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Intro
Ned Begay tells his grandchildren about a special medal he owns. The medal commemorates Navajo Marines’ special service in World War II. For many years, Ned was not allowed to speak about his role in the war. He was a code talker—a big story that will take a while to explain. He starts at the beginning.
When Ned is six years old, he says goodbye to his family and journeys to the mission school in Gallup, New Mexico with his uncle. Ned’s uncle explains that Ned has to attend “the white man’s” school for his family’s sake. Historically, the Navajo people have been persecuted by the American government. Ned’s uncle explains that, by attending boarding school, Ned and other Navajo children will have the opportunity to communicate better with white American society.
Upon arriving at boarding school, Ned and his classmates are forced to speak only English, their long hair is cut off, their traditional clothing and jewelry are confiscated, and they are given new names. Ned gets his mouth washed out with soap when he accidentally speaks Navajo, and other children receive even harsher punishments. However, rather than becoming depressed, Ned is resilient, helped by his natural love of learning. He does well in his classes, and he continues speaking Navajo and learning about his culture when the teachers aren’t around. He even earns the chance to attend a better high school. However, Ned’s culture is denigrated there, too, and he doubts that Navajos will ever be respected by white people.
Then, in 1941, the Japanese military attacks Pearl Harbor. Not long after the United States declares war, a call for Navajo recruits circulates on the reservation. Bilingual Navajos are wanted for a mysterious special duty. Ned is eager to join up, but his parents ask him to wait for one year, since he is only 15 at the time. Meanwhile, 29 men are recruited to form the first all-Navajo Marine platoon. After a few months, one of those men, Johnny Manuelito, returns to the reservation to recruit and train a new group of men. After hearing Johnny speak, Ned can wait no longer. His parents grant him permission to enlist, on the condition that he undergo a Blessingway, a protection ceremony, which is conducted by Hosteen Mitchell, a well-respected Navajo singer.
Like the other Navajo recruits, Ned thrives in boot camp because many of the physical demands are familiar to him from his family’s rural, agricultural life. After Ned’s platoon graduates from boot camp with highest honors, they finally learn their secret mission—to become code talkers. They will learn a top-secret Navajo-based code language in order to transmit crucial messages on the battlefield. Code school is a happy experience for Ned and his fellow Navajo recruits; besides getting to help the U.S.’s war effort, for most of the men, it’s the first time their language and culture have been respected and celebrated by outsiders.
After further training and field maneuvers on Hawaii and Guadalcanal, Ned and his fellow marines make their first landing on Bougainville in the Solomon Islands, giving Ned his first taste of combat and code transmissions in the field. The code talkers prove themselves so effectively on Bougainville that the Marine commanders unanimously call for more Navajo code talkers, to Ned’s joy. After Bougainville, Ned participates in the landing on Guam, in the Marianas Islands, including fierce hand-to-hand fighting. He is devastated by the suffering endured by Guam’s native people under the Japanese occupation. Ned receives a bullet wound in the shoulder while fighting on Guam and spends some weeks recovering on a hospital ship. While there, he sees many men suffering from battle fatigue, something that his Navajo history helps him understand.
Ned participates in the invasion and brutal battle of Iwo Jima in the early part of 1945. Though most of the images of this battle are too terrible to recall, Ned remembers the strong voices of the Navajos, unfailingly transmitting messages through the chaos and helping secure the Allied victory. He also tells his grandchildren the story of the flag-raising on Iwo Jima’s Mount Suribachi, which was immortalized in a Pulitzer Prize-winning photo and involved Ned’s Pima Indian acquaintance Ira Hayes. Ned also fights through the devastating battle on Okinawa, and then he must pass along the news of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death.
After the atomic bombs are dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, ending the war, Ned returns to San Francisco for debriefing with other code talkers. On his way home, in contrast to his warm reception in San Francisco, he is rudely kicked out of a whites-only bar on the edge of the Navajo reservation. This hardens Ned’s resolve to fight for his people after the war, too, by promoting Navajo history, culture, and education. And he proceeds to do just that, although he must first heal from the spiritual wounds of battle, with the help of his family and Hosteen Mitchell’s Enemyway ceremony.
In 1969, the code talkers’ story is declassified, and Ned is finally allowed to speak of it to his family. Sharing his story is more precious to him than the accolades he and his fellow code talkers receive from the White House. He hopes that by passing his story down to his grandchildren, they, too, will be encouraged to treasure their Navajo heritage and fight for it with a “warrior spirit.”
