Code Talker: Chapter 26 Summary & Analysis

Johnny Manuelito is manning the Navajo net on one of the command ships. Later, he tells Ned what the beach landing looked like from his position. Soon after the suspiciously quiet landing, a storm of shell, machine gun, and small arms fire explodes across the island. On the island itself, the loose, deep black sand makes it nearly impossible for Ned and Smitty to scramble up Mount Suribachi. When they reach the top, they realize that the Japanese waited until the Americans had scaled the mountain’s first slope and then were exposed on the broad plain at the top of the slope. They manage to dig a foxhole, and Ned starts sending a desperate string of messages back to the command ship—messages reporting high casualty estimates and requests for more ammunition.

Ned can’t remember much about the first three days on Iwo Jima. It’s probably best, he thinks, that he can’t recall all the terrifying sights. He does remember the sulfurous smell of the island, combined with the smells of gasoline, gunpowder, and—worst of all—burning skin. Ned remembers hastily eating his steak sandwich as he and Smitty keep shoveling black sand out of their foxhole.

However, Ned also has calming memories from Iwo Jima. He remembers hearing strong Navajo voices over the din of shells, shrapnel, and bullets. The Navajo web never breaks, holding together the battle for Iwo Jima.

It takes four days for the marines to climb Mount Suribachi, taking just a few feet at a time. On Friday morning of that week, 40 marines crawl on their stomachs up a nearly vertical slope. When they reach the top, it’s empty. Six men raise a small American flag they’d brought with them (one of them is a Salish Indian). A sergeant who’s a photographer snaps a picture of the group. This photo later gets printed in Leatherneck, a Marine magazine.

Ned can’t see the raised flag from his foxhole, but he hears the cheers pouring down the mountainside. Another code talker sends a message back to the command ship that Mount Suribachi has been secured. Much of the island breaks into celebration. However, the rest of the island still has to be taken, and there’s a terrible cost. Almost 20,000 Japanese soldiers die, and almost 7,000 Marines are killed.

Ned says that he has shared too little about the many white men who became his friends during the war. Friendship in war is different than friendship in peacetime—you know you might lose a friend at any moment. One rainy March morning, Ned is part of a group whose objective is to take a certain hill. They are raked with enemy fire, and suddenly Ned turns to see blood spurting from Georgia Boy’s neck. After a medic arrives, Ned has to keep moving with his radio. It’s the last he sees of Georgia Boy on Iwo Jima.

Twenty-six days after D-Day, Iwo Jima is officially won. As they sail back toward Guam, the last thing Ned sees is the American flag waving on the top of Mount Suribachi. He tells his grandchildren that they have probably seen the famous picture of the six marines raising that flag. However, that famous picture wasn’t the first one taken. Two hours after Mount Suribachi was taken, an Associated Press photographer, Joe Rosenthal, took a picture of marines erecting a larger flag on the summit. The photo of that flag-raising became famous. It even included Ira Hayes, Ned’s Pima Indian friend.

Some of those in the photograph felt embarrassed about the attention they later received. Ned thinks they deserved all the praise they got, but he understands Ira’s discomfort with his new celebrity status. He thinks that’s part of why Ira started drinking so much. He couldn’t get war memories out of his mind, and the famous photograph made things worse. Ira used to tell Ned and Wilsie he wished they were in the photo, too: “It is so lonely being there forever without another Indian.”