Code Talker (15 page)

Then there were Roy and me. We were both serious guys, and we paid close attention to our assignments. Roy was close to six feet tall, and I was much shorter, five feet six inches. We both had wiry builds, and we depended on each other. Although neither of us made many jokes, we laughed a lot with the other guys. They were all good men, and it makes me feel nostalgic, thinking about those guys, my buddies. We Navajos have long been known for our sense of humor, and looking back, I am struck by how many of the men were born entertainers. It was good for morale.

We finished the development phase. We felt sure we had a code that even a native Navajo speaker would not be able to crack. Our classroom was unlocked, and we code talkers went out on maneuvers to test the code and to practice, practice, practice. When we saw the letter
C
we had to think
moasi.
In battle, there would be no time to think: C,
cat
.
That's
moasi. It had to be automatic, without a conscious thought process. We were to be living code machines.

Several Marine generals came to the room to listen as the code was refined. As part of the training, those men arranged to put some of us on shipboard—both submarines and surface ships—and some on land. We often spread out like this for field maneuvers aimed at practicing the code.

Someone not involved with our group heard the messages, and all along the California coast troops suddenly went to “condition black” (a state of readiness where weapons were prepared for immediate use) thinking that the Japanese had invaded the United States mainland at San Diego. A couple of the code talkers were taken to North Island Headquarters, where they quelled the panic. They listened to the tapes of “Japanese” made by the officers and identified the language as Navajo. One of the colonels involved with the program told his superiors that the strange language was their own Navajo Marines speaking a code that they had developed. He promised to give headquarters advance warning of future field maneuvers involving the code so that the Navajo words wouldn't be mistaken for Japanese and wouldn't cause panic.

The new code was leagues more efficient than the “Shackle” code used previously by combatants. Once they stopped being troubled by the foreign-sounding words, the generals were impressed.

Still, some had doubts. Over and over we demonstrated the speed and accuracy of our code for various high-ranking officers. Some observers even thought the code was so accurate—word for word and punctuation mark for punctuation mark—that we must be cheating somehow.

That bothered us. What point would there be in cheating? That wouldn't cut it in battle. We wanted our code to work as much as anyone else did. Maybe more. But we didn't let on how much that accusation insulted us.

To see whether we were scamming, some officers separated the men transmitting from those receiving so we couldn't see each other, then posted guards by each so we couldn't cheat in any way. Our messages were still fast and accurate. Eventually the observers had no choice but to admit that our code worked.

As a further test, expert code breakers from the United States military were assigned the task of breaking our code. They tried for weeks, but not one man met with any success in breaking the Navajo code.

Finally, the Marine brass threw their considerable weight behind the code. We had earned staunch allies.

Later, new code talker recruits expanded this code, adding two more Navajo words to represent most letters and more than four hundred additional words for other military terms, bringing the code to around seven hundred words. When a code talker transmitted the letter
A,
he could then use the Navajo word for “ant” or “apple” or “axe.” The code talkers might spell a word containing three
As
using each of the three words for
A
. This broke the pattern of one-letter-one-word, a pattern in which a code cracker might discover the symbol for
E,
the most common letter in English, and other letters based upon how frequently they were used. The extra letter symbols made the code even more complex and more impossible to crack, and the added words for military maneuvers and equipment made transmission even faster.

 

 

In late September 1942, our thirteen weeks in Camp Elliott came to an end. We graduated as Navajo code talkers, Marine Corps MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) number 642 and were promoted to private first class.

We hoped to get some leave, but again our officers talked to us. They explained that we were badly needed in the South Pacific theater of the war, where the Japanese had already taken Guam, the Philippines, and Burma on the Malay Peninsula. They had attacked New Guinea and prevailed in the Battle of the Java Sea. The Bataan Death March in the Philippines, in which more than five thousand Americans perished, had been well publicized back in April, around the time we had been recruited.

The U.S. victories at the Battle of the Coral Sea and the Hawaiian island of Midway were also known to us. Midway had been the first major Japanese Naval defeat in 350 years. And, of course, we were familiar with the valiant ongoing struggle by the United States to take Guadalcanal.

So, again, we were not allowed to visit our families. We immediately prepared to board ships bound for the French islands of New Caledonia. It was autumn, before the middle of October.

Our Japanese enemies, we were informed, had always managed to crack American communications codes. Past experience gave them a well-earned confidence that they could decipher any code devised by the United States. But they were unaware that a new era of wartime communications had begun.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

New Caledonia

The ocean swelled and subsided, wave after wave, motion without end. I half stood, half leaned against the ship rail. One of my buddies leaned beside me. Our hands and faces clammy, neither of us spoke. That morning, most of the men had thrown up the antiseasick pills that were routinely handed out on board ship.

Another code talker joined us and groaned. “Are we there yet?”

En route to the French islands of New Caledonia, a group of islands off the east coast of Australia in the South Pacific, we traveled light. Our dress blues stayed back in San Diego, as did anything else we wouldn't need in battle. Some of the guys sent stuff home, but I just loaded a sea-bag and left it at the base in San Diego. I never got any of its contents back, except for my dress blues.

