Code Talker (27 page)

 

 

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 sure 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

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 cruelty 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.

Code talkers took part in every Marine battle in the Pacific War. Each of the six Marine divisions had code talkers. We talkers trusted each other without question, and our fellow Marines sought us out for special assignments.

Sergeant Dolph Reeves, with Radio Intelligence, recalled, “During our beach assault and island operations, Navajo talkers were worth their weight in gold and were thoroughly professional . . . Their contributions to Marine operations in the South Pacific were probably unmeasurable.”
³⁸

George Strumm, 25th Regiment chaplain, said, “Of course their task was dangerous . . . They were most courageous in all their duties. The sacrifice for freedom given by these very brave men was incredible. I feel that all the Marines respected them very highly, including the Officers.”
³⁹

Davey Baker, attached to a Marine Special Forces group, stated, “Most Marines and Army personnel never had a clue what the ‘coders' were and what a major part they played in our war. If God alone may know, they saved thousands of American lives, yet their tale has been hidden by the very role they played.”
⁴⁰

When the surrender of Germany on May 8, 1945, did not lead to Japan's surrender, the Allies knew they must employ drastic measures. Atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. When the Japanese military still refused to surrender, Tokyo was bombed on August 13 by 1,600 United States aircraft. The bombs were not atomic, but the devastation was extreme. Emperor Hirohito finally admitted defeat.