Code Talker

by Chester Nez

  I said nothing, waiting to hear more.

  The first Marine gave Marine number two a slantwise look. “Anyway, he walked right into camp with ’em, holding his rifle. Just like John Wayne.”

  “We thought he was a Jap bringing in his own men,” Marine number two added. “We should of said, ‘C’mon over here, Chief. Let me see your dog tags.’”

  The story of the code talker and his captives spread, giving everyone a good laugh. Like the Army men on Angaur who had detained me and Francis, some of the Marines thought we dark-haired, dark-skinned code talkers resembled the Japanese. At first, I couldn’t understand it. In my opinion, the two races—Japanese and Navajo—looked nothing alike. But later, after staring eye to eye with that young Japanese prisoner on Guam, I understood. But I never did understand why so many American troops thought our Navajo transmissions were Japanese. I guess Navajo just sounded foreign to them. Our language and the language of the enemy sounded nothing alike.

  The Marines continued to tease us Navajos about our man who had captured the six Japanese. I really didn’t mind the ribbing the other Marines often gave us. And I didn’t mind the nickname “Chief.” We didn’t think of it as a slur. We knew we were well respected as fighting men. We laughed and joked with our fellow Marines, giving back as much as we took.

  The title “code talker” had not been coined yet, since most of the Marines did not know of our secret function. But other Marines had been warned not to call us Navajos or Indians. No one wanted the Japanese to draw any dangerous conclusions. So “Chief” stuck.

  Francis, the two Roys, and I ate cold military rations—packages filled with sardines, a packet of bland crackers that were neither sweet nor salty, and fruit in a can. I used my Ka-bar to open the side of the fruit can. The canned stuff was good, but I especially liked the wild fruits, like coconuts, that dropped from the trees on the islands. A quick stab of the Ka-Bar broke the coconut open. We sliced them like pineapples. They were sweet, delicious.

  Now that Peleliu had been declared secured, we had a big mess tent, and the food had taken on more variety. So after eating our cold rations, we walked to the mess for some hot food. After we’d repeatedly gone for days without food, the more we could eat, the better.

  I munched on a hunk of nonmoldy bread. Wait a minute. I couldn’t believe my ears. Did the mail sergeant actually call my name?

  “Nez, Chester.”

  There it was again. I rushed from the mess tent to grab my letter. With all the stamps and crossed-out addresses—sending the innocuous envelope from one battlefield to another, until it finally stopped on Peleliu—I could barely tell that it was from home. But it was.

  Letters from the United States routinely took eight months to reach us men on the islands. And, judging from what my family said in the few letters that had reached me, my responses took months to make it home.

  I pulled a paper from the open envelope. There were only a few readable lines. The remaining sentences were blacked out. I knew requests from home for inappropriate things, like battle souvenirs, were always censored. But the reasons for much of the other censorship remained a mystery.

  At any rate, the readable portions of my letter from home said things like “Hello. How are you?” and “Take care of yourself,” with plenty of blacked-out lines in between. I studied the handwriting, knowing that it was my younger sister Dora who wrote the letter, in English, and who read my letters to everyone back home. I hated to have to destroy it after reading it, but those were the orders. Command didn’t want to take a chance that the Japanese might get hold of our letters. They didn’t want them to be able to infer how things were at home in the United States, how morale was holding up and who was in the service. The Japanese were a smart adversary, and they could surmise things about troop movements from unlikely sources. Of course, our outgoing letters were censored as well as the incoming. Still, just knowing that my family was thinking about me, praying for me, made the day grow brighter.

  I joined the other guys who had letters, and quite a few who didn’t. We lucky ones all read our messages from home out loud. It’s amazing how similar the Navajo letters tended to be, after being censored. Pretty much all of our relatives had to find someone who wrote English in order to send a letter. Our generation had attended school, but our parents generally spoke the unwritten Navajo, not English.

  I think hearing them read out loud made the men who had no letter feel almost like they’d received one, too. At least it worked that way for me. And the letter-reading session always turned into a good opportunity to talk and joke. That made everyone less tense.

