by Chester Nez
We knew that the Navajo code words would be spoken, but never written, when utilized in battle. English messages were to be encrypted orally into Navajo and sent by radio. When a message was received, it would be orally decrypted from Navajo back into written English. In the heat of battle, not one of us could afford to be rattled. We studied till we were exhausted, then studied some more.
Certain military terms would be used frequently—so frequently that we didn’t want to waste time spelling them. Those words needed direct translations. We men, barely off the reservation, were not familiar with military terms, the names and capabilities of various ships and planes, types of artillery, and other equipment. Words like “echelon” or “battalion” stymied us. We also had to figure out a way to indicate various officers—“captain,” “major,” “brigadier general,” “colonel,” “first lieutenant,” “second lieutenant,” “major general.” How were we supposed to find equivalents for all of those? We asked for three Navajo-speaking military men to help us. Felix Yazzie, Ross Haskie, and Wilson Price were pulled from their Marine duties and assigned to help us with the code. These three men fit in, becoming one with the rest of us, indistinguishable in my mind from the original twenty-nine. After we developed the code together, they went into battle with us. I don’t know why historians insist on separating them from the original twenty-nine. For me, it was the original thirty-two. They deserved credit for the code just as much as any of us did.
Of course, even after we compiled a comprehensive list of military terms, there was still a problem. In Navajo, no equivalent for words like “fighter plane” existed. We chose animals and other items from our everyday world that resembled the military equipment. So “fighter plane” was represented by the quick and maneuverable hummingbird, code word da-he-tih-hi. The huge transport planes were represented as an eagle who carried prey, atsah. A battleship was a whale, code word lo-tso, and a destroyer was a shark, code word ca-lo. A cruiser was a small whale, code word lo-tso-yazzie. In choosing each code word, we talked about how the animal chosen lived and hunted, and we did our best to link it up logically with a piece of military equipment. Sometimes we used non-animal items to represent certain things. A hand grenade was a potato, or nimasi. Bombs were eggs or a-ye-shi. Japan was slant-eye or beh-na-ali-tsosie.
There is no Navajo equivalent for months of the year, since we did not divide our calendar into twelve chunks. Instead, we used concepts to describe each month. January, a cold month, was “crusted snow” or yas-nil-tes. The month of April, when spring sprouts begin to grow, was “small plant” or tah-chill. June, when much planting is done, became “big planting” or be-ne-eh-eh-jah-tso.
In addition to the alphabet, we devised nearly 220 terms for various concepts and diverse types of military equipment. A code name, Ne-he-mah, was chosen to represent the United States of America. Ne-he-mah translates to “our mother.”
Living the Right Way, we men knew that things must be in harmony. We didn’t compete with each other. We continued to help any of our buddies who needed help. As traditional Navajos, we had a bond of understanding. In our new roles as Marines, we continued to work together.
We thirty-two were an interesting blend of personalities. Eugene Crawford was husky and real smart. He had a good sense of humor. Wilsie Bitsie was short and chubby. He, too, made us laugh. Felix Yazzie, one of the three men assigned to help us original twenty-nine develop military code terms, was tall and lean, another joker. Charlie Begay, a tall, skinny man kept us laughing, too. He was good to be around. Those four joined Carlson’s Raiders at some point. I think we were on Guadalcanal when that happened. Their officer, Lieutenant Colonel Evans Carlson, was a strong leader. He appreciated the code talkers and was good to us. And the raiders were real brave. They’d go behind enemy lines under cover of dark—or even sometimes during the day—to raid Japanese camps or airfields and to clean up hot spots. Dangerous work.
