Code Talker

by Chester Nez

  It was the medicine man’s job to help me figure out why the enemy continued to plague me. Knowing the “why” became the first step to overcoming the problem. Then my body and mind could be cleansed, leaving me free of my Japanese tormentors and bringing me back to the “Good Life.”

  Father talked to the medicine man at length, telling him about my problems. The medicine man gave Father questions to ask me, and Father relayed the answers back to the medicine man. He told him how my visions grew stronger at night, until they veiled the rest of my world.

  In preparation for the ceremony, my family butchered a goat and several sheep. They would feed the people who came to the sing. Wood was chopped, and the ingredients to make mounds of fry bread and tortillas were purchased. The family hosting or “putting up” a sing never knew how many people would attend. Traditionally, Navajos were supposed to take part in at least four sings during their lifetime, so often people heard of a sing and traveled to find it.45 Of course, people close to the family came. But many others, even people my family didn’t know, heard about me—the returned Navajo Marine—and came to lend support and help me reenter the Good Life. Everyone brought food and news to share. And they brought hozoji: kindness, compassion, and goodwill.

  On the first night, the ceremony was performed near the home of the medicine man. The last night it was held at Grandma’s home, and on the intervening nights at a location between the two. The young woman who led the Squaw Dance portion of the sing rode on horseback, carrying the prayer stick—or rattle stick—from one location to another. Several men and boys, also on horseback, accompanied her.

  Squaw Dances, part of the Enemy Way sing, are so named because the young women who participate in the dance pick male partners from the audience. After each dance, the male bargains with the female, arranging a price he must pay to be released from the dancing. The price—always minimal—is paid, and the young woman chooses another partner. The dance is very popular.

  At Grandmother’s home, a large fire in a shack provided a place for cooking. My female relatives prepared the food, and everyone who attended was welcome to eat. At night, most of my female relatives slept in the cook shack, and the men in the hogan. Other families camped on the ground overnight, sleeping on sheepskins and blankets. No conjugal relations were allowed during the days of the ceremony.46 Everyone was supposed to concentrate on the purpose of the sing.

  The pot drum, an integral part of the sing, was made of pottery and filled with water. Taut buckskin, stretched over the pot, was punched with eye- and mouth-holes. The drum-with-a-face represented the ghosts, who were beaten into the ground as the drum was played for the Squaw Dance songs.

  Dry paintings, or sandpaintings, were created on a skin placed on the floor of Grandma’s hogan.47 Several men, over a period of hours, painstakingly created these paintings from various finely ground colored sands, charcoal, and corn pollen. The hataathlii supervised their creation. Every line had to be correctly placed.

  Each painting was used in a ceremony involving me, then destroyed afterward. The medicine man told me things I needed to know in order to recover from my bad visions. These things were secret, just between him and me, so I can’t talk about them here.

  The traditional scalp shooter was hired. He fired at the Japanese items—the “scalp”—that the medicine man had provided for the ceremony, using a sling similar to the one I had played with as a boy, except that this sling was made from rubber and buckskin instead of string and the tongue of a shoe.48

  The sing was a success. Hozoji was exhibited toward all who attended the ceremony, just as tradition mandated. I reentered the trail of beauty. For a long time afterward, my dreams and visions of the Japanese subsided.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Singing, Boxing, and the Korean War

  Late 1940s: Haskell

  I looked to the east, across the long stretch of box canyon. The last couple years with my family, herding sheep, had been peaceful, but I realized I didn’t want to stay on the Checkerboard forever. It was time to get down to the serious business of living.

  I had signed up for the Marines before finishing high school, so getting my diploma was goal number one. Like many young men who returned from war, I would go back to school.

  But which school? I thought back to Fort Defiance. There was one teacher who stood out, Freddie Richard. I had liked and respected him. Freddie, an eighth-