Code Talker

by Chester Nez

  After a few seconds, I noticed that the terrain seemed to slope a little. I stopped rolling, realizing I had reached a shallow depression. It was full of rocklike shards that pressed sharp and warm against my back. Probably a bomb crater. Recent. I turned my head without raising it, scanning for Francis. He was only a couple of feet away, behind a sizable chunk of loose coral.

  A runner, no doubt noting my TBX radio, dove flat out beside me and handed me a message. I inched over toward Francis till I was close enough to plug in and started cranking. He reached for the message and sent it.

  “Over there,” Francis yelled above the din. We had finished sending the message and needed to move. He pointed with a twitch of his lips. Before the Japanese could pinpoint the location from which our message had been sent, we dashed toward an even smaller depression in the sand. We were, of course, still connected by our radio equipment. We kept our heads down, legs pumping, and dove into the shallow shelter.

  BAM! A group of American guns—nine-millimeter artillery—exploded, the percussion pounding against our eardrums like a jackhammer breaking up rock. Someone cussed, yelling something about a failed firing mechanism. The defective American gun and the munitions surrounding it had exploded.

  Shit!

  I glanced around for better cover. There were many loose rocks, and Francis and I piled some up to create a makeshift blockade. Like every other day on the islands, you had to do for yourself or die.

  At five o’clock in the afternoon, Japanese Colonel Kunio Nakagawa ordered his crack 14th Division troops to cross the airfield and attack us Americans. Tanks and troops advanced toward the beach. But this time we were ready. The thinly armored enemy tanks were vulnerable to our Marine artillery and to just about every other Marine weapon. When heavy Marine Sherman tanks bombarded them, the lighter Japanese tanks crumpled as though made from tin. Then a Naval bomber targeted the enemy, sending them back to the far side of the field in retreat.

  Around midnight, Colonel Nakagawa bombarded us with mortar fire. And the next morning he again attacked, with mortars and grenades. We Marines suffered heavy losses, but kept fighting. The Japanese retreated. Whether their retreat had already been planned, or whether something in the fracas caused them to panic, I don’t know. But those men from the Land of the Rising Sun suddenly drew back toward the caves and pillboxes of Umurbrogol Mountain. The so-called mountain was actually a series of coral ridges, riddled with caves, that ran north of the airfield in a northeasterly direction.

  Although we Americans had chased the Japanese from the airfield, we couldn’t make use of it. From their fortifications in Umurbrogol Mountain, the Japanese targeted anyone who dared enter the open area surrounding the intersecting runways. But there was no other way to get to them. So, on day two, we were ordered to cross that airfield.

  I remember approaching the field. It was wide open with no cover, the kind of place any fighting man wanted to avoid at all costs. The terrain was pockmarked and alien looking, like a gray moonscape devoid of life. The splintered trunks of dead trees poked out of the rock at wide intervals. Not a blade of grass, nothing green, was visible. It was difficult to believe that this island had once been so densely forested that our American intelligence people hadn’t been able to penetrate the trees with their surveillance cameras.

  As we drew close to the field, shots whipped out of a Japanese bunker. We hit the ground. Our riflemen, who were ahead of us, targeted the bunker, but the deadly Japanese artillery continued to pepper us. Someone ran up to the side of the concrete bunker with a flamethrower. We held our fire as he inched his way along the front of the blind bunker, then ran to the narrow front opening and thrust the nozzle of the flamethrower in. Flames bloomed, and within seconds Japanese soldiers ran from the bunker, babbling, their uniforms on fire.

  My stomach twisted and I felt like throwing up. The men’s screams echoed above the sound of bombs exploding. Marines raised their rifles and picked them off. The screams stopped.

  After that we rushed toward the bunker. Someone made sure there were no more enemy troops inside. Artillery fire swept nonstop over the airfield. We couldn’t move forward under the heavy fire, so we took shelter there for a few minutes.