Then there was Samuel Begay, who had a good sense of humor like Charlie Begay. Cosey Brown was quiet, another tall, thin man. John Chee, again tall and skinny, was intelligent. He knew a lot about all kinds of subjects. David Curley was well educated. He often talked about school. Ross Haskie, another of the three men assigned to help the first twenty-nine, was a big guy who looked kind of like a white man. Alfred Leonard was just the opposite—short and skinny and, like so many of the others, very funny. William McCabe was another well-educated member of the team. Lloyd Oliver was very serious, tuned in. I liked to hang out with him. No matter where we were, he always knew what was going on. John Benally was a little guy, very sharp, with a complexion so light he looked like a white man, not a Navajo. He learned the code perfectly, later staying on at Camp Elliott as an instructor who trained the new code talkers. Oscar Ilthma was one of the older guys, also light-complexioned like a white man. John Brown was a very good guy, smart, with a dry sense of humor, kind of like Jack Benny. Wilson Price, the third of the men who came into the classroom at Camp Elliott to help with military terms, was quiet and very serious.
Lowell Damon was a real nice guy, my best buddy. He was fairly tall and skinny, serious about our assignment. I always wished he could have accompanied Roy Begay and me when we went overseas together. George Dennison was funny, kind of tall also. James Dixon was funny, too, one of the older guys. Jack Nez was also a good buddy, not related to me, although his name was Nez, like mine. Frank Pete was a small guy, and quiet. Balmer Slowtalker, who changed his name to Joe Palmer after the war, was a joker, with a fun sense of humor. Nelson Thompson kept to himself. Harry Tsosie was tall and quiet, and he didn’t socialize much. John Willie, a small guy, was quiet, too. Johnny Manuelito kept to himself. He also ended up being a code instructor. Benjamin Cleveland was funny and short. Carl Gorman, at thirty-five, was the oldest of the original code talkers. He liked to talk and to joke. He was a very good guy. William Yazzie, who later changed his name to William Dean Wilson, was about my size, quiet and gentle. Allen Dale June was a good guy, about my height, and husky.
Then there were Roy and me. We were both serious guys, and we paid close attention to our assignments. Roy was close to six feet tall, and I was much shorter, five feet six inches. We both had wiry builds, and we depended on each other. Although neither of us made many jokes, we laughed a lot with the other guys. They were all good men, and it makes me feel nostalgic, thinking about those guys, my buddies. We Navajos have long been known for our sense of humor, and looking back, I am struck by how many of the men were born entertainers. It was good for morale.
We finished the development phase. We felt sure we had a code that even a native Navajo speaker would not be able to crack. Our classroom was unlocked, and we code talkers went out on maneuvers to test the code and to practice, practice, practice. When we saw the letter C we had to think moasi. In battle, there would be no time to think: C, cat. That’s moasi. It had to be automatic, without a conscious thought process. We were to be living code machines.
Several Marine generals came to the room to listen as the code was refined. As part of the training, those men arranged to put some of us on shipboard—both submarines and surface ships—and some on land. We often spread out like this for field maneuvers aimed at practicing the code.
Someone not involved with our group heard the messages, and all along the California coast troops suddenly went to “condition black” (a state of readiness where weapons were prepared for immediate use) thinking that the Japanese had invaded the United States mainland at San Diego. A couple of the code talkers were taken to North Island Headquarters, where they quelled the panic. They listened to the tapes of “Japanese” made by the officers and identified the language as Navajo. One of the colonels involved with the program told his superiors that the strange language was their own Navajo Marines speaking a code that they had developed. He promised to give headquarters advance warning of future field maneuvers involving the code so that the Navajo words wouldn’t be mistaken for Japanese and wouldn’t cause panic.
The new code was leagues more efficient than the “Shackle” code used previously by combatants. Once they stopped being troubled by the foreign-sounding words, the generals were impressed.
Still, some had doubts. Over and over we demonstrated the speed and accuracy of our code for various high-ranking officers. Some observers even thought the code was so accurate—word for word and punctuation mark for punctuation mark—that we must be cheating somehow.
That bothered us. What point would there be in cheating? That wouldn’t cut it in battle. We wanted our code to work as much as anyone else did. Maybe more. But we didn’t let on how much that accusation insulted us.