  I would have liked to get more uncensored news—about my family, our neighbors, the sheep. When I answered a letter, I knew my response would arrive, months later, ruthlessly censored as well. No doubt my relatives were just as bewildered by the censoring as we Marines were. I pictured Dora laboring over my letters, trying to make sense out of them, trying to have something meaningful to translate for the others. But I was too busy to let something like mail worry me for long. I had to keep my mind clear. There was too much else to think about.

  The 5th Marine Regiment, having taken northern Peleliu, about-faced and attacked the Japanese on Umurbrogol, or Bloody Nose Ridge, from behind. Ferocious battles followed as the 7th Marine Regiment, still attacking from the south, attempted to climb the steep ridges of Umurbrogol. The series of coral ridges seemed endless, rising from the ground like miniature mountains. The coral cut our boots and slashed our bodies when we dove for cover. The coral, in addition to making it impossible to dig foxholes, shattered when hit by Japanese fire, its shards becoming shrapnel. As the Marines climbed Umurbrogol, the Japanese easily picked the climbers off from adjacent pillboxes and caves. Things looked grim.

  But another of the Army’s 81st Division Regiments—the 323rd Infantry Regiment—arrived on Peleliu near the end of October. We raggedy Marines, decimated in numbers, exhausted, and clutching our sanity with shaky hands, finally left.

  A month of slow and painstaking attacks ensued, with the Allies eventually gaining the upper hand. Three days before the 323rd Infantry Regiment finally took the last large Japanese stronghold on Umurbrogol, Colonel Nakagawa shot himself.

  Peleliu was finally secured. Most of the Marines had left some weeks before. It was November 27, 1944, six weeks and four days after the island had earlier been “declared” secured. And although the Americans finally had control of the entire island of Peleliu, individual Japanese soldiers continued to wander down from Umurbrogol Mountain for several years.35

  I sometimes wonder about those Japanese who never learned of the war’s end. I think that maybe they chose to go “missing” rather than to be captured and returned to a world where they would be scorned. The families of Japanese prisoners faced dishonor right along with the men. So perhaps, after their buddies died, those men decided to be “missing” or “dead,” too. Maybe that was preferable to returning alive and being treated as a coward.

  Victory had cost the United States dearly. In terms of deaths per number of fighting men, Peleliu had the highest casualty rate of the South Pacific war. I have too many pictures in my head of the Navy “docs” running with stretchers through that hellish coral rock, sliding and falling, the wounded man falling off. Or of the Japanese targeting the men as they struggled with a laden stretcher.

  At battle’s end, 1,500 U.S. troops were dead, with 6,700 wounded or missing. Close to 11,000 Japanese and Japanese “subjects”—mainly Korean and Okinawan laborers—were killed, with only 19 fighting men and 283 laborers taken prisoner. Many Japanese had committed suicide, preferring that to capture. And, to tell the truth, enemy wounded lying on the battlefield were unlikely to survive. They were generally shot by the Americans. Too many had attacked their rescuers when we attempted to help them.

  All of us code talkers remember Peleliu with heavy hearts. Code talker Jimmie King said it was the island where the code talkers suffered the most, but I’m not su
re about that. All of the islands were tough. On Peleliu, we did go a long time without water and food. And there weren’t enough medical personnel to deal with all the wounded. Normally, the wounded would be brought to a hospital ship, patched up, and returned to battle. Only the severe cases were sent home. But on Peleliu, they couldn’t get to the ship, and many died waiting to be taken on board.

  Several code talkers were wounded on Peleliu. Code talker Tommy Singer died in the water, making his landing on the island.

  In his book With the Old Breed, E. B. Sledge describes all war as horrendous. “But there was a ferocious, vicious nature to the fighting on Peleliu that made it unique for me. Many of my veteran comrades agreed.”36 And Major General Roy Geiger maintained that Peleliu was the worst battle of the South Pacific war.

