Code Talker (28 page)

American troops studied the destruction of buildings, land, and people resulting from the atomic bomb at the Nagasaki site. The devastating explosion was something never experienced or even anticipated before, and American scientists felt its impact needed to be studied. The men sent their observations back to the United States via Navajo code, some of the final transmissions of the war.

After the halt of hostilities in the Pacific, the
Fuji Evening,
a Tokyo newspaper, admitted, “If the Japanese Imperial Intelligence Team could have decoded the Navajo messages . . . the history of the Pacific War might have turned out completely different.”

 

 

Back in the San Francisco hospital, I couldn't avoid thinking about the things I'd done that had gone against Navajo belief. I had become so used to the dead bodies that I had pushed them out of the way without thinking, unmindful, like I was doing some household task.

The war had climbed inside my head. On the islands I'd been busy, too busy to dwell on the horror around me. But in the hospital I had no responsibilities. The days stretched out long as a highway, and nightmares invaded both my waking and sleeping hours. I felt lost. Sometimes I actually thought I'd been killed. And the dreams—horrifying dreams of unearthly battles, with Japanese faces leering at me—refused to end.

I looked around.
I'm in better shape than a lot of these guys
. Battle-weary Marines and Naval troops filled the hospital in San Francisco. Some just rolled up in a corner in the fetal position, crying. Many of the men huddled on their beds, refusing or unable to speak. Victims of what was termed “combat fatigue,” they couldn't move, couldn't function.

And I couldn't shake the war from my head.

In the South Pacific, I'd been surrounded by the other code talkers. We all joked around, talked Navajo, helped each other with the stress. That gave us strength, kept us going. But none of my buddies were with me now. Two other hospitals, one in San Diego and another elsewhere on the California coast, also took in returning combatants to prepare them for their return to civilian life. Those facilities might have housed some of my friends. I wasn't sure. But in my hospital, the silence was filled with the faces of the enemy.

Loud noises made me jump. I always felt uneasy. Even though, intellectually, I knew I was safe, my reflexes told me I could be shot at any second. A nurse or doctor dropped something, or a car backfired in the parking lot, and I'd be back on the islands, diving into a foxhole.

I met with my doctor.

“We think you're ready to go home,” the doc said.

I had been waiting to hear those words for five months. Months that dragged by, filled with the grinding repetition of nightmares, of Japanese enemies appearing even during the day. I looked around at the men lying listless in bed, smelled the hospital disinfectant undercut with a whiff of urine.
I'm lucky.
Many of those men would never be ready to go home.

I boarded a train in San Francisco and returned to the Marine recruiting station in San Diego for several months' additional duty. There, I was briefed by Marine security, warned not to talk about the code or what I had done in the war. I felt a twinge of disappointment when I realized I would not be able to tell Father or Dora or my brothers about my role in developing the code that kept American tactical plans secret. But, of course, that code might be used again in future conflicts.

The war had ended by the time I received my discharge papers and the papers documenting my service, describing me as Private First Class Chester Nez. Those were dated October 11, 1945. The Japanese had signed an armistice agreement on August 14, 1945, shortly after the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They officially surrendered on September 2, four months after the Germans surrendered.

I boarded a Trailways bus for Albuquerque, New Mexico's largest city, where my older brother Coolidge lived.

En route I stopped at the federal building in Gallup, New Mexico, to get an identification card, a card that was required for Native Americans at that time. Dressed in my spotless Marine uniform, I entered the building with confidence and approached the desk of a civilian paper-pusher. From behind his desk, the man stared at me, the Navajo Marine, and his eyes narrowed.

“You're not a
full
citizen of the United States, you know.” Wielding the small power given to him by his position, the man pressed his lips together and raised his brows in a contemptuous expression. “You can't even vote.”

“I'm a Marine. I'm on my way home after serving my country in battle,” I said. I took a deep breath and told myself to stay calm. This guy didn't know anything. But I didn't much like what the civil servant had to say.

I stared at the smug man. “I wish I had my forty-five with me,” I said. I pointed my finger like a gun, aiming at the man's chest. “I'd shoot you right there. Right there.” I turned around and walked out, ignoring the protests that followed me out the door.

Although Native Americans were made citizens of the United States in 1924, we weren't finally granted the right to vote in New Mexico until 1948, three years after I finished my service as a Navajo code talker in the Pacific War.

Coolidge met me at the bus stop in Albuquerque.

“Welcome home, brother.”

Coolidge was my older brother, but I could see that he was proud of me, his little-brother Marine. We went to Coolidge's small house in the sprawling desert city. Immediately Coolidge's friends began to arrive.

“Let's meet this Marine brother,” they'd say. And when I shook their hands, they told me, “Congratulations on returning safe.”

Over beers the men always asked, “Well how was it? What did you do in the war?”

I remembered the Marines' warning. I couldn't mention being a code talker, couldn't say anything about helping to develop the top-secret code. “The Marines issued me a gun and some ammunition and told me to go hunt down and kill some Japanese,” I said.

For two and a half weeks, Coolidge, various friends, and I celebrated my return.

After celebrating and then spending several months in Albuquerque, I realized that I missed the rest of my family. Grandmother, Grandfather, Father, and Dora still lived on the Checkerboard. I wanted to see them all and to help Dora with the exhausting task of herding Grandma's sheep. I headed west on a Greyhound bus to Gallup, then walked from there, with my thumb stuck out for a ride.

I stepped from the car that dropped me off at
Chichiltah
. Bright red rocks with splashes of purple shadow greeted me. The mesa glowed white and red. A bold turquoise sky, feathered with clouds, arched above me. With the familiar beauty of home finally surrounding me, I remembered the Navajo prayer:

A neighbor was holding a “sing” when I first arrived, and my father was helping out. A sing is a ceremony conducted by a medicine man or woman, a person also called a “singer” or
hataathlii
. It is part of the Right Way of life. It puts things back in harmony when something has gone awry.