To see whether we were scamming, some officers separated the men transmitting from those receiving so we couldn’t see each other, then posted guards by each so we couldn’t cheat in any way. Our messages were still fast and accurate. Eventually the observers had no choice but to admit that our code worked.
As a further test, expert code breakers from the United States military were assigned the task of breaking our code. They tried for weeks, but not one man met with any success in breaking the Navajo code.
Finally, the Marine brass threw their considerable weight behind the code. We had earned staunch allies.
Later, new code talker recruits expanded this code, adding two more Navajo words to represent most letters and more than four hundred additional words for other military terms, bringing the code to around seven hundred words. When a code talker transmitted the letter A, he could then use the Navajo word for “ant” or “apple” or “axe.” The code talkers might spell a word containing three As using each of the three words for A. This broke the pattern of one-letter-one-word, a pattern in which a code cracker might discover the symbol for E, the most common letter in English, and other letters based upon how frequently they were used. The extra letter symbols made the code even more complex and more impossible to crack, and the added words for military maneuvers and equipment made transmission even faster.
In late September 1942, our thirteen weeks in Camp Elliott came to an end. We graduated as Navajo code talkers, Marine Corps MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) number 642 and were promoted to private first class.
We hoped to get some leave, but again our officers talked to us. They explained that we were badly needed in the South Pacific theater of the war, where the Japanese had already taken Guam, the Philippines, and Burma on the Malay Peninsula. They had attacked New Guinea and prevailed in the Battle of the Java Sea. The Bataan Death March in the Philippines, in which more than five thousand Americans perished, had been well publicized back in April, around the time we had been recruited.
The U.S. victories at the Battle of the Coral Sea and the Hawaiian island of Midway were also known to us. Midway had been the first major Japanese Naval defeat in 350 years. And, of course, we were familiar with the valiant ongoing struggle by the United States to take Guadalcanal.
So, again, we were not allowed to visit our families. We immediately prepared to board ships bound for the French islands of New Caledonia. It was autumn, before the middle of October.
Our Japanese enemies, we were informed, had always managed to crack American communications codes. Past experience gave them a well-earned confidence that they could decipher any code devised by the United States. But they were unaware that a new era of wartime communications had begun.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
New Caledonia
October to early November 1942
The ocean swelled and subsided, wave after wave, motion without end. I half stood, half leaned against the ship rail. One of my buddies leaned beside me. Our hands and faces clammy, neither of us spoke. That morning, most of the men had thrown up the antiseasick pills that were routinely handed out on board ship.
Another code talker joined us and groaned. “Are we there yet?”
En route to the French islands of New Caledonia, a group of islands off the east coast of Australia in the South Pacific, we traveled light. Our dress blues stayed back in San Diego, as did anything else we wouldn’t need in battle. Some of the guys sent stuff home, but I just loaded a sea-bag and left it at the base in San Diego. I never got any of its contents back, except for my dress blues.
Our ship, the luxury ocean liner USS Lurline, had been converted for military use. The vessel, once ringing with the clink of crystal glasses, faint memories of haunting melodies drifting just beyond earshot, was now a military transport vessel. I could almost see the former passengers— moneyed men, like movie stars, resplendent in tuxedos, bejeweled women hanging on their arms. But now, in the fall of 1942, one big barracks area replaced the private rooms, and the separate dining areas had become a single mess hall. So we troops slept and ate together.
The elegant vessel, armed with hastily mounted artillery on deck, moved toward a destination that had never graced its peacetime itinerary: the Pacific islands of World War II.
When our transport ship docked in Hawaii the next day, only officers were granted shore leave. There were ten of us code talkers on board, and most were too sick to care about carousing onshore. We went below, where hammocklike beds were strung from a metal framework, four high, with racks for our rifles bolted onto the wall next to them. We climbed into our beds in the stuffy, hot hold of the ship. My bunk was on the third tier, and when the man above me climbed into his hammock, it hung down burdened with his weight, nearly touching my nose. The smell in there—of sweating bodies and vomit—was terrible, but we could forget it for a while if only we could sleep. After a while I gave up and climbed out of my bunk. I went up on deck and slept in the fresh air, with a breeze rustling the leaves onshore and my blanket wrapped around me.
