Code Talker

by Chester Nez

  In addition to sharing their good food, we often used the Seabees’ showers. A shower was a luxury after bathing in the streams and pools that dotted the island—streams and pools shared by crabs and crocodiles.

  When not joining the Seabees, we often used small camp stoves as cook fires. We’d remove the cloth cover from our helmets, rinse them out, and cook our dinner in them. Large cook fires were prohibited, because Japanese soldiers were still hiding on the island. The resolute Japanese took any opportunity to skulk in and take potshots at us Americans.

  I pulled a couple of sardines from a can. The Marine sitting next to me had sunken blue eyes, blond hair, and bony shoulders. I handed him a sardine, keeping one for myself, then took a pull on a bottle of military-issue beer.

  “What was it like at home for you guys?” the sunken-eyed Marine asked.

  “It was good. Peaceful,” I said. “Mostly we herded sheep.”

  “Did you have houses like ours?” The Marine stirred something that had been warmed in his mess kit, probably spaghetti with meatballs.

  “Just summerhouses, branches and twigs, at first. Pretty rough. But then, when I was ten or twelve, we built a hogan from tree trunks and mud.”

  “Tree trunks and mud? That still sounds rough.”

  “Nah,” I said. “It was home.”

  We Marines all enjoyed a special camaraderie. I had trusted my life—over and over—to this Marine and to others. They, in turn, had entrusted their lives to us and our critical transmissions. After fighting alongside the men of the 3d Marine Division, I felt at home with them, just as I had with the 1st Marine Division. War makes buddies of strangers pretty darn fast, and we had become buddies.

  We were generally tight with the officers, too. I never saw a Marine, Navajo or otherwise, question the orders of an officer, although I know there were times when we weren’t happy about what we’d been commanded to do. Generally, the officers were good, and they treated the code talkers with respect, as though we were also officers. Our skin color didn’t work against us in the military. Our leaders took care of us. We men counted on them just like they counted on us.

  Bougainville had been secured for a few days when suddenly the signal lights on the TBX radios lit up. We code talkers relayed an unwanted and unexpected message to our fellow Marines: the Japanese were returning to the island by ship, in an attempt to wrest it back from the United States.

  Immediately, a code black was issued. A code black (or condition black) differed from a code red, which was issued in the thick of battle. During a code black, all weapons were readied for use, but we weren’t actively engaged.

  Francis and I sat in our foxhole on the beach near the tree line and waited, armed with grenades and extra ammunition for our rifles. Radio equipment at the ready, we were poised to resume vital communications in the heat of battle. The other Marines maintained a state of readiness as well, with weapons poised and night-vision binoculars within easy reach in case our wait extended into the dark hours.

  It was noon. Seconds ticked by.

  “What I don’t get,” whispered Francis, “is why these Japs are so eager to die.”

  I shook my head. “Makes no sense to me either.”

  “I mean, when they’re surrounded, with no hope, why can’t they just surrender? Any sane person would.” Francis shifted in the foxhole, tried to stretch one leg. “Why do they have to fight till we kill them?”

  “It’s all about honor,” I said. “If they surrender, they’re shamed for life.”

  Francis shrugged his thin shoulders. “I’m glad we’re Americans, not Japs.”

  “Ouu. Those Japanese are scary.”

  For a while we both remained silent. Tense minutes passed slowly. Then I spoke, again in a whisper. “You think we’ll get off this island soon?”

  Francis looked out at the ocean. “Sure as hell can’t swim out.”

  “Where would you go, if you could?” I asked him.

  “Guadalcanal, I guess. It’s safe there, now.” He chuckled. “And from there, home.”

  I saw a movement from the corner of my eye. I reached down and grabbed a black, eighteen-inch lizard, flinging it out of the foxhole. I turned back to Francis. “Remember how it used to take us days walking back from boarding school?”

  “You walked?” asked a Marine in the next foxhole.

  “Ouu. The school truck dropped us off near Gallup, at Manuelito.”

  “How old were you?” he asked.

  “Eight the first time. My sister was five.” I stopped for a minute, thinking. “There was no way to contact our families. No phone.”

