Code Talker

by Chester Nez

  In actuality, we 1st Division Marines had been on the front pages of all the papers back home. And everyone had heard of Guadalcanal, an island none of us even knew of before the war. And when the rest of the 1st Marines reached Melbourne, Australia, they were met with cheering and ticker-tape parades. The Australians, whose port city, Darwin, had been attacked by the Japanese just as Pearl Harbor had been, loved the Yanks.

  We were heroes back in the United States. But I don’t think any of us, struggling as we were to keep going and to do our jobs, could have felt less like a hero.

  As promised, General Alexander Patch arrived on Guadalcanal the same day the 1st Marine Division left us, December 9. We ten code talkers worked alongside the 2d Marine Division men who remained on the island. More than twenty thousand Japanese still infested the island, most of them in the ridges and mountains. Until the Sixth Marine Regiment arrived to round out the 2d Marine Division and the Army infantry troops who still remained, Patch assigned us to clean up hot spots around the jungle perimeter near Point Cruz and in the series of hills just west of Point Cruz.

  General Patch assigned an assault on Gifu Ridge, southwest of Mount Austen, to the 132nd Infantry, an Army regiment. On January 1, 1943, the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Battalions from the 132nd Regiment approached Gifu from the east, southeast, and north respectively. The 2nd Battalion, approaching from the southeast, reached Mount Austen’s summit, but was driven back. Five more times the men attempting the summit were forced back down by Japanese troops led by Colonel Oka.

  Roy and I relayed messages as rain poured over us and our weather-safe equipment. Fire from the Americans battered the Japanese on the ridge. Each shot was painstakingly positioned using information transmitted by us code talkers. Those artillery bombardments on the Mount Austen ridges eventually saved the infantry’s 2nd Battalion from being overtaken by Oka’s Japanese troops.

  Now our Allied troops threatened the Japanese who were holed up in the ridges of Gifu and Mount Austen from every direction except the west. We dug in, awaiting reinforcements.

  Finally relieved for a few hours, I leaned against my backpack, tried to get comfortable in the foxhole. Rain trickled down the neck of my uniform, snaking its way across my chest and back. I pulled out my Ka-bar and opened a can from my box of field rations. That knife was issued as a fighting knife, but it worked great as a can opener and a food chopper, too. I even cut bushes and small limbs with my Ka-bar and used it to loosen rocks and dirt when digging a foxhole.

  “Don’t forget to save that,” Roy said.

  I grunted, knowing what he meant. We’d been told to save the cans from our food. We’d put a few pebbles or pieces of other cans in them and string them up around our camp at night on wires so they’d make noise if an enemy came near.

  In the sporadic light generated by munitions fire and enemy flares, I glanced at Roy. Out of traditional Navajo politeness, our eyes did not meet. “Remember all the grass?” I whispered. “How it grew up to your knees?”

  Roy, sitting so close in the cramped foxhole that I heard his every breath, caught right on. “And no fences,” he said. “The sheep could graze anywhere.”

  “Ouu,” I said. Yes.

  I bent my knees so they stuck up above the water level in the foxhole. Even soaking wet, I felt enervated by the terrific heat and the humidity. Our body heat, coupled with the tropical weather, kept the water warm, too warm.

  Somewhere nearby I heard a stage-whispered curse. “Damn crab, I’m gonna rip your guts out!”

  Then, from farther away, several shots rang out. The guards must have been shooting crocodiles again.

  Japanese were not the only scary inhabitants of Guadalcanal. We’d been warned about the crocodiles, which were plentiful and mostly active at night. They made several strange sounds, one that was a dry, trilling rasp, another that sounded like a cross between an inboard motor and the roar of a juvenile lion, and a third that was almost a purr, but very deep and ominous, punctuated with a higher rattle resembling a maraca. All those sounds were chilling at night, when you couldn’t see where the animal was. And they were even more chilling when the animal tried to crawl into your foxhole. That happened to a couple of the men. They had to shoot the crocs.

