Code Talker: The First and Only Memoir By One of the Original Navajo Code Talkers of WWII

I'd heard of code talkers before, but I'd never really dived into their history. I found this book, written by one of the original 29 (or 32 if you go by Chester's numbers). Code talkers were a group of brave Native Americans who used the Navajo language to make sure the Japanese didn't know what the Americans were doing in the Pacific during WWII. The code was never broken and was much quicker and more efficient than what was being used previously. I like how the memoir went through almost his entire life. It covers his childhood up until 2011. Chester passed away in 2014 and was the last surviving member of the original code talkers. He lived quite a life and went through so much. I have the Kindle version and wanted to mention a few things. The text for the book ends at page 276. Acknowledgements, Navajo dictionary for the code, Bibliography, an index, maps of the islands Chester helped conquer, and pictures fill the rest of the book. The pictures start on page 347. The code was small and hard to read on my Paperwhite, but that's something I could fix. This is one of the better memoirs I've read. The writing was easy to read, there were enough breaks if you wanted to stop for a while, and the subject matter was super interesting to me. I believe this is an important part of WWII history that shouldn't be forgotten. The impact these men had was so important to the Pacific theater, and it was a secret for so long. If you're at all interested in a life lived the Right Way, I recommend this book.

Fascinating true story- well worth reading.

This is definitely a must-read for anyone interested in this topic or certainly the history of the war. The code talkers were neglected for so many years - and one could certainly digress as to why, but that is fodder for another day. This memoir is a good start on the road to rectifying that wrong. The memoir could have concentrated just on the war years, but that would have been a mistake. Any good historian knows, as the late R.G.L. Waite used to say, that in order to study World War II you must look back as far as possible. And in order to look back at the late Mr. Nez's experience in the war, it is imperative that he fully discuss his life with the reader- which he wisely did in this volume. We are introduced to his life before the war - beginning as a young child, including when he was forced to attend boarding school for many years, away from his family, where English was rammed down his throat and his native language was forbidden. If you are unfamiliar with the legalized repression of the Navajo culture in American history, this is yet another reason why you absolutely must read this book. It is perfectly understandable why it was co-written by a professional writer, who spent countless hours interviewing him in depth. Our code talker never pretended to be a professional writer, nor should he have spent years writing a memoir at his advanced age. I am sure he had better things to do. His co-writer was smart in that she allowed him to retain his voice almost always throughout the book. You note that I said "almost always." There are times in the book - even sentences and paragraphs - where it is clear that the writing is in an entirely different voice, and as an experienced reader that may jangle your nerves. Their editors should have caught that and fixed it. However, any memoir that is cowritten with a professional writer usually has this as an Achilles heel, and one must suppress one's perfectionism as a reader because the story itself is so compelling. Certainly the story within Code Talkers is extraordinarily compelling and the writing, quite good. I read it very quickly within a couple of days - and you probably will as well. I recommend it highly.

After being treated horrendously like a sub-human at two different "boarding horror schools" while he was a child, Nez's culture as a Navajo was facing genocide. Beaten daily, feed little, forced to follow english commands that they did not understand since they weren't taught english and punished for not following the command, and a whole host of violations that would today place the boarding school tyrant "matrons" in jails for very long periods of time and catch the attention of UN Unicef's, America's child protective services and a myriad of government protective agencies and organizations. In a stroke of hypocrisy, under the suggestion of a military man who had spend time with the Navajo, the Marines looked to Nez to speak the language that he had been so forcefully and cruelly forbidden to, in order to serve his country and protect it from tyranny. The other armed branches skeptical of the Navajo "code" were reluctant to switch to it from an elaborate and archaic coding system which took up valuable time in the combat field, where time lost quite literally translated to men lost and friendly fire incidents prevailed, but the marines flirted with the idea. Once marine Generals saw that the old coding communications took four hours to transmit a communication and the Navajos took two minutes to accurately convey the same message, misgivings were set aside and the Navajo were brought in to save American lives and end the war as quickly as possible to save Japanese lives as well. Nez witnessing of his fellow marines die and suffer, on the battle field and in the hospital as well as several of his fellow Navajo code talkers, was trial enough. Nez had to nonstop transmit critically important messages all throughout the day on the battlefield, having to change sites after every transmission, while gunfire, mortar, grenades and various artillery is going off around them and coming down on them. Furthermore, the Navajos Marine commanders deemed their mission too important to permit the overworked Navajo marines to go on break like all of their fellow battle weary and fatigued Marines. The Navajos never questioned their duty. The Navajo code talkers diffused many of their anxieties with their classic Navajo humor. Nez's trails would not end there though. After committing the most anxiety provoking task since he'd had been in the trenches of asking a woman's family for permission to marry then marrying his third girlfriend, the one he wanted to spend the majority of his time with, then having a un Navajo weeding at a catholic church, Nez's wife gives birth to a girl. Nez's wife lives but the girl that Nez had been dreaming of perishes after only an hour of life in the hospital. Nez is devastated that he lost a daughter that is so highly valued in Navajo culture, even more so than sons sometimes. Nezs trails continue. After having a son with his wife, who is from another tribe, the son missteps off a train and dies. When Nez's other son runs out to him at his home in Albuquerque, Nez's wife restrains him and tells him that his father needs to be alone. Nez tries to dry his tears from the double death of two of his children before his son runs up to him. Nez's trails continue. After his 21 year old son is partying with his friends, he gets into a car with a drunk friend and his killed when the drunk friend crashes the car into anther car that had been chasing them. Nez's trials continue. Late in Nez's life, after moving from his home in Albuquerque where he was living while he lost three of his children, Nez outlives his daughter. In addition to the battlefield scars that Nez faces, he also had to live with the death of four children, but he handled all of this with the Navajo ideal of balance, not falling prey to the perils of alcohol like several of his fellow code talkers later do. Nez constantly quoted the famous Navajo saying of "Beauty in front of me, beauty behind me, beauty to the left of me, beauty to the right of me." Besides inventing an unbreakable code, this story is a tale of Navajo stamina and strengths triumphing over painstaking grief. Nez had to also deal with the changing generations of Navajos, many who did not respect or value the ways that he had been shown by his family members. Nez liked a girl very much but because she was in one of the five tributes at the time associated with his own, he could not pursue her. As Nez wrote the book, it was not uncommon for current Navajo to marry a tribal half sister. As Nez is trying to rid himself of the nightmares of Japanese attackers that plague his mind through a ceremony, the Navajos giving the ceremony do not follow the guidelines that had been observed in his previous ceremony to rid him of these demons of negative lingering spirits. As a snake entered the building of the ceremony, the man entrusted with guarding the door kills the snake rather then redirecting it, as it is incorrect to kill anything without using it, thus spoiling the ceremony. Furthermore, at night several of the Navajo involved in the ceremony choose to drink alcohol, which is strictly forbidden during such a ceremony. Only through the family's quick action is Nez's family able to quickly organize and execute another ceremony to redo the damage done in this ceremony, is Nez able to rid himself of the symptoms associated with PTSD.

