.

  But it didn’t happen. At the last minute, Admiral Spruance decided to send the Twenty-seventh Army Division, the soldiers who were supposed to be our back-ups, to help take Saipan. The Third Division was ordered to hold their position. The unit I was in was sent back to the little islands of Kwajalein and Eniwetok to the east of Guam. It was hard being told just to wait on those little islands without knowing what was going to happen or when.

  “There ain’t nothing here tuh do but count legs,” Georgia Boy said as we sat in our barracks watching the land crabs scuttling up and down the coconut trees. Those big crabs made me nervous about going out at night. They looked like gigantic spiders and were as common on Eniwetok as ground squirrels are back home. If I ever stepped on one in my bare feet I was sure it would chop my toes off with those big pincers. I was teased about being more scared of crabs than enemy soldiers, but no amount of teasing could get me to set foot out of the barracks after dark, when everyplace outside was crawling with crabs and you could hear them rustling and clicking through the palm leaves.

  All there was to do on those islands was drill and swim, play cards and eat fish, complain and sleep. But we were better off bored on shore than stuck on board like the other Marine units. They were kept cooped up on the hot, crowded transport ships
out at sea. Stuck there for almost two months, just waiting.

  Another strange thing about war, grandchildren, is that when things do not go as planned, they may turn out better. So it was in our invasion of Guam. Our landing was delayed, but not the Navy bombardment. Instead of only one day, they now had almost two weeks to work over the coast of Guam. They were led by Admiral Conolly. Everyone knew him as “Close-up” Conolly and he really lived up to that nickname.

  Admiral Conolly had learned from the mistakes at Bougainville and Tarawa where the naval shelling had been too brief or too inaccurate to break down Japanese defenses. Close-up Conolly bought his three cruiser divisions and six battleships in right next to shore to pound the coastal defenses. For thirteen days, the battleships boomed and heavy shells rained down on target. By the time Admiral Conolly was done, the Japanese beach defenses were pulverized. Air strikes had also wiped out all of the Japanese planes on Guam that might have attacked our invading forces.

  Finally, we were loaded back on ship and off the shores of Guam.

  It meant a lot for us to take Guam. Guam was U.S. territory. Before the Japanese attacked, it had been an American island. I’d read some about it in my geography book in Navajo High School and was reading more about it now. That was one thing that I did before every invasion. I’d scrape up whatever reading matter there was on board ship about the place we were going.

  “Begay here is our travel agent,” our lieutenant wisecracked. “He’s checking out all the best hotels for us to stay in.”

  Even though they kidded me, the other guys asked me what I’d learned about Guam and I told them. Its people had been American citizens since the Spanish American war. They were called Chamorros. A U.S. Naval base, a deep water harbor, and a Marine airfield had all been taken over by the Japanese when they invaded Guam on December 8, 1941, the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Chamorros had stayed loyal to us after the Japanese came, and they tried to resist. As a result the Japanese had been very cruel to them. If the Chamorros refused to work for the Japanese, they were shot or put into concentration camps on the island.