  Then there were huge crabs—blue-black or red-orange in color, some with bodies a foot in diameter—that ate the bodies of dead soldiers and attacked the live combatants at night. The crabs were ugly with long strong legs and viselike claws that could clip a finger off. They were more aggressive than the crocs. They dug into the sand during the day and came up to the surface at night. You’d hear a cracking noise as the crabs dug up through the sand. When we sent up flares to see whether there were any enemy troops near our foxholes, the red light of the flares would reveal a beach alive with thousands of dark crabs scuttling around looking for food. Crab bites were painful and prone to infection. Once they latched onto a leg or an arm, the crabs refused to release it.

  The engineers built fences, from poles, that were designed to keep the crocs away from where we men bathed and swam. Sometimes that worked okay, but often the guards who were posted ended up shooting the crocodiles. The big animals swam so quietly that we couldn’t hear them coming. But nothing kept those crabs away.

  My thigh bumped against a lump in the water. I flinched. Carefully I prodded with my rifle butt. Whew! Just my canteen. The primal screech of a parrot raised the hair on the back of my neck. Seconds later, another bird responded from a palm tree behind the foxhole.

  The stench of bodies filled my nostrils, so strong it became a taste in my mouth. I’d smelled the bodies of sheep killed by a coyote and left to rot after the predator had eaten his fill. I’d smelled burned animal carcasses after the livestock massacre. But these were the decaying bodies of men. I tried, but could not block that fact from conscious thought.

  “I miss the smell of piñon,” I said.

  Roy grunted. “Ouu. Me, too.”

  I gazed out over the ocean. Maybe ten miles away there were lights. Ships. I gestured with my thumb. “Theirs or ours?”

  Roy looked at me, his brows pulled together. “What?”

  “Out there.” I raised my chin toward the lights. Roy and I still practiced the Navajo custom of never pointing with our index finger, only with our chin or thumb. Using an index finger was disrespectful, almost as though the person pointing was going to poke someone.

  “Let’s hope they are ours,” said Roy.

  It was nerve-racking, not being able to tell about those ships. From ten miles out, shells from a ship’s artillery could hit the island. A bullet whined. Then another. Bullets, not artillery. Probably just the croc hunters, I told myself. Still, the sound brought goose bumps to my arms, reminding me that the next rotting body could be mine. Or Roy’s. I hunkered down, drawing my head into my shoulders. This Marine gig had looked so appealing from the warm, dry land of home.

  Concentrate. Pray. I prayed to both the white and the Indian Gods. In boarding school, the Catholic priests had taught us to ask God for what we needed. And at home, my father had taught me to ask to walk in beauty. Those prayers pulled my thoughts away from death and back home to New Mexico. Immersed in thoughts of home, I tried to pass the last few hours of night in this waterlogged place.

  Damn rain. Would it ever let up?

  “Japanese sniper at your twelve o’clock! Japanese sniper at—”

  “Chester! Wake up. You’re dreaming.”

  I groaned and slit one eye open. Roy leaned over me. “The Sixth Regiment is here,” he said. It was January 4, 1943. The Sixth Marine Regiment, part of the 2d Marine Division, was needed to augment the number of troops on the island now that the 1st Marine Division had left Guadalcanal for Australia.

  I pulled myself up to a sitting position in the foxhole. Sure enough, a new flotilla of United States Naval vessels sat just offshore.

  We watched as the regiment landed. Their approach to the island was peaceful, with most of the enemy holed up in the mountains.
I waded out to help a couple of the men with their equipment. Even though they were facing no real fire, the new Marines looked just as scared as Roy and I had been back in November.

  We ten code talkers left on Guadalcanal would provide secure communications for the fresh troops. Drained as we were, we mustered the strength to stay alert.

  New code talker recruits arrived with the Marines, joining us veterans. Roy and I, partners since we’d first landed in the South Pacific, were each assigned rookies. It wasn’t easy to take on new partners when we had worked so well together, but the new men needed to work with experienced code talkers, men who could help them get acclimated.

