“CODE TALKER.” Chester Nez with
Judith Schiess Avila. 2011. Berkley/Caliber. Hardcover. 268 pages. $26.95
"We Navajo don’t believe a man
is a hero just because he’s done his duty." That’s something Chester Nez
says repeatedly throughout this book.
The fact remains that Chester, and
his comrades, are heroes. It’s a fact, plain and simple. You don’t get the
Congressional Gold Medal just for being an ordinary, average Joe. If it weren’t
for Chester and 29 other men, we could conceivably be speaking Japanese or
German today as a nation.
Chester is the only remaining living
member of the original 30 code-talkers, a group of men that helped turn the
tide of World War II in the South Pacific theater of war. And this is the only
memoir by a Code Talker – everything else has been written as a scholarly or
historical work, never from inside of the experience.
As the U.S. was pulled quickly into
the war, the Japanese military was eating their lunch, as the saying goes.
Every code the U.S. forces used was quickly cracked by the Japanese. It got so
bad that often the U.S. forces would arrive only to find the Japanese already
dug in and waiting for them, guns blazing.
Then Phillip Johnston, the son of a
preacher who’d grown up on the Navajo reservation, conceived the idea of
developing a military code based on the Navajo language. The best selling point
of the idea was that Navajo had never been written down; therefore, it was impossible
for the enemy to learn.
The Marines took the idea and ran
with it, and that made all the difference.
With co-author Judith Schiess Avila,
Chester tells his story. He grew up in what is called the Checkerboard area
near Gallup, New Mexico. It’s an area that is not quite the Navajo reservation,
but most of the land there is either owned by the tribe or by individual Navajo
families. He helped herd his grandmother’s sheep – a herd of nearly 1,000 – learning
hard work and living in difficult conditions. (His sister, who died in 2008,
never had electricity in her house her entire life.)
When his family had the chance to
send him to boarding school, he went to learn English but it was a brutal experience.
There, the teachers and Indian matrons (they weren’t Navajo, however) would
beat the children if they spoke in their native language.
Nez recounts several events such as
the Long Walk – similar to the Trail of Tears – experienced by the Navajo,
which resulted in a huge number of deaths. He heard those experiences from his
grandmother. And then he saw with his own eyes the Great Livestock Massacre,
where his family’s herds and flocks were slaughtered by burning, bringing the
size of their herds from more than 1,000 animals to only 300. (Pages 73-81)
All these details are important, because
in spite of this harsh and brutal treatment by the government, when war broke
out the Navajo Nation issued a statement of their complete support for the
government of the United States of America, declaring that no treasonous
activity would be supported or sanctioned by the tribe and would, in fact, be
met with expulsion. It recalls two other similar things – the Mormon Battalion
of the Mexican-American War and the Japanese Nisei Battalion which served in
the European theater of WWII (they became one of the most highly decorated
battalions in the entire European theater). People who had been abandoned,
ignored or interred by their government nonetheless stepped up to the defense
of their nation.
In high school at the time, Chester
joined the Marine Corps. In fact, the Corps was making a concerted effort to
recruit Navajos, telling them they were needed for a secret mission. (My mother
worked for the Draft Board in Gallup at the time and knew they were targeting
Navajos, but until the government declassified information about the Code
Talkers in 1968 she had no idea she was participating in something so
important.)
Once their basic training was
completed, the original 30 Code Talkers were sequestered for weeks and told to
come up with a military code based on the Navajo language. They were ordered
not to discuss their work with anyone, and at the end of each day all their
work was locked in a safe. (One of the original 30 dropped out early in the
process.)
This was tougher than it sounds.
They had to come up with Navajo equivalents for words that didn’t exist in
their language, such as ship, tank, bazooka, regiment, etc. But once the code
was completed, it made all the difference. The results were amazing. Before, it
had taken anywhere from two to four hours to code, transmit and decode
messages. With the new code, that time was dropped to two to five minutes. So
amazing and so valuable were the Code Talkers that they rarely, if ever, got R
and R. Nez speaks about many times hearing their regiment was going to get some
R and R in Australia, only to be told the Code Talkers services were too
valuable and they had to stay in the battle.
