Linda
Lee Greene, Author & Artist
Late in the year
of 2004 and while conducting research on Navajo Code Talkers, I found a range
of material on the subject. An endorsement by Bookwatch of the book featured in
this post states, “’THE NAVAJO CODE
TALKERS’ (authored by Doris A. Paul) is the single most comprehensive
account of the contribution of the Navajo Native Americans in World War II…Highly
recommended!” Only a few of the code talkers are still with us. Sadly, the
Navajo Nation is now one of the cruelest of Covid-19’s killing fields of the
Western Hemisphere. This is emblematic of the history of the fate of America’s
First People, and I can think of no darker stain on present-day American
decency.
Because it is important to me to encourage the welfare of the
beautiful indigenous people of my country, I include Native American characters
in my books when appropriate, facets of my stories that showcase their
histories, their cultures, and their priceless and immeasurable contributions
to American life. My latest novel titled A
CHANCE AT THE MOON, features as one of its main characters a Navajo rancher
named Sam Whitehorse. His explanation of the code talkers is presented in the
following excerpt of my novel:
Excerpt of
A CHANCE AT
THE MOON
ver dinner of left-over mutton stew,
fresh fry bread, ancient discolored platters of corn and squash from his own
garden, a dinner sweetened with great pyramids of watermelon, also grown at his
urging in loamed soil he had nurtured through the years, Sam Whitehorse was
storytelling that blistering July evening. Koa Kalua’i and the ranch hands Jack
Ray and Carl Mathers were so caught up in Sam’s recounting that savory chunks of
lamb on their forks hung in mid-air for over-long spans of time. Acculturated
by his Diné upbringing in the art of oral narrative, Sam was a natural and
eager storyteller, and that night, with such a captive audience, he was in fine
form.
“Of
course, we Navajos wasn’t the first code talkers in the U.S. military.” Sam
spoke with authority, for he had become a student of the code talkers’ history,
an endeavor inspired by his own military experiences. “It ain’t widely known,
but fourteen of my Choctaw brothers of the Army’s Thirty-sixth Division was the
original ones, all the way back in 1918 during the final offensive of World War
I. It was in the Meusse-Argonne campaign against the Germans. During several
battles in that operation, Pershing and his men was able to finally recover
more than two hundred miles of French territory from the Germans, but fer a
long while, the situation had been bleak fer our side because the American
forces had been practically surrounded by the Germans.
“The enemy was adept at breaking the American’s
communication’s codes, and had tapped their telephone lines. American runners,
who was sent out with messages between companies on the battle line was being
captured right and left. It was a captain of one of them companies, while
overhearing two Choctaws talking to each other in their own tongue, who got the
idea to use them as communicators. He come up with a plan to station them
fourteen Choctaws in different companies where they transmitted and translated
radio messages and wrote field orders in their own language. The Germans was unable
to decipher them codes. The tide of the battle turned in only seventy-two hours
after that. That was what I’d describe as a spur-of-the-moment situation
compared to the strictly organized and rehearsed programs among my Comanche and
Navajo brothers that come later in World War II, but it was the first
occurrence of Native Americans performing that task. There’s also been others, involving
several tribes of American Indians.”
“I ain’t heard of any ones but the Navajo Code Talkers. They’s
been in the news quite a bit here of late,” Jack replied, pouring himself a
second cup of black coffee from the hand-me-down coffee pot, a charred and
scarred, blue-veined enamel centerpiece holding court on the table.
Pushing back from the table and rubbing his stiff knees, Sam
replied, “Just last month the five living veterans of the original twenty-nine
Navajo Code Talkers in World War II, who actually developed the code, was
presented with the Congressional Gold Medal. The remaining twenty-four was
honored posthumously.”
“He don’t like the word to git around, but since he was one
of them Navajo Code Talkers who come after them first twenty-nine, Old Sam
here’ll be atravelin’ to Washington, D.C. too, come November, and he’ll be
receivin’ the Congressional Silver Medal,” Jack informed the others.