We code talkers remained on board with the other enlisted Marines, wondering whether we’d ever stop feeling seasick. We stayed in Hawaii a few days, always aboard ship. At this time a new contingent of Marine recruits boarded.
The ship departed for New Caledonia, and the newly boarded recruits soon began to turn green. Like us, they had to develop their sea legs. The seasoned sailors assured us that we would all be fine by the time we reached our destination.
I woke at 5 A.M. for breakfast, managing to eat a few bites. We practiced the new code all morning. At lunch, most of us were able to eat at least something. After a week, our bodies had begun to adjust to the constant rolling of the ship. After lunch, I did calisthenics with the other code talkers—the sick ones joining in with the well. Then we cleaned our rifles and practiced close-order drills.
Finally, in late afternoon, we had some free time. Some of the men read, taking books from the ship library. I was never too much of a reader, although occasionally I’d pick up a book. That afternoon, I joined a few of the others to play blackjack. Poker and blackjack were very popular. I didn’t have much money, and had no money to waste, so I didn’t play cards all that often.
It was a long trip to the South Pacific—a couple of weeks—and it was hot. The weather was one of the most difficult things we had to adapt to. Coming from the desert, we were used to heat, but we couldn’t seem to get used to the constant humidity that transformed the ship into a sweat bath like the ones in our sweat huts back home. Those, though, we only stayed in for an hour or so. This muggy heat we couldn’t escape.
Often the men got together and sang. I always liked that. Someone grabbed a guitar, and a couple of others played harmonicas. Sometimes we sang religious songs like “Rock of Ages.” Other times we sang popular songs. “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree” and “I’ve Got Sixpence” were two of the favorites. Those songs always made me think of home. They reminded me of the beautiful land and the people I loved—everything I was fighting for.
We’d play rough-and-tumble, stealing one another’s food and spraying each other with hoses on deck. Pretty frequently we’d get to watch a movie. Everyone looked forward to this. It was a great diversion from thinking about war. We needed that kind of thing.
In addition to reminding u
s about the secrecy of the code, Marine trainers had warned us to concentrate on our purpose—communications—and not to think about whether we’d live or die in the South Pacific. But those thoughts just came into my mind. I couldn’t help it. It was impossible not to think.
In general, we ten code talkers on the ship stayed close, talking Navajo and practicing—always practicing—the new code. Sometimes other Marines in our battalion overheard our practice. “What are you doing?” they’d ask.
We shrugged. “Speaking Navajo,” we’d answer. We were not allowed to reveal the details of our secret assignment even to our fellow Marines.
Cards, reading, and the constant practicing of the code provided our most frequent distractions from the ordeal ahead. Unlike the meals during basic training, where food was a hearty and a welcome diversion, the food on board ship was not as plentiful as we would have liked. We did get two small bottles of sage beer every day, one at about eleven o’clock in the morning and one in the evening. And there was lots of coffee. But to augment our allotments of food, we code talkers volunteered for kitchen duty. We had to wake at four in the morning, but figured it was worth it.
Some of the kettles in the galley were so big we’d walk right into them in order to scrub them! And we’d scrub the smaller pots and pans, too. It wasn’t bad work. While on kitchen duty, when not suffering from seasickness, we ate as much as we could hold—our own meals plus leftovers.
Grande Terre, the largest of the New Caledonia islands, loomed as we approached. We gathered along the railing for a view of our next home. The ship slowed as the water grew more shallow, and a small pilot boat came out to guide us in. The captain of the pilot boat came aboard the Lurline to help our ship captain navigate the unfamiliar harbor waters of Noumea Bay. As the ship drew into the American base there at Noumea, I imagined the feel of solid earth under my feet.