The original 30 talkers eventually
grew to more than 400; of that number, only 13 were killed.
The writing style in this book is
basic and to the point and yet still captures so much poignancy, such as the
confusion of a young Indian boy being beaten by another Indian and the
frustration of not being able to tell family members about what they really did
in the war. Many of the Code Talkers died without having been able to openly
talk about their experiences.
“Code Talker” is a piece of history
that is huge in what it opens to the reader’s view about the import of what
these men did. And yet it is a book that has you weeping in places and cheering
in full cry in others. It is a book whose time is long past due. Read it.
“TO CATCH
A THIEF.” David Dodge. 1952, 1980, 2010
Reprint. Trade Paperback Bruin. 271 pages. $14.95.
David Dodge was a travel writer who
also wrote mysteries based on the countries he traveled to. A small inheritance
by his wife allowed him the freedom to travel and write, and “To Catch a Thief”
finally gave him the money he’d longed for.
Dodge and his wife and daughter
arrived on the Cote` d’Azur and rented a villa right next door to a
multimillionaire American industrialist. During their stay, the industrialist’s
villa was robbed by a daring thief who climbed a drainpipe and stole several
thousands of dollars of his wife’s jewelry.
The day after the robbery, Dodge and
family left for Italy, completely unaware of the theft. The French police
immediately suspected him because of their departure. Eventually. the thief was
turned in by a fence he had an argument with about the jewels. When Dodge
returned and learned he’d been suspected as the thief, he got a big laugh that
anyone would suspect a pear-shaped, out-of-shape, middle-aged man as capable of
such a daring feat, requiring such physical strength and agility.
And voila – a mystery novel was
born.
It quickly generated a lot of buzz
and was published in condensed form in both Cosmopolitan magazine (it was a different magazine in those
days, folks) and Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. A galley copy was circulated
around Paramount Pictures in July of 1951, where it caught the eye of suspense
master Alfred Hitchcock, who bought the movie rights before the year, or book,
was out.
The filming of the movie in Monaco
and Monte Carlo brought its young female lead, Grace Kelly, to the attention of
Prince Rainier Grimaldi, ruler of Monaco. And voila – a princess was made, Princess
Grace.
The book starts with a bang – almost
literally – and just keeps going. "The agents de police came for John Robie sooner than he expected."
A retired jewel thief, American John
Robie has been living on the French Riviera in peace on an unofficial parole
since the end of World War II. He’d been in prison for his theft, and when the
Germans occupied France they released all the prisoners, perhaps hoping they’d
be sympathetic to them. Instead, they all headed for the hills and fought with
the maquis, the French
resistence. Afterwards, French officials never officially pardoned them but let
them live free, as an unofficial thanks for their resistance efforts.
But someone has studied John’s
exploits and is now repeating his crimes, in his style. The police – even his
friend, the local chief of police – believe he’s come out of retirement.
Robie’s determined to discover the thief so he won’t have to go back to prison.
What follows is a well-paced cat and
mouse game. Complicating matters is the young American heiress, who wants a
thrill and offers to help him steal her mother’s jewels.
This is a smartly done mystery, with
roots in the noir mysteries of earlier decades but still illuminated by the
bright sunshine of summer on the French Riviera, spiced by the sea, elegant
surroundings and beautiful women in swimsuits and evening gowns.
For book purists, all I can say is
that, as I read, I could see the reasoning behind each of Hitchcock’s changes
to the book. Both the book and the movie work excellently in their respective
worlds. The tone in many ways is darker than the movie, and there is more moral
ambiguity.
As a writing style, this holds up
excellently 60 years after its initial publication. Well worth it for both fans
of the movie and mystery lovers.
Rich
welcomes questions and comments from readers. You may contact him through this
paper or by e-mail at 62rich@gmail.com.
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