Code talker WWII's 'secret weapon'

JCFalkenbergIII · #1 (**permalink**) April 18th, 2008, 06:28 PM

Chester Nez of New Mexico couldn’t even tell his family about his work as a Navajo code talker in World War II until 28 years after he completed his service in the Marines.Rich Beauchesne photo

By David Ramsay
news@seacoastonline.com

April 18, 2008 6:00 AM
ELIOT, Maine — Six hundred students and area veterans got to see "a secret weapon used in World War II" during an assembly on Thursday at Marshwood Middle School. And they got to hear him, too.
Chester Nez, 87, is one of three remaining — out of the original 29 — Navajo Indians who devised and used an unbreakable code in the war, as depicted in the 2002 movie "Windtalkers," starring Nicolas Cage.
"Unless you had a top secret clearance," said Marine Maj. David Flores, a South Berwick resident who organized the event, "you didn't know what his job was."
Nez told the students, "I'm very happy that I served my country."
But he described how difficult it was to decide to join the Marine Corps in 1942 when a recruiter came to his high school.
"I thought about how my people were betrayed by Kit Carson and forced to walk hundreds of miles. ...; That was called the Long Walk. It wasn't until 1968 that the Navajos were able to return to their homeland," he said.
"But, with my friend, I decided to join, and we were among the 29 original code talkers," he said.
There would be 400 to 500 before the end of the war, according to Flores, who referred to Nez as a secret weapon. Flores described how Navajo was spoken by only 45 non-Navajo people in the early 1940s and that made it an ideal language for a code because no Japanese knew it and it was very complex.
"The Japanese had broken the other codes we were using, and the Navajo code was much faster," he said. "It would take 30 minutes to send and translate the other codes. A Navajo code talker could do that in 30 seconds."
Nez and the other Navajos were sent to Camp Elliott, north of San Diego, where they devised and memorized the code.

"We were shipped to an island, where we prepared again, memorizing the code on maneuvers and then we were shipped to Guadalcanal. It was the first time we used the Navajo code," said Nez.
"The Japanese did everything in their power to break the code, but they never did. It was unbreakable."
On Wednesday, at a similar assembly at Winnacunnet High School in Hampton, Flores said the military picked the Navajo language because at the time it was an unwritten language, very complex and extremely difficult to decipher.
Nez said they came up with a code by using mostly Navajo words for animals, sea creatures and different kinds of birds.
The Navajo word for "eggs" was used for "bombs," "chicken hawk" for "dive bomber" and "whale" for "submarine." The code for America was "ne-heh-mah," the Navajo word for "mother."
After the war, back at home, Nez said he participated in a four-day Navajo ceremony of purification, called the Blessing Way, which he said "erased the horrible war memories in my soul ...;"
But Nez was unable to tell even his parents or closest relatives what he did during the war until 28 years later, when the code was finally declassified.
Marshwood eighth-grader Ryan Anderson said: "It was great to see what his life was like and it was amazing to see how they formed that code using a complicated language."
Eighth-grader Casey Brown said, "I never knew how big a part the Navajo people played in World War II. I never knew they were even involved in it."
Patrick Cronin contributed to this report.

Code talker WWII's 'secret weapon'