  I met my new foxhole partner, Francis Tsinajnnie,31 a man whose surname meant “shadow” in Navajo. I wondered whether Francis would be battle-ready. He and the other new men had been trained as code talkers back in Camp Elliott, where John Benally and John Manuelito were still working as teachers.

  Meeting Francis, I noted that his eyes continually darted around, never resting for long. Nerves. He moved quickly and jumped at any chance to please.

  I showed him the ropes. I filled him in on how, prior to the code talkers’ arrival in the South Pacific, the Japanese broke every code used by the United States. And they broke those codes quickly. Sometimes, the enemy would be lying in wait at a specified U.S. bivouac point before the American troops arrived. Losing the element of surprise drained the strength from Allied attacks, and the United States couldn’t gain a firm foothold anywhere. The Allies stood in imminent danger of losing the war.

  But months after we code talkers had arrived, the Japanese still had no clue about how to break the strange new code. Transmissions, previously intercepted and interpreted at will, flew back and forth with no danger of the enemy learning strategic plans. In an arena as huge as the South Pacific islands, with thousands of miles separating one military installation from another and the safe movement of troops, weapons, and provisions over these miles depending upon secure communications, this was crucial.

  “Nothing to it,” I told rookie Francis. I knew he was worried about whether he’d do a good job as a code talker. I nodded at the TBX radio clutched in my new partner’s arms. “Just try to relax.”

  We sent a few practice messages back and forth with my former partner Roy Begay and his assigned rookie, Roy Notah.

  “Perfect,” I said, grinning at Francis. “Benally and Manuelito are good teachers. You know the code as well as I do.”

  The 2d Marine Division, bolstered by the arrival of its Sixth Regiment, was immediately assigned to take Galloping Horse, a ridge to the west of Mount Austen. Three units of the Army’s 25th Division joined the Marines. These troops, positioned on the west, provided the fourth side of the box already outlined on three sides by the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Infantry Divisions entrenched in the east, south, and north. The series of ridges composing and surrounding Gifu Ridge and Mount Austen were finally completely enclosed. Gifu Ridge was taken by the Americans. The Japanese troops on Mount Austen were cut off and rendered ineffective.

  U.S. troops moved westward along the northern coast of Guadalcanal and then inland, planning to intercept Japanese troops fighting under General Hyakutake. Hyakutake and some of his senior commanders had already left Guadalcanal, but their fighting men remained. As the American troops approached Hyakutake’s men, Japanese ships again maneuvered the Slot. In late January, they managed to quietly evacuate somewhere between seven thousand and thirteen thousand Japanese troops before the Americans arrived to engage them in battle.

  The Japanese had had enough. General Alexander Patch reported that on February 9, 1943, we officially secured Guadalcanal.

  March 1943 through October 1943: Guadalcanal

  We four men—Francis and I working in tandem, and Roy Begay and Roy Notah doing the same—became a team. I watched as my new partner finished reassembling his rifle.

  “There,” he said. “No sand. Good as new.”

  Francis reached into his ammunition pouch and inventoried its contents. He had finally begun to relax, to take things more in stride. He and I had been able to attend to small tasks these last few days, things we’d had no time for during the battle for Mount Austen.

  Word had come down from high command that the 2d Marine Division would take R&R. I wiped sand from the butt of my rifle. “Just in time. I’m beat.” I looked down the beach, twitching my mouth in the direction of a couple Marines who lay with their shirts off, dog tags glinting in the sun. “We all are.”

  We joined the sunbathing Marines and someone, sitting there on the sand, started to sing. “Don’t sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me. Anyone else but me. Anyone else but me . . .” I sang along, feeling proud of my buddies, proud of how they’d all kept up their spirits, even in the worst of times. We were really happy as a troop. And we managed to keep that spirit of brotherhood and camaraderie alive even when some of us were dying.

  But once again, even though the island was secured, we got word that we would not be leaving for R&R. The 3d Marine Division had been assigned to Guadalcanal for training, in preparation for an attack on Bougainville. They would need the code talkers. This time, both my new partner, Francis, and I would stay. Roy Begay and Roy Notah were also staying.

