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Chapter 19
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Code Talker, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Memory, Language, and Identity
The Navajo Way and the Life of the Warrior
Culture and Patriotism
War, Healing, and Peace
Summary
Analysis
In June, 1944, the Mariana Islands become the next targets of the Marines’ island-hopping campaign. This is called Operation Forager, and it is under the command of Admiral Nimitz and Marine General “Howling Mad” Smith. The ultimate objective is to reach Japan itself. Ned is reunited with Georgia Boy and Smitty in the operation’s Southern Task Force. Their first objective will be the island of Guam.
The Mariana Islands are an archipelago southeast of Japan and also a present-day United States territory. The goal of Operation Forager was, besides neutralizing more Japanese bases in the South Pacific, to build Allied bases for bombing runs against Japan.
Themes
Ned is forever grateful that he was not part of the Northern Task Force, which was sent to Saipan. Hundreds of marines there are killed in the water, on the beaches, and in banzai attacks. There are also Japanese civilians living on Saipan, some of whom join the attacks, armed only with sharpened sticks. Ned’s friend Wilfred Billey tells him that the civilians were the saddest part—women and children jumped off cliffs to their deaths rather than be captured, believing propaganda which told them that the Americans would torture and kill them. Though the Marines eventually take Saipan, the victory is too bloody to be celebrated.
Saipan is the northernmost of the Mariana Islands. For the Japanese, Saipan was considered to be part of the last line of defense before Japan itself, which contributed to their ferocity in defending it. Approximately twenty thousand Japanese civilians died during the Battle of Saipan, though it can only be estimated how many people leaped to their deaths because of propaganda-fed fears. A memorial stands below Saipan’s cliffs today.
Themes
