Code Talker

by Joseph Bruchac

  When the United States gained control of the Southwest, the Navajos thought at first they’d been liberated. Unfortunately, the Americans listened not to the Indians, but to the New Mexicans, who wished to continue the slave trade and convinced the United States to engage in warfare against the Navajos. A brutal campaign was then waged, under the leadership of Kit Carson. It resulted in the total defeat of the Navajos, the destruction of their homes, fields, and orchards, and their forced exile for several years to a bleak outpost in eastern New Mexico, far from Dinetah.

  The Navajo Long Walk, which ended that campaign, was as awful an experience for the Navajos as the Trail of Tears was for the Cherokees. It was a forced march of almost the entire Navajo nation. More than 10,000 people trudged 400 miles across mountains and deserts to a desolate Army post. So many died along the way that modern Navajos still speak of it as if it were just yesterday.

  By the late 1860s, some thought that the Navajos were not only a defeated people, but a people on their way to extinction. Yet the Navajos never gave up. After years of bitter exile, they were allowed to return to their homeland only after pledging never again to take arms against the United States. Their warrior tradition was supposed to be ended forever.

  The recovery of the Najavo nation that took place over the next century and a half is so incredible that one might conclude that not only are the Navajos one of the most remarkable native nations that has ever existed but also that they have truly been blessed and protected by their Holy People. Today, the Navajo Reservation comprises 26,897 square miles. It is the largest Indian reservation in the United States. There are more than 200,000 Navajos. Although it is not without its problems and challenges, the Navajo nation has been described as one of the most economically prosperous and forwardlooking of all the American Indian nations in the United States. Yet it is also true that a deep regard remains for the ancient traditions of Dinetah.

  The Code Talkers

  I’ve long been fascinated by the story of the Navajo code talkers and the role they played in World War Two. In that part of the conflict that was fought against Japan in the Pacific Ocean, Navajo Marines used their native language to create an unbreakable code. Because they were Marines, that arm of the U.S. military that leads all others into the thick of battle, they also saw some of the heaviest fighting of the war. If any American servicemen deserved to be honored, it was those Navajos.

  But for decades there were no parades, no public honors, no official recognitions of the crucial role they played. From the end of the war in 1945 until 1969, the very existence of a Navajo code and the intelligent and courageous work of those several hundred Navajo Indian Marines remained top secret.

  I was born in 1942. Like many others of my generation, World War Two is a part of my own family’s history. Several of my relatives saw intense action in that war, including my aunt Margaret, whose early death was a result of a disease contracted while she was an army nurse in the Philippines. My uncle Jimmy, James Smith Jr., was himself a Marine in the Third Division, Third Tank Battalion, Company B. He took part in such campaigns as Bougainville and Okinawa, two places where code talkers played a vital role. The conversations I’ve had with Uncle Jim about his experiences in the war and the information he shared with me helped me understand what it was like on those grim and distant islands where the Marine Corps was the first to land. Uncle Jim even loaned me such rare volumes as The Third Marine Division and Captain Bryan’s Pacific War Atlas.

  My uncle remembered the presence of those Navajo Marines. However, his impression, like that of most other Marines, was that the Navajos were being used as scouts. “I always figured those Indians had some important job,” Uncle Jim said. “But it was kept secret from us.” He never knew their real story until more than three decades after the end of the war.

  Today, despite a number of books and a major Hollywood movie starring Nicolas Cage—as a shell-shocked non-Indian Marine whose personal story takes center stage—the true story of the code talkers still remains relatively unknown. Because of the top secret nature of their role, none of the major books written about World War Two before 1969 contain any mention of them. To this day it’s still easy for both historians and the general public to talk and write about the Pacific campaign without feeling the necessity to mention the Navajo code talkers.

  That lack of understanding and appreciation is one of the reasons I ended up telling this story. However, I must confess that I never intended to write this book. Somehow, over the last decade, the project took on a life of its own and swept me along with it.

  Two things led to my taking on this project. The first was my interest in the American Indian languages. My own tribal heritage is western Abenaki. My family has been deeply involved in trying to preserve and teach this language, which now has a base of less than forty fluent speakers. It is almost that bad for most of the more than 300 indigenous languages that were spoken before Columbus in what is now the United States. The loss of our languages was accelerated by the development in the late nineteenth century of government boarding schools. Virtually all American Indian children were forced into these schools, much like the one my protagonist in this novel attends. In those schools, everything that was Indian was forbidden. Lieutenant Richard Pratt’s Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania was the model. Pratt’s motto was to “Kill the Indian and save the man.” Indian language was a weed to be pulled up by its roots and thrown on the trash heap.

  Yet half a century later, boarding school–educated Indians, who’d been told their language and culture were of no use to the modern world, were recruited by the United States and asked to use that language they’d been ordered to forget in the defense of their country. It is one of the greatest ironies of American history that American Indian languages have been of that sort of use to the very nation that forbade them. During World War One, such languages as Cherokee and Choctaw were employed by American Indian soldiers in the trenches to radio messages the Germans couldn’t understand. In the European theater of war during World War Two, Comanche Indian soldiers used their language to send similar messages. However, only the Navajo language was used to create a true code—which the Marines used not just in World War Two, but also during the Korean and Vietnam Wars.