  When we left the bunker and started to move forward again, we were totally unprotected. Many men got shot, killed or mutilated, crossing that airfield. The corpsmen were flooded with medical emergencies—too many to handle with their thin-stretched resources. The corpsmen who served with the United States Marines were Navy personnel, but they wore uniforms just like ours except for a red cross on the sleeve. We all called them “Doc,” and we admired their bravery and selfless behavior under fire, when they’d endanger their own lives to help a wounded man. I saw many of my brave corpsmen friends get cut down, on every island. There were never enough “docs.”

  Injured men struggled to their feet and kept moving. Men dragged and carried their dying buddies across the field.

  By the end of day two, Francis and I were still alive, no thanks to the 110-degree heat. Sweat blinded us, leaking from under our metal helmets like a tropical downpour.

  The Marines field-tested a new grid system during our attack on Peleliu, blocking maps of the island off into squares. Both air and artillery strikes were coordinated by means of those squares. The new mapping method helped us direct strikes toward the Japanese while keeping friendly fire away from our own men.

  U.S. troops managed to hold our narrow strip of beach, as well as the unusable airfield, through the second day of fighting. But we couldn’t get supplies. The enemy’s continuing heavy artillery fire kept Higgins boats—also called LCVPs (landing craft, vehicle and personnel)—from landing. LVTs (landing vehicle, tracked; also called “amtracs”) were similarly unable to land. Even the LSTs (landing ship, tank), which were oceangoing ships capable of depositing heavy equipment directly on shore, proved unable to land. Normally, those craft would come ashore day and night with ammunition, medicine, food, and water. Then trucks would load everything up and bring it to the front lines while the landing craft went back for more. There was no naturally occurring drinkable water on Peleliu, and in the extreme heat we men were hurting bad. The coral rock that the island was made of seemed to absorb and magnify the heat. We found ourselves longing for rain, something we never would have anticipated after the soggy jungles of Guadalcanal or Bougainville. But rain didn’t come.

  I found myself constantly wetting my lips with my tongue, until my tongue grew too dry to make a difference.

  Some of our ships finally resorted to filling oil barrels with water and dropping them into the sea as close to the island as they could. Usually the waves and the tide carried them in for the last half mile or so. Many of those barrels still had oil in them when they were filled with our drinking water. And the oily water caused cramps. Each man had to decide for himself whether he wanted to chance drinking that water. You couldn’t tell someone else what to do any more than he could tell you. That was a lonely feeling, if you let yourself dwell on it.

  We all missed the barrel-sized seabags that, on most islands, were filled with clean water and hung where anyone could fill his canteen. Now the bags all hung limp and empty. I drank as little as possible of that oily water, but I did drink it. I tried to just wet my lips, which were dry and cracked. But once my mouth felt that cool water, I just had to drink.

  The lack of fresh water wasn’t as tough for us men from the reservation area as it was for many other Marines. Accustomed to rationing our food and water, we were no strangers to hunger and thirst. Still, though, it was pretty darn difficult.

  The constant enemy barrage was especially rough for the wounded. They couldn’t get off the island any more than food, water, and ammunition could get on. I pitied them, lying on stretchers in the sun in 110-degree heat, hoping and praying to be evacuated. Unlike the Japanese, we Americans never abandoned our wounded on the battlefield. Often, dead American bodies accompanied the wounded on Peleliu. Because of the island�
��s coral-rock composition, many of the dead couldn’t be buried the way they were on other islands. They, too, were carried to the beach and hauled away when landing boats were able to make it to shore.

  Peleliu seemed different from the other islands. I can understand why General Roy Geiger referred to it repeatedly as the worst battle of the South Pacific war. The shelling was everywhere and the enemy was invisible, hidden in their caves with metal doors that slid shut when our weapons got too close. It just seemed to rain bullets, and there was nowhere to go that was safe from the Japanese barrages.

  The prelanding bombardments that had been carried out from our aircraft carriers had not beaten down the enemy, but the bombs had splintered darn near every tree on or near the beach, effectively eliminating cover. No vegetation stood taller than our knees. It was a nightmare.

  September 1944: Angaur

  “Chief!” one of the second lieutenants called.

  Crouching nearby, I responded, “Yessir.”