A true story of Native American heroes that truly won the war in the Pacific. Well written by one of the original Navajo Code Talkers explaining in great detail how they relayed target coordinates from the battlefield to the Japanese targets. One of the best books I have read in a long time!

My husband is a retired Master Sgt in the Marines. He was enjoying this book as I noticed signs of reading. He took it to “his throne” to read! lol! UNFORTUNATELY, we just had a house fire recently, and lost everything. I hope to replace it for him eventually so when we get a new to us home, it will be”feel like home” again! Unfortunately it will be quite awhile as it is a non essential n we can’t right now.

Although Chester Nez cooperates with co-writer Judith Schiess Avila, his words come through as his own. Chester Nez said: "I'm no hero; I just wanted to serve my country." And serve it he did, though it seems his country had not served him well. "Chester" was not even the name his family had given him. That "American" name was given him at the government's boarding school, miles from his home, when he was five years old. Students there were supposed to learn English and were punished for speaking Navajo, his people's language. Chester recounts his schooling and young life at his home. We learn something of his culture in the sun-baked area of New Mexico, including his family life, religious rites and sheep and goat raising. Once government employees brought heavy excavating equipment and dug a deep, wide trench near the Nez home. Then they told the family to round up 300 of their sheep and goats and drive them into the trench. There they were drenched with a flammable liquid and burned alive. Eventually the Nez family heard that the reason for this slaughter was an effort to preserve pastureland. This was misguided and unnecessary because the Navajo moved their stock from area to area to prevent over-grazing. Chester said that for months he had nightmares in which he heard the animals high-pitched screams. The efforts of the government school to have Chester learn to speak only English proved to be ironic. Years later he and other teen-aged Navajos at the government school were recruited by the U.S. Marines, who called upon the youths to serve their country. The government was looking for young men who were proficient in English AND NAVAJO. (Through those years, their families spoke only Navajo to their children.) The boys were eager to pass the language tests and be of service. Those who passed the test were sworn in as Marines, and shipped to a camp in California before they could tell their families. In addition to their training as Marines, the young men were tasked to use the Navajo language to develop a secret code. This they did. They were on a ship bound for war in the Pacific before they were told for what the code would be used. The Japanese had broken every code the U.S. military had used up to that time. Maybe these few Navajo Marines could change that. Chester describes how he and other code talkers developed the code and how it was used successfully in the some of the islands' bloodiest campaigns. The code was shared only among the "Talkers." So it took teams of four Navajo, two who translated orders from commanding officers to the men at the front and two at the front to translate for the Marines for whom the orders were meant. At each end of the radio transmissions, there was a translator and a radioman. Some of the Code Talkers were killed in the fierce fighting. The Japanese never broke the code. The government, not knowing when the code might be needed again, swore the Navajo to secrecy. It was years later before the Talkers were able to tell, even their families, what an important part they played in victories in the Pacific war and how they had served their country. The code is included in the book, and until you see it, you can't understand how imaginative and clever these young Navajo were.

Having lived on the Navajo Reservation for a few years and after hearing my father, who was a Marine, and had met some of these Code Talkers in the World War II, I wanted to know more about them. This book is well written and helps you to understand their challenges and achievements.

Book arrived as stated. Book in great shape. This book is one I will have to read .

Very interesting!

Code Talker: The First and Only Memoir By One of the Original Navajo... Chester Nez ok, welldone ok ok ok

The book revealed exactly what the title said. Along with many photos I enjoyed it thoroughly and as a WWII history buff I was very pleased with this book

This is a well-written account of the way that the language of the Navajo Indians formed the basis of a code to encipher secret messages. Despite the efforts of the Germans the code proved unbreakable. The book is written by a man belonging to the Navajo Indian tribe who was in the navy and whose identity was kept secret. I give it five stars because of the unique and authentic story, and because of the quality of the writing, but I confess that it went on a little too long for me and I skipped the last part.