I stood in the doorway of Grandma's hogan. A figure approached from down the canyon. As it grew larger, I realized it was Uncle, riding a horse. I hadn't ridden a horse since before enlisting back in 1942.

“Climb up,” said Uncle when he got near, patting the rump of the horse.

Uncle and I had always been good friends. I swung up behind him, happy to see him and eager to reach the sing and greet my father.

The familiar aroma of juniper smoke announced the gathering, as the smell of popcorn announces a carnival. It reached our noses well before we spotted the site of the ceremonial. Then we gained the top of a piñon-dotted hill and saw hundreds of
Diné
inhabiting a valley between red mesas. The colorful scene moved like an industrious city, all the activity centering on a special hogan that had been built specifically for the occasion. Women stood about in bright crushed-velvet blouses, their turquoise and silver “squash blossom” necklaces hanging heavy around their necks. They talked to friends while small children clung to their long, full skirts. Men sported heavy silver-and-turquoise belt buckles and multiple turquoise rings on each hand. Dense, handwoven blankets, wrapped around shoulders as protection against the cold, turned the open area into a moving tapestry.

A sing, which can be held anywhere in the vast empty miles of Navajo land, is a huge undertaking. Often the host family saves for years in order to afford the mutton to feed a large crowd. They stockpile firewood for the bonfires and gather poles for the ceremonial hogan. They pay the medicine man or woman who performs the ceremony. Dedicated to helping one person with a specific problem—like an illness—the sing benefits all who attend in good heart.

During the sing, the
hataathlii,
singer, and his assistants create several dry paintings. The intricate designs and multiple colors are prescribed by tradition. Rock, sandstone, and charcoal, as well as other locally available substances, are ground to a fine powder to make the colors, which are dribbled carefully onto the hogan floor by hand. Paintings are usually created by several men working together for four or more hours. The person for whom the sing is being held sits on the sand painting while the medicine man prays. At the end of the short ceremony associated with each specific sandpainting, the painting is destroyed. The traditional design represents the unchanging laws of the Right Way, while the destruction of the painting reminds all attendees of the transience of life.

My father, still tall and lean, approached Uncle and me, his face lit by a hundred-watt smile.

“I am relieved to have you home safely, my son. My daily prayers have been answered.”

But we Navajos don't celebrate the accomplishments of one who has done his expected duty, so although the homecoming was joyous, there was no reason to celebrate my bravery. And, of course, I could not tell Father about my service as a Marine code talker.

Father had to stay and assist at the sing, which could go on for as many as nine nights. I knew that participants slept during the day, because ceremonial events would keep them up all night. All night, chanting and singing, punctuated with rattles and drums, would fill the dark, the music pounding on until it became the earth's heartbeat.

But I had been gone a long time, and I wanted to be home. I left the sing and rode back to Grandma's hogan. Father would join us there when his duties were fulfilled.

I think everyone was happy to have me back. For them, now that I was home in the box canyon nicknamed Nez Valley by my family, everything returned to normal. I hoped the quiet would be healing. Back among the sheep and goats, with the people I loved, maybe life would return to normal.

I tried to relax, to return to my past self, but my memories were not peaceful like those of my grandparents, father, siblings, and extended family. And the quiet grew increasingly disturbing and unreal.

The adults on the reservation were careful to never discuss the war in front of young kids. No one wanted our children to glorify war in any way. It was okay to speak to other adults about the conflict, but even so, I stayed pretty quiet. The secrecy that the Marines had imposed upon the code talkers stifled me. It wasn't much help to talk about what I'd done and seen in general terms, as I was allowed to do. My memories were very specific and very disturbing, and I decided that it was better not to say much at all if I couldn't reveal my true story.

I knew that other soldiers returning from war had the solace of talking things out if they wanted to—either with their families, with friends, or with other enlisted troops. Their efforts had not been sworn to secrecy, like ours. We code talkers, forbidden to talk about the realities of our war, were largely denied that solace of getting everything out into the open. Even though I knew my family wanted to learn about what I'd faced, and even though I knew they would help me if they could, I couldn't bring myself to talk about the limited things I was allowed to reveal.

The Japanese enemy populated my dreams, continuing to plague me even when I was awake. Our invasions of hostile islands played like an endless film in my head, with me and my buddies exposed to enemy fire as we struggled toward the beach.

When my time at home had passed the half-year mark, I finally broke down and told my sister Dora about these unwelcome visitors. Then I told Father, Grandmother, and Grandfather. The dead Japanese wouldn't let me sleep or function normally during the day. All that blood I had walked through had stained my mind. Just as the island fighting had trapped us soldiers, never letting us get away from the battles, keeping us scared twenty-four hours a day, the devil spirits of my dead enemies now trapped me, never letting me enjoy any peace. My family agreed that if things continued as they were, the Japanese would eventually take me away. I needed a ceremony. They would put up
⁴¹
an Enemy Way.

A hand-trembler performed a diagnosis. Although I knew it was the Japanese who plagued me, the hand-trembler was part of the ceremonial protocol.

Grandma brought me to the hand-trembler's home.
⁴²
The trembler, who could be either male or female but in my case was male, held an unpolished crystal in his hand while chanting in my presence. He asked questions, which I answered as accurately and as honestly as I could. The trembler concentrated on the crystal until he fell into a trance. His hand began to tremble. He saw the cause of my nightmares revealed in the crystal. This was important, because the trembler would prescribe a specific ceremony, one that would address the causes of my problem, not just the symptoms. His understanding of both my symptoms and of human psychology in general led him to make a diagnosis. He told me which healing ceremony I needed in order to get back in balance.