  “The U.S. Army, Eighty-first Division, needs a couple of you guys on Angaur. Their communication specialists need help.”

  I knew that the Army had no Navajo code talkers at their disposal. Although Philip Johnston—without the consent of his associates in the Marines—did propose that the Army should develop a code talker program, the Army officers who were contacted about it failed to see the benefits offered by the program, so they never complied. They were stuck with the outdated method of communication. And now the Army needed our help in transmitting their plans and strategies during their attack on Angaur.

  Angaur was a tiny island, three miles long, east of the Philippines, just southwest of Peleliu, also in the Palau Islands chain. U.S. troops had not yet secured Peleliu, but Marine command agreed to lend some code talkers to the Army. It made sense that we code talkers who were attached to the 3d Marine Division, and merely on loan to the 1st Marine Division on Peleliu, be asked to go.

  Francis; my old partner Roy Begay; Roy’s new partner, Roy Notah; and I made the trip to Angaur, an island with no airfield, and so accessible only from the water, in a pontoon plane. The plane landed out beyond the surf in full daylight, then taxied in toward the beach, dropping us as close to shore as it could. Luckily, there was very little enemy fire when we reached shore.

  The Army communications center on Angaur wasn’t much to look at. It was housed in a small tank. The other code talkers and I ventured out from that tiny communications center to relay messages as ordered.

  That first night, the voice of Tokyo Rose blasted from Japanese loudspeakers. This wasn’t new. It seemed that no matter where we fought, the broadcasts of Tokyo Rose kept us from sleeping at night. Tokyo Rose was actually several different women, all of whom spoke perfect English in a sensual voice. Her messages were calculated to get the troops upset, to make us worry. She talked about American troop movements as though she knew what would happen the next day and the next week. She gave us gruesome details about how we would die in battle, alone, with no one to care. She told us that our sweethearts were going out with other men, having a good time at home while we fought the Japanese. She told us our families had forgotten about us. Her voice droned on and on. It was impossible not to wonder: Was there any truth to what she said? Sleep eluded us while we struggled with uncertainty.

  Several men shouted out dirty jokes, all starring Tokyo Rose. Then angry cries of “Hey! Cut if off!” punctuated the night. But everyone knew the transmissions came from the Japanese, and the Americans couldn’t control them, except for shooting out the occasional loudspeaker.

  And that night, no one wanted to risk raising his head to shoot.

  “She makes it all up,” Francis said. “All of it.”

  “But it still gets you to worrying, doesn’t it?” I huddled deeper into the foxhole. “She’s a bad woman.”

  The next evening was hot, as usual. Francis and I walked together, talking quietly in Navajo, as we returned from an assignment. The sun had just set, and we were headed back to the Army communications center.

  Suddenly two United States soldiers waylaid us.

  “Don’t move, Japs,” one of them said. “Why are you wearing United States Marine uniforms?”

  One soldier held a rifle on Francis, and the other held a .45 pistol to my head.

  The soldier with the .45 accused me. “You killed a Marine and stole his uniform, didn’t you, Jap?”

  I stood my ground. “I am a Marine,” I said. “Just listen to me. I speak perfect English. How could I be Japanese?”

  “Lots of Japs speak perfect English,” the soldier said. He looked at his buddy. “Should we shoot these Japs right here?”

  Mywhole body went cold. After surviving Guadalcanal, Bougainville, Guam, and Peleliu, would I die here, killed by an American soldier?

  My mouth went dry, but I managed to blurt out, “One of you guys go to the communications center. Get hold of an officer. They’ll vouch for us.” Because of the secrecy of our mission, Francis and I could not tell those Army men that we were code talkers. Navajos. The soldier with the .45 looked me straight in the eye, and I could feel his hatred.

  “C’mon, man,” I said. “I’m on your side.”

  The soldier’s eyes wavered, just barely. He turned and nodded at his buddy. “Get someone from communications.”

  The three of us waited in an uneasy silence. My mind strayed to home. How long would it take for Grandma and Father to find out about my death?