Our ship, the luxury ocean liner USS
Lurline,
had been converted for military use. The vessel, once ringing with the clink of crystal glasses, faint memories of haunting melodies drifting just beyond earshot, was now a military transport vessel. I could almost see the former passengers— moneyed men, like movie stars, resplendent in tuxedos, bejeweled women hanging on their arms. But now, in the fall of 1942, one big barracks area replaced the private rooms, and the separate dining areas had become a single mess hall. So we troops slept and ate together.

The elegant vessel, armed with hastily mounted artillery on deck, moved toward a destination that had never graced its peacetime itinerary: the Pacific islands of World War II.

When our transport ship docked in Hawaii the next day, only officers were granted shore leave. There were ten of us code talkers on board, and most were too sick to care about carousing onshore. We went below, where hammocklike beds were strung from a metal framework, four high, with racks for our rifles bolted onto the wall next to them. We climbed into our beds in the stuffy, hot hold of the ship. My bunk was on the third tier, and when the man above me climbed into his hammock, it hung down burdened with his weight, nearly touching my nose. The smell in there—of sweating bodies and vomit—was terrible, but we could forget it for a while if only we could sleep. After a while I gave up and climbed out of my bunk. I went up on deck and slept in the fresh air, with a breeze rustling the leaves onshore and my blanket wrapped around me.

We code talkers remained on board with the other enlisted Marines, wondering whether we'd ever stop feeling seasick. We stayed in Hawaii a few days, always aboard ship. At this time a new contingent of Marine recruits boarded.

The ship departed for New Caledonia, and the newly boarded recruits soon began to turn green. Like us, they had to develop their sea legs. The seasoned sailors assured us that we would all be fine by the time we reached our destination.

I woke at 5 A.M. for breakfast, managing to eat a few bites. We practiced the new code all morning. At lunch, most of us were able to eat at least something. After a week, our bodies had begun to adjust to the constant rolling of the ship. After lunch, I did calisthenics with the other code talkers—the sick ones joining in with the well. Then we cleaned our rifles and practiced close-order drills.

Finally, in late afternoon, we had some free time. Some of the men read, taking books from the ship library. I was never too much of a reader, although occasionally I'd pick up a book. That afternoon, I joined a few of the others to play blackjack. Poker and blackjack were very popular. I didn't have much money, and had no money to waste, so I didn't play cards all that often.

It was a long trip to the South Pacific—a couple of weeks—and it was hot. The weather was one of the most difficult things we had to adapt to. Coming from the desert, we were used to heat, but we couldn't seem to get used to the constant humidity that transformed the ship into a sweat bath like the ones in our sweat huts back home. Those, though, we only stayed in for an hour or so. This muggy heat we couldn't escape.

Often the men got together and sang. I always liked that. Someone grabbed a guitar, and a couple of others played harmonicas. Sometimes we sang religious songs like “Rock of Ages
.
” Other times we sang popular songs. “Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree” and “I've Got Sixpence” were two of the favorites
.
Those songs always made me think of home. They reminded me of the beautiful land and the people I loved—everything I was fighting for.

We'd play rough-and-tumble, stealing one another's food and spraying each other with hoses on deck. Pretty frequently we'd get to watch a movie. Everyone looked forward to this. It was a great diversion from thinking about war. We needed that kind of thing.

In addition to reminding us about the secrecy of the code, Marine trainers had warned us to concentrate on our purpose—communications—and not to think about whether we'd live or die in the South Pacific. But those thoughts just came into my mind. I couldn't help it. It was impossible not to think.

In general, we ten code talkers on the ship stayed close, talking Navajo and practicing—always practicing—the new code. Sometimes other Marines in our battalion overheard our practice. “What are you doing?” they'd ask.

We shrugged. “Speaking Navajo,” we'd answer. We were not allowed to reveal the details of our secret assignment even to our fellow Marines.

Cards, reading, and the constant practicing of the code provided our most frequent distractions from the ordeal ahead. Unlike the meals during basic training, where food was a hearty and a welcome diversion, the food on board ship was not as plentiful as we would have liked. We did get two small bottles of sage beer every day, one at about eleven o'clock in the morning and one in the evening. And there was lots of coffee. But to augment our allotments of food, we code talkers volunteered for kitchen duty. We had to wake at four in the morning, but figured it was worth it.

Some of the kettles in the galley were so big we'd walk right into them in order to scrub them! And we'd scrub the smaller pots and pans, too. It wasn't bad work. While on kitchen duty, when not suffering from seasickness, we ate as much as we could hold—our own meals plus leftovers.

Grande Terre
,
the largest of the New Caledonia islands, loomed as we approached. We gathered along the railing for a view of our next home. The ship slowed as the water grew more shallow, and a small pilot boat came out to guide us in. The captain of the pilot boat came aboard the
Lurline
to help our ship captain navigate the unfamiliar harbor waters of Noumea Bay. As the ship drew into the American base there at Noumea, I imagined the feel of solid earth under my feet.

Mountains ran the length of the island, dominating the scene before me, and conifer trees, a rare sight on a tropical island, lined the beach. They reminded me of the piñon and juniper back home. I quickly squashed that thought. The challenging job at hand required my entire focus. I didn't need to be homesick for New Mexico.

Onshore, we ten code talkers from the USS
Lurline
reunited with others who had come on different vessels. It felt good to be together again. Through Marine boot camp, followed by the serious job of designing and memorizing the code, we men had forged a real bond.