  “Damn! What did you eat?” the Marine asked.

  “The truck driver handed us each a stack of sandwiches.”

  “And water?”

  I shook my head, although, from his foxhole, the man I spoke with couldn’t see me. “The walk took, maybe, three days. We had to find water along the way.”

  “But I thought you lived in the desert?” said the unseen Marine.

  “Yeah,” I said, “but some years weren’t so dry.”

  The Marine let out a low whistle. “Jesus! Eight years old. You Indians are tough.”

  I liked thinking about home in that hellhole of a place. The school truck driver dropped me, Dora, and a handful of others west of Gallup. He handed us peanut-butter-and-jam sandwiches, or sometimes hot dogs, and told us to walk the rest of the way. We drank from snowmelt and rainfall that, if we were lucky, created puddles in the arroyos. Confident from our years herding sheep, we followed horse trails across arroyos and mesas. Sometimes people we encountered along the way invited us to spend the night inside a shelter. Otherwise, we slept out in the open. It was usually not too cold in May.

  I pulled my thoughts back to the present. Everyone was growing more and more quiet, waiting for the Japanese Navy to attack. Three o’clock in the afternoon came and went. Four. No Japanese fleet. Every sound of men in nearby foxholes—shifting their weight or adjusting a weapon—made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. You could almost hear nerves pinging in the air.

  My radio beeped and the red light blinked on.

  “Message.” I pressed the headset to my ears. I felt a huge grin break across my face. “Our Navy beat the Japs. We’re condition yellow.” Condition yellow meant “all clear.”

  The United States Navy, the branch of service to which the Marines belonged, had intercepted the Japanese fleet as they approached Bougainville. A sea battle had ensued, with the Americans emerging victorious.

  We Marines cheered our Naval brothers in arms. On shipboard, Navy men and Marines often harassed each other. Fistfights broke out on the battleships and destroyers when a sailor called a Marine a “jarhead” or a Marine referred to a sailor as a “swab jockey.” That day, though, all of the rivalries were forgotten. We thanked God for our sailors.

  Francis, the other code talkers, and I sent the message out to the rest of the troops on Bougainville. Men cheered, and relief poured over us all, palpable as a bucket of cool water. Everyone’s biggest fear had been that the enemy would wait for the cover of darkness, then attack the island the Americans had fought so diligently to secure.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Onward to Guam

  June to July 1944: Training, Guadalcanal

  The terrain of Guadalcanal was familiar, but the island seemed eerily quiet. Scattered foxholes, splintered trees, and the occasional broken-down tank testified to the battles we had fought there. It felt strange to be on an island that wasn’t in the midst of combat. After taking Bougainville, my 3d Marine Division had returned to the site of the code talkers’ first campaign. The island had become a jungle training base and a staging area for war equipment and supplies.

  This wasn’t R&R. Generals had gathered on the island, where, huddled over maps of the South Pacific, they discussed which islands should be invaded next and wrangled over the details of the United States’ war strategy. How many men should be sent? How long should we b
omb the island prior to invading? The generals may have planned the war, but we men on the ground lived it.

  A special liaison kept the code talkers informed of plans, and we were asked to forward strategic information to military leaders who weren’t at the meetings.

  Guadalcanal had been a beautiful tropical island before the war hit. Now broken heavy equipment was buried in the sand or hauled out into the ocean and sunk. Vegetation was trampled and shattered. Dead and broken palm trees had gone from green to brown. The brush was cut and dying. Bomb craters disfigured the once-pristine sweep of beach. It was awful, seeing all the things that had been destroyed.

  But it was safe, a good place for training. We learned additional words as they were added to our Navajo code. It was a flexible secret language, sensitive to the dictates of battle, and always growing. Our vocabulary expanded throughout the war to accommodate new equipment or practices, anything that was needed by our troops and officers.