  In terms of matériel, the losses were huge as well. Estimates say it took more than fifteen hundred rounds of ammunition to kill each Japanese defender of Peleliu, an almost unbelievable number.

  And, back in the States, the terrible battle went largely unnoticed and unheralded. General Douglas MacArthur had insisted that the conquest of Peleliu was necessary for his attack on the Philippines. He would use the island as a fighter-plane base. Media attention was diverted by General MacArthur and his famous promise, “I will return,” which referred to his retaking the Philippines. He returned to the Philippines on October 20, more than a month before Peleliu was completely secured. But bloody Peleliu was never utilized in that or any other attack.

  Despite the United States’ insistence upon secrecy, the Japanese somehow learned that the unbreakable code being utilized by the Americans had something to do with the Navajo language. No one knows exactly how or when this information was obtained, but it has been hypothesized that a Japanese translator with the surname Goon first associ-ated the Navajo language with the unbreakable code while participating in the interrogation of Joe Kieyoomia. Kieyoomia, a Navajo man who had survived the Bataan Death March, was questioned by Goon and tortured by his Japanese captors in their attempt to force him to crack the code. His ribs and wrist were broken, and he was made to stand naked in freezing weather until his bare feet froze to the ground, leaving blood and flesh on the ice when they pulled him back inside. A nail was driven into his head. It was no use. He could not and would not help the enemy. But the constant attempts the Japanese made to force him to crack the code meant that, at least, they kept him alive. Kieyoomia survived the war, still knowing nothing about the Navajo code.

  After the war, I read a newspaper article about a Navajo man who’d been stationed in Alaska. He heard his Navajo language over the radio as he was flying in a military craft. He told his buddies, “These are my people talking.” But he was never able to make any sense of what was being said in the Navajo code.

  Several Navajo prisoners reported, postwar, that the Japanese had tried to get them to figure out the Marine’s code. None of these captives were code talkers, and none shed any light on the complicated secret language.

  Once the Marines realized that the code was truly a matter of national security, they began to assign bodyguards to us code talkers. I think I had two, although I wasn’t actually told that they were bodyguards. 37 We just thought our bodyguards were buddies, guys who hung around with us and followed us—even when we went to use the restroom. Now we know the bodyguards were making sure the code talkers were safe.

  If a code talker was injured or killed, one of his bodyguards had to explain to his superior officer exactly what happened. The bodyguards were expected to stay alert, and if one of them took a break, another took over. At night, with Japanese bombs blasting, the bodyguards stayed close to us code talkers, making sure we were taken care of. I guess the theory was that you could replace a fighting man, but you couldn’t replace a code talker.

  I don’t know whether our bodyguards had orders to kill us rather than allow us to be captured. The Marine Corps has been asked if this was so, and they did not deny it. I believe that an American bullet would have been preferable to Japanese torture. At any rate, no code talker was ever executed by his bodyguard.

  The 1st Marine Division was sent from Peleliu to R&R in Australia. Once again, Francis and I returned to our 3d Marine Division without that R&R. We went back to Guadalcanal, this time to make preparations for the landing on Iwo Jima.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  No Hero’s Welcome

  January 1945 to October 1945

  A forbidding place, covered by black volcanic ash, Iwo Jima was home to no indigenous animal life. Instead, antiaircraft guns, manned by the troops of the Land of the Rising Sun, sat atop Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima, picking off United States aircraft that overflew the island.

  Back on Guadalcanal, we men trained hard, each wanting to be as prepared as possible for the coming conflict. A volcanic island in the Kazan Rettō chain, Iwo Jima was the gateway to an eventual attack on Japan. It had been colonized by the Japanese back in the 1800s, and it was part of Japan’s inner-island defense plan.

  Iwo Jima was directly in the flight path to Japan from airfields on the islands we had already conquered. Those American-held islands were a little too far from Japan to make a round-trip flight practical. Our pilots declared their need for a refueling base. We needed to secure Iwo Jima, and it promised to be a terrible battle.

  I sat, listening to the lieutenant’s briefing. My heart raced. Another island assault.