  Finally—after what seemed like enough time for the soldier to have circled the island three times—an Army communications officer, a major, arrived. He took one look at Francis and me and yelled, “What the hell are you men doing, capturing our own Marines? Of course these men are U.S. military. You’re damn lucky you didn’t shoot them.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief.

  “You men”—the officer dragged his icy stare from one Army man to the other—“report to me tomorrow morning for disciplinary action.”

  The Japanese, once masters of the South Pacific, were losing their grip. Thanks, in part, to our code, a war that had once seemed unwinnable had now begun to tilt in our favor. On Angaur, like Peleliu, the Japanese had built underground bunkers. This made it difficult to confront the enemy. Angaur’s terrain was flatter than that of Peleliu, so U.S. troops used bulldozers. Managing to approach the bunkers and tunnels, they sealed their entrances. Starving and dehydrated, the Japanese gave in. The Army’s 81st Division secured Angaur just a few days after our arrival there, on September 20, 1944.

  We four Navajo code talkers were sent back to the continuing bloodbath on Peleliu.

  September to late November 1944: Back at Peleliu

  Nights were tough on Peleliu. As on every other island, we could hear the Japanese Zeros, their sirens wailing, and count how many bombs they dropped. Each bomb made a click. Cramped into the shallow depression that served as a foxhole on the coral island, we’d count the clicks. Click click click click. Four bombs. Then we’d wait. The whistle came next as the bomb approached. Wondering whether it would hit us, we’d feel cold sweat breaking out on our foreheads and under our arms. We knew those shells respected no one. Many men hollered to relieve the tension. We Navajo men would usually stay silent. When the bomb finally hit, the ground shook. The concussive noise assaulted and numbed our eardrums like a flash of light blinds your eyes.

  Sometimes we took over Japanese foxholes, constructed when the enemy had had time to blast the stubborn coral rock with explosives. These were sometimes linked by tunnels. We’d crawl into the tunnels when the bombs came, but we’d still feel the ground shaking.

  The 1st and 7th Marine Regiments, belonging to the 1st Marine Division, attempted to climb up and destroy the Japanese entrenchments on Umurbrogol Mountain. There, the Japanese had hidden artillery positioned so as to produce a deadly cross fire. Men attempting to climb the ridge were easy targets, cut down pretty much at will. Our American fighting men suffered tremendous losses, and Umurbrogol became k
nown to us Marines as “Bloody Nose Ridge.”

  On September 23, the 321st Regimental Combat Team, members of the Army’s 81st Infantry Division, arrived on the island. General Rupertus had resisted calling the Army in to help when it became apparent that we Marines were undermanned, but General Roy Geiger had overruled him.

  Fresh from their speedy victory on Angaur, the Army managed to establish and hold an offensive line on the west side of Bloody Nose Ridge. Then the 5th Marine Regiment, also belonging to the 1st Marine Division, moved northward along the line established by the Army, capturing northern Peleliu on September 30.

  In mid-October 1944—a month after our initial landing—III Amphibious Corps commander General Roy Geiger declared Peleliu secured. Although sections of Peleliu were ours, his declaration was premature. Many of the enemy still fought from the island’s mountains and ridges, secure in their hidden caves and bunkers. Also, the Palau Islands housed Japan’s administrative headquarters for its South Pacific island holdings. And Japan’s Lieutenant General Sadae Inoue, managing the Peleliu defense from another of the Palau Islands, was not about to let the men under Colonel Nakagawa give up the fight on Peleliu.

  I woke up in a bomb crater blasted into the flintlike coral. No munitions noise. I’d arrived back on Peleliu, after helping out on Angaur, three weeks—or was it only a few days?—before. One day had become interchangeable with the next. I sat for a moment, eyes closed, knees pulled up to my chest.

  What island would be next?

  I nudged Francis. “Time for breakfast.”

  Francis groaned, then opened one eye.

  Someone shouted, “Hey, Chief, did you hear? One of your guys brought in some Jap prisoners. Four of them.”

  Another Marine yelled, “No, there were half a dozen, at least.”