“Ain’t too many of us
around no-more. I surely wish the others had received this recognition before
they passed on.”
“It is too often the case that veterans fail to receive the
recognition and benefits they deserve. Look at what happened to the Viet Nam
veterans, many of my fellow Hawaiians included,” Koa added.
“I served with lots of them Hawai’i boys in ‘Nam,” Jack
interjected. “One o’ them boys, he played a slack key guitar. I ain’t never
heard a guitar played thataway. It was real purty.”
“It’s called kī hō alu in my language. Spanish and Mexican
cowboys brought the guitar to my islands back in the early eighteen hundreds,
and the paniolo...that’s Hawaiian cowboys...picked it up and adapted the
slack key tradition unique to Hawai’i.” Demonstrating the technique with his
hands, Koa continued. “The way it is done is that some of the keys are left
slack from the standard tuning, and the thumb plays the bass while the other
fingers play the melody. Improvisation in a finger-pick style is important.”
“You play, do you, Koa?” Jack inquired, fascinated by the
mysterious man who had become a regular visitor to the ranch.
“Oh, I turn a little tune here and there. I have a Keola
Beamer CD out in my car. He is one of Hawai’i’s masters of the technique, if
you would like to hear it sometime.”
“Well, shore. That’d
be right nice,” Jack replied, his head nodding in approval. “A lot of them Hawai’i
boys over in Nam, theys names started with “k” like yourn and that guitar
player you just mentioned. I never could git my tongue wrapped around them guy
‘ez names.”
“It is a very simple language to master once you understand
the basics of it. The entire Hawaiian alphabet contains only twelve
letters...the same five vowels as in English, but only seven consonants: h, k,
l, m, n, p, and w. It is a bit easier to memorize than the English alphabet. That
lyrical sound you hear comes from words overflowing with vowels, but if you
remember to pronounce each vowel separately rather than blending them to make a
different sound as you do in English, you will pretty much be able to be
understood,” Koa explained, his big fist all but smothering his coffee cup. “By
comparison, the Navajo language is much more complex, isn’t it, Sam?”
“You got that right, Son. That’s why it was ideal for the
code talking during the war.”
“How’d that code work, Sam? Wasn’t it kept top secret ‘til
not too long ago?” Carl asked.
Sam replied with a nod of his head. “Yep, Carl, it was kept
as highly classified material ‘til 1968. I imagine most folks thinks we just
talked Navajo like them Choctaws and them other tribes talked their languages,
but the Navajos didn’t use translations of their language. What they done was
devised a code where Navajo words was used to substitute fer something else. Like
a dive bomber in Navajo was ‘gini’ meaning chicken hawk, or fer mine sweeper
we’d use ‘cha’ meaning beaver in Navajo, or report was ‘who-neh’ meaning got
words. Then fer the alphabet, we’d use three or four different words fer each
letter which kept redundancy from giving the code away. As Koa said, the
complexity of the Navajo tongue made it the ideal language to use fer that
purpose. The code never did git broke.”
“Ain’t
no wonder. I hear’d tell it’s jist as hard to larn as English,” Jack
interjected….© -Linda Lee Greene, Author & Artist
#Las Vegas, #Nevada, #Hawaii, #Big
Island, #Coffee Plantation, #Caesars Palace, #A CHANCE AT THE MOON, #Linda Lee
Greene, #Multi-award-winning Author, #Multi-award-winning Artist
A CHANCE AT THE MOON purchase links:
I was fortunate. I actually avoided
Hugh Hefner’s camera eye, but my sisters—hundreds, no thousands of them, I suppose, were
not as lucky as me. They, and by extension, we were objectified, diminished,
reduced to only one dimension. We were bare bodies in a centerfold, empty faces
on a page. We were the symbol of something called, “eye candy,” on a man’s arm,
and were assigned no other place. 