  Because of my interest in language preservation, those stories of native tongues being used by the military really stuck with me. In some ways, this novel can be read as a parable about the importance of respecting other languages and cultures.

  It’s even more ironic that Navajos were the Indians chosen by the Marines. Many of those men had grandparents who were survivors of that U.S. Army campaign fought to destroy the Navajos in the 1860s and the nightmarish Long Walk that concluded it.

  This brings me to the second thing that led to my taking on this project. In 1996 I was commissioned by the National Geographic Society to research and write a book about the survival of two remarkable American Indian nations. Those nations were the Cherokee and the Navajos, and the eventual book, Trails of Tears, Paths of Beauty, was published in 2000.

  As I traveled the route of the Navajo Long Walk and spoke with many different Navajo people, I began to think again about the code talkers’ story. Some of the Navajo people I met were code talkers, but it seemed that every Navajo had some connection in one way or another to those brave men. The wartime experience of the code talkers, and what they did when they returned to the United States, turned out to be a major force in shaping the destiny of their people. Code talkers took the lessons they had learned while serving in the military and put them into the service of their people and their culture. Seeing all they did, as teachers, as businessmen, as artists, as major tribal leaders, made me respect them even more.

  My first book for the National Geographic Society led to a second one, a picture book entitled Navajo Long Walk that I did with my friend Shonto Begay, a Navajo artist whose pictures told the story even more powerfully than my words. So I suggested the idea of another
picture book, this time one about the code talkers. When National Geographic Books declined the idea, I took it to another of my publishers, Lee and Low Books. My good friend Philip Lee liked the idea. With his editorial input, I worked through six different drafts. Finally, after more than a year of work, Philip decided it just wasn’t working. “This story is too big for a picture book,” he told me. I knew he was right.

  My next step was to rethink it as a novel and propose it to one of my favorite editors, Lauri Hornik at Dial. She accepted my proposal enthusiastically, even though I know her enthusiasm was dampened—if not drowned—by the first draft of the book I sent to her. After years of research, reading hundreds of books and countless articles, watching documentary films, visiting museums and libraries, speaking with many people, including surviving code talkers, there was an immense amount of history that I felt needed to be told. As a result, that first full draft was so heavy with facts—names, dates, places—that you could have used it as an anchor.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “The character will come out more as I revise it. There’ll be a little less history and a lot more of his story.”

  There’s still a lot of history in this story and I’ve done my best to keep it accurate. Even though my main character and narrator is fictitious, I haven’t invented events. Everything that happens to Ned Begay happened to real Navajo people, including the boarding school episodes at the start of the tale. With the exception of some of the white Marines, such as his buddies Smitty and Georgia Boy, the characters named in this novel are all real people. Their stories have been well-documented elsewhere.

  Whatever I have done, however, this is not my story. It belongs to the Navajo people. Anything that is good in it must be credited to them. I thank them for it. And though I’ve tried to do my best, I know that I am only a human being and that I may have made mistakes. For that I am truly sorry. However, I believe that the beauty and power of the Navajo Way is so great that it will shine through whatever clouds of confusion my own failings may have created. The lessons my Navajo friends have shared with me over the years are truly the only reason I was able to attempt this inspiring, important story, a tale that is as much about the beauty of peace and understanding as it is about the pain and confusion of war.

  SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Books About the Navajos

  Acrey, Bill P. Navajo History, The Land and the People. Shiprock, N.M.: Department of Curriculum Materials Development, 1978.

  Aronilth, Wilson. Foundation of Navajo Culture. “Navajoland, USA,” (no publisher listed) 1992.

  Bulow, Ernie. Navajo Taboos. Gallup, N.M.: Buffalo Medicine Books, 1991.

  Callaway, Sydney M. and others. Grandfather Stories of the Navajos. Chinle, AZ: Rough Rock Press, 1974

  Iverson, Porter. The Navajos. New York, Chelsea House Publishers, 1990.

  Locke, Raymond Friday. The Book of the Navajo. Los Angeles, CA: Mankind Publishing, 1976, 1992.

  Mitchell, Frank (edited by Charlotte F. Frisbie and David P. McAllester). Navajo Blessingway Singer, The Autobiography of Frank Mitchell, 1881-1967. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1978.

  Rock Point Community School. Between Sacred Mountains. Tucson, AZ: Sun Tracks and the University of Arizona Press, 1982

  Roessel, Ruth (compiler). Navajo Stories of the Long Walk Period. Tsaile, Navajo Nation, AZ: Navajo Community College Press, 1973

  Thompson, Hildegard. The Navajos’ Long Walk for Education. Tsaile, AZ: Navajo Community College Press, 1975

  Young, Robert W., and William Morgan. Colloquial Navajo, A Dictionary. New York: Hippocrene Books, 1994 (originally compiled in 1951 for U.S. Indian Service).