  One I remember was the bazooka, a terrible gun, rocket-propelled, recoilless, and very effective as an antitank weapon. It delivered HE (high explosive) warheads and wasn’t used by American forces until 1943, after we had already developed the original code. The gun was operated by two-man teams, aimer and loader, and its accurate range was limited, maybe three hundred feet, but it could take out any tank and was also used with great success to attack fortified positions. Bazookas were so effective that the Germans, back in Europe, copied the design and used our own innovation against us. The code talkers had to come up with a word for the new weapon. Someone chose ah-zhol, which means “stovepipe” in Navajo. That made perfect sense, since, in the field, the bazooka was nicknamed the “stovepipe.” All the code talkers learned the new word, as well as other words required by similar innovations. Upgrade code training was always stressed, since the original and the newer code talkers had to be in sync, and everyone had to be familiar with new vocabulary. Drilling on the code never ended.

  Occasionally we were assigned to work detail. When there was no real work to accomplish, we dug holes, six feet deep, only to turn around and fill them. It was a strange assignment. I guess the Marines figured digging was a good way to get exercise.

  I relaxed. Even strenuous Marine training was less exhausting and stressful than the fierce fighting we had endured on Guadalcanal and Bougainville. The bulk of the South Pacific islands still remained in the hands of the Japanese. Our victories at Bougainville and at Guadalcanal provided United States troops with jump-off points for future conquests.

  When night arrived on the Guadalcanal training base, everything was quiet, almost surreal. With no ear tuned for the sound of enemy troops, I slept soundly there for the first time in months. I woke early, to the sounds of men swimming and roughhousing, the smells of food cooking. What a life!

  We prepared for our assault on Guam, an island much smaller than Bougainville and Guadalcanal. But at only 212 square miles, it was the largest and most southern island in the Mariana Islands chain. The Mariana Islands lay due east of the Philippines, and the United States’ command saw them as stepping stones to an eventual attack on Japan.

  Operation Forager pursued the objective of capturing several of the Mariana Islands, foremost among them Saipan, Tinian, and Guam.

  July to August 1944: Guam

  Guam had been a territory of the United States from 1900 until the Japanese captured it in late 1941, immediately after their invasion of Pearl Harbor. The Japanese perpetrated many atrocities against the island natives, the Chamorro people. They were tortured, beheaded, and treated as slaves. The Chamorros, who had been well treated during the American occupation, naturally favored the Americans. And the United States military knew that for strategic reasons, they needed to wrest the island back from the Japanese.

  Prior to our land invasion of Guam, American bombers and ships strafed the beach near Apra Harbor. The bombing lasted for thirteen days.

  On July 21, 1944, Marines and infantry invaded Guam. We Marines in the 3d Division landed north of Apra Harbor, an important deep-water harbor on Guam’s western coast. Our goal was to capture the Japanese Naval yard located there. A regiment from the Army’s 77th Division, along with the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade, landed south of Apra. Their assignment was to capture the Orote Peninsula and its airfield.

  Bullets fell like deadly sleet. Francis and I waded ashore from our landing craft. Ahead, I could see much of the island. The vegetation was close to the ground, and the terrain was more hilly than mountainous. At least the Japanese wouldn’t have a mountain stronghold that overlooked the entire island.

  But the enemy did have several vantage points atop a series of ridges and cliffs that overlooked the beach. Bombs and bullets flew everywhere. A daisy cutter hit the beach near me. Shrapnel exploded outward. Something slammed into my foot. I looked down at my left boot. A piece of shrapnel had lodged there.

  “Corpsman!” someone yelled.

  I said nothing, just gritted my teeth. We Navajo men never screamed when we were hit, and we waited for someone else to call the medic. We’d been raised to suffer silently.

  A medic fought his way through the assault. The shrapnel had sliced my left foot between my big toe and the toe adjacent. The corpsman wrapped the injured foot. “You can keep going, Chief,” he said.

  “Okay, Doc. Thanks.”

  Business as usual, I told myself, diving behind a bush with Francis. The radio beeped and blinked. An American cargo plane flew overhead, dropping crates full of supplies onto an empty portion of the beach. We listened to the message, then ran behind a three-by-five-foot crate and hunkered down.

  Francis and I survived days one through four on Guam. Our 3d Marine Division captured the beachhead north of Apra Harbor while the American troops five miles to the south fought to isolate the Orote Peninsula.