  “The Japanese have built a network of tunnels on Iwo Jima,” the lieutenant boomed. “They spread out like an ant colony under the entire island.”

  My heart sank. The Marine sitting next to me turned, met my eyes, and shook his head, a slow motion that spoke of acceptance, but also of the inescapable knowledge of impending danger. Darn! I thought. Tunnels, just like Peleliu.

  “The enemy positions will be nearly impossible to assault,” continued the lieutenant, his enthusiastic voice beginning to grate, given the message it delivered.

  A dark cloud hung over the preparations for the landing. Everyone worried.

  It was late January 1945, early morning. We men milled around, waiting to board ship. Some had heard that plans had been changed. We would attack Japan, not Iwo Jima. But we code talkers knew better. We had transmitted strategic messages about the coming battle on Iwo Jima. Japan considered Iwo Jima to be a critical island, a buffer in their homeland defenses. The United States, too, saw the island as critical—critical to the conquest of Japan.

  Battleships, aircraft carriers, troop carriers, and supply ships all stood ready to depart. A man holding a clipboard moved among us troops, calling out names.

  “Nez! Chester Nez!”

  My stomach clenched. Was that me? I responded, “Over here.”

  “Congratulations!” the man said. “You’ve made your points. You’re going home.”

  The point system awarded points for each island invaded and wrested back from the Japanese. Each island was assigned a unique number, and we Marines were stamped with that number when we invaded the island. The stamps, on our fighting jackets, were very bright, like neon, and they wouldn’t wash off. I had five of them. I reviewed my point tally in my head. By my calculations, my points actually exceeded the number required to be relieved. Happiness swelled up inside me like a balloon ready to burst. It was the happiest day of my life. Home!

  When I climbed aboard the transport ship that would take me to San Francisco, everything had changed. I was a Marine who had fought for my country, a Marine who had contributed in a most unusual way to the war effort. The code I had helped to develop had never been cracked. I had been accepted by the other Marines as a competent combatant. I had been respected and treated as an equal by men who—I’d been warned on the reservation—might look down on Native Americans. And I had seen the world outside the Checkerboard. I’d seen big cities, the ocean, tropical islands, and battle. My life was forever changed.

  I had lived through a time that many people never experience, a terrible time of danger and crue
lty and fear. But I had done what was needed, and I had proved to myself that I could be depended upon. I never had to wonder about that after I came home from the South Pacific.

  And after my war experience, I would never again take the little things, like clean clothes and clean water, for granted. I still appreciate those things every day.

  Other Marines who’d made their points sailed with me. It took a couple of weeks to reach stateside. The ship docked in San Francisco. Everything was quiet, with no one there to greet us. The jubilation we returning Marines felt about coming home was mixed with the cold knowledge that the war was not over. Many of our buddies were still in danger. I did not know the whereabouts of Francis, Roy Begay, and Roy Notah.

  I was still a private first class. I read later that the Marines had no protocol in place for promoting code talkers, since it was a new specialty. A couple code talkers made it to sergeant, but I don’t know of anyone going any higher than that.

  I checked into the Naval hospital in San Francisco to prepare for my return to civilian life. At breakfast one morning, not long after my arrival, newspaper headlines and speakers in the hospital dining room screamed of the attack on Iwo Jima. The Marines had landed on the island at 2 A.M. on February 19, 1945.

  Major Howard Connor, a 5th Marine Division signal officer, had halfa-dozen code talkers with him when he invaded Iwo Jima. He said that without them, the Americans wouldn’t have taken the island. Iwo Jima was the only battle in the Pacific war where Allied casualties outnumbered Japanese casualties.

  On World War II Pacific island battlegrounds, Marines gained the reputation that defines them today—fiercely loyal, fiercely determined, and fiercely lethal combatants. Living examples of their motto semper fi (shortened from semper fidelis or “always faithful”), Marines looked out for each other. And we code talkers, with our secret mission, shared an additional, immeasurable bond with one another. We watched out for our fellow Marines and for our fellow code talkers.