  Books About the Code Talkers

  Aaseng, Nathan. Navajo Code Talkers, America’s Secret Weapon in World War II. New York: Walker & Company, 1992.

  Bixtler, Margaret T. Winds of Freedom, The Story of the Navajo Code Talkers of World War II. Darien, CT: Two Bytes Publishing, 1992.

  Durrett, Deane. Unsung Heroes of World War II: The Story of the Navajo Code Talkers. New York: Facts on File, 1998.

  Greenburg, Henry, and Georgia Greenburg. Power of a Navajo, Carl Gorman: The Man and his Life. Santa Fe, N.M.: Clear Light Publishers, 1996.

  Kawano, Kenji. Warriors: Navajo Code Talkers. Tucson, AZ: Northland, 1990.

  McClain, Sally. Navajo Weapon. Tucson, AZ: Rio Nuevo Publishers, 2001.

  Paul, Doris A. The Navajo Code Talkers. Pittsburgh: Dorrance Publishing Company, 1973.

  Books About World War Two

  Anderson, Christopher A. The Marines in World War II, From Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay. London, U.K.: Greenhill Books, 2000

  Gailey, Harry A. The War in the Pacific, From Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay. Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1995.

  Jowett, Phillip. The Japanese Army 1931-1945 (2 volumes). Oxford, U.K.: Osprey Publishing Inc, 2002.

  Leckie, Robert. Okinawa, The Last Battle of World War II. New York: Penguin Books, 1995.

  Moran, Jim, and Gordon L. Rottman. Pelelieu 1944, The Forgotten Corner of Hell. Oxford, U.K.: Osprey Publishing, 2002.

  Newcomb, Robert F. Iwo Jima. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1965.

  Rottman, Gordon L. Okinawa, The Last Battle. Oxford, U.K.: Osprey Publishing Inc, 2002.

  Tregaskis, Richard. Guadalcanal Diary. New York: The Modern Library, 2000 (updated reissue of the Random House, 1943 edition).

  Wright, Derrick. Iwo Jima, 1945, The Marines Raise the Flag on Mount Suribachi. Oxford, U.K.: Osprey Publishing, 2001.

  Wright, Derrick. Tarawa 1943, The Turning of the Tide. Oxford, U.K.: Osprey Publishing, 2000.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  First of all, I want to express my gratitude to the Navajo nation in general. Whenever I have visited Dinetah, I have always been treated by the Navajo people with such patient grace and good humor that it has made me feel as if I was a welcome guest. I wish I could list everyone by name who has helped and taught me over the years, but there’s not enough space. Here are the names of those people I must mention.

  Thanks to Shonto Begay, Rex Lee Jim, and Wilson Hunter for what you’ve taught me through your work and our all-too-brief conversations. Many thanks to Nia Francisco, Luci Tapahonso, and Laura Tohe, three Navajo women who are also among our country’s finest poets. Your work has meant a great deal to me over the last two decades, inspiring and informing me, just as you have done for countless readers.

  For this story in particular, I have to say a very big thanks to Keith Little, current secretary of the Navajo Code Talkers Association. It was my very good fortune to have been invited, along with Mr. Little and Jesse Samuel Smith, to tell stories at the Smithsonian Tent during the first National Book Fair in Washington, D.C. Not only did I get a chance to hear them speak about their experiences as code talkers, I was able to hang around with them, hear some more tales, and share some very funny experiences, including a memorable breakfast at the White House. The further information about the experience of being a Navajo Marine during World War Two that Mr. Little was kind enough to share with me in response to my letters and phone calls was incredibly valuable.

  Mention of Washington, D.C., brings to mind those institutions whose archives are true national treasures—the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution. Without the work they have done to preserve the knowledge that empowers us all, I would not have been able to write this story. It is impossible for me to express how grateful I am for the existence of one branch of the Smithsonian, in particular—the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). NMAI, with its three branches in Suitland, Maryland, New York City, and Washington, D.C., is not only the greatest repository of information about our many native nations, it is also a dynamic force in maintaining and renewing American Indian culture.

  It was at the New York City branch of NMAI that I met Carl Gorman for the first time in 1996. Mr. Gorman had long been one of my personal heroes for his inspiring work as an artist. However, I had not known until then the important role he played i
n 1942 when he was, at thirty-five, the oldest man in that first group of twenty-nine Navajo recruits who developed the code. I also met his daughter, Zonnie Gorman, who screened the still-incomplete film she was making about the code talkers. Since her father passed on, she has continued to be active as a speaker, sharing her father’s legacy and the code talkers’ stories. I hope she will find the support and time to complete that film.

  Whenever I write or say anything about Dine’ culture I would be deeply remiss if I failed to mention Harry Walters, Navajo culture teacher and director of the Hathathli Museum at Dine’ College. Thank you for your committed brilliance and your careful, compassionate scholarship, Harry. You are an inspiration to all of us who believe in preserving the language, the stories, and the ways of our ancestors.

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