  During the night of day five, stuck in our foxhole, I tried to ignore the throbbing of my foot. I concentrated on my bladder, which felt as though it would burst. I nudged Francis. “Gotta take a leak.”

  “Me, too,” he said.

  “Don’t try to crawl out.” I shuddered, thinking about what had happened to Harry Tsosie on Bougainville.

  We Marines had been warned numerous times about relieving ourselves at night. We should never stand up. Some men would leave their trenches on all fours, flying in the face of our superior officers’ warnings. But we were always told to simply stay and do our business in the foxhole. Our helmets did double duty as chamber pots.

  “Crawl out? Not me,” said Francis.

  I crouched lower in the foxhole. No one could forget the Japanese Banzai who lurked out there or their war cry, “Banzai! Banzai! Banzai! Marines, you die!”

  “Better not leave this hole,” I said.

  I could hear the smile in my partner’s voice. “Right!”

  We had plenty of things to worry about, and being delicate about biological functions wasn’t one of them. Besides, we’d learned that we stayed drier in the tropical climate if we didn’t wear underwear, which served only to hold the wet against our bodies. So we went “commando,” which made things easier when we had to pee. We pissed in the foxhole, feeling better after responding to nature’s call. Then, careful to keep our heads low, we tried to get comfortable in the cramped trench. I closed my eyes, hoping for sleep.

  But before dawn our radio came to life. Shouted messages told of a Banzai attack. No time to even think about an injured foot. Thanks to Lieutenant General Takeshi Takashina’s leadership, the Japanese attackers were better organized than previous Banzai had been. They’d slipped between two regiments of our Marine 3d Division, actually attacking U.S. positions just before dawn.

  When we Americans responded, the walking wounded from the division hospital joined the fray, and the nonwalking wounded shot at the enemy from their hospital cots. The Japanese drive broke up, with groups of the enemy losing both their leaders and contact with one another. The battle dissolved into a series of isolated skirmishes.

/>   The Navajo radio net was busy all night. Everyone needed ammunition. Everyone needed grenades. Everyone needed night flares. Messages zipped back and forth as fast as we could send them. Exhausted, Francis and I, both with headsets, wrote the incoming messages down and quickly compared them to make sure we had made no mistakes.

  In the full light of morning, dead Japanese lay everywhere, 3,500 of them. There were many fewer dead Marines. Thanks to our Navajo code, our U.S. troops had been warned. When the smoke of battle cleared, we Americans still owned the beachhead.

  That same night, as the Japanese approached our beach north of Apra Harbor on foot, U.S. troops just south of the harbor completed their assignment to take the Orote Peninsula. We Americans owned both the airfield at Orote and Apra Harbor with its Naval yard.

  A group of Seabees had built several large foxholes on the island, huge holes covered with palm logs and camouflaged with dirt and leaves. Sometimes they dug the holes into a hill, making something like a cave, and covered the door with branches. The “super” foxholes measured maybe twelve by fifteen feet, with one side open, and were so deep you could almost stand in them. Officers and enlisted men all dove for those shelters when we thought an attack was coming. The officers mixed with us men and often removed signs of rank so the Japanese wouldn’t target them. We all huddled together, feeling safer than in a standard foxhole. Although the officers sometimes had a tent to sleep in at night—not like us enlisted men, who slept in foxholes—they were just regular guys, seeming every bit as scared as the rest of us.

  When bombs dropped, generally we code talkers couldn’t just curl up in a shelter. We were almost always needed to transmit information, to ask for supplies and ammunition, and to communicate strategies. And after each transmission, to avoid Japanese fire, we had to move.

  One morning, my squad huddled in a bomb crater large enough to hold eight men. Francis and I stayed close, connected by our communications gear. Our leader, a tall, skinny second lieutenant from New York, was not popular with the men. He had a mean streak and a desire for personal glory that made him especially dangerous to the men under his command. He ran back and forth on the crater’s lip, yelling at us to “move the fuck” out. A shot rang out. I saw the lieutenant fall. He was hit either in the ass or the nuts. Corpsmen arrived immediately and patched him up.