  We code talkers, battle-weary, joined the incoming 3d Marine Division, units of which began arriving on Guadalcanal in June 1943. It took quite a while before we were able to feel at home with our new cohorts. Not that there was anything wrong with the men. They were scared, just like everyone in war, and hoped to do a good job. It’s just difficult to feel the same closeness you felt with men who risked their lives alongside you. The new officers were different from our old officers. Again, not bad, but it took time to get used to new idiosyncrasies and preferences. You depend on your officers in war. They tell you what to expect each day, what they need you to do. There are many times when your life, literally, depends on them. We missed the closeness we’d had with the officers and men of the 1st Marine Division. I wasn’t wise enough, then, in the ways of war to know that the next campaign would bring us close to our new fighting partners.

  We fought with the 3d Division for the rest of the war.

  Now 3d Division Marines, we had survived the battle for Guadalcanal, the longest of the Pacific war. The entire battle lasted more than six months, and we code talkers had been involved for more than three. The U.S. invading forces numbered around 60,000. Between 1,200 and 1,600 American troops died on the island and in the surrounding waters. Many others were wounded in action. Estimates run from 3,000 to 4,400. Although estimates of Japanese losses vary drastically, their dead were thought to number between 24,000 and 30,000 out of a total force of close to 38,000.

  Now that the Japanese were mostly gone, we had more time for things like fortifying our foxholes with sandbags. During the fighting, we’d been too busy to spare any time for filling bags with sand. Ironically, when things got safer, we had time for additional precautions, precautions that were no longer terribly necessary.

  A screen was erected, and we got to watch movies—cartoons like Tom and Jerry and other stuff that made us laugh. Nothing heavy. I especially liked one Gary Cooper picture, The Westerner. Betty Grable was a big morale booster, too. Her musicals were always good. Much of our entertainment came courtesy of the Army. They tended to arrange that type of thing, while the Marines, for some reason, didn’t. We’d sneak out and join the Army troops for the fun. They didn’t mind. Nobody ever kicked us out. Occasionally, when there was no danger of additional hostilities, there was even live entertainment, kind of like vaudeville or burlesque, with good-looking women dancing and singing. I can’t remember whether we had any of that on Guadalcanal, or whether it happened later. After a while, when you’ve been fighting, everything tends to run together.

  We were able to eat hot food and bathe on a somewhat regular schedule. Showering felt especially good, and let us think about things going back to normal. Francis and I stood in line for the
portable showers. Several rows of showers, made from thirty-two-gallon barrels with a hose attached, stretched for thirty or forty feet down the beach.

  “Guess we’ll be shipped off to another island soon,” said Francis, a towel looped around his neck.

  “We’ve secured Guadalcanal,” I said. “Enough for now.”

  A couple of weeks after the Americans took Guadalcanal, we communications men were lounging around. Most of the non-Navajos were smoking. A man offered a cigarette to Francis and me. We both shook our heads. My father had told me stories about smoking, that it was a health hazard. Apparently the other Navajos had been raised the same way. Only occasionally would any of us indulge in a cigarette. We donated our rations of cigarettes to the other men. But I smoked any cigars I could get.

  Now that things had quieted, we had daily mail call. That was a morale booster, although you felt kind of sad when you didn’t get mail. That was me, most days. I knew my family followed a strenuous regime of praying for me, but Dora was the only one at home who wrote and read English, and they weren’t too big on letters. Most everyone who got mail shared it with us, though, reading out loud.

  We spotted a small group of people, six of them children, approaching our Marine encampment. The children—a couple of them less than five or so—walked slowly, dragging their bare feet. An adult woman carried a baby in a sling made from woven tree bark. The baby had been hit by shrapnel. Several Marines directed the family to the medical tent, where we knew corpsmen would treat the injury.

  More and more of the island’s native Melanesian population had begun to trickle into camp. They’d hidden in the mountains during the fighting. Many brought children and babies injured by the war in which they’d taken no part. American corpsmen cared for them and gave them medicine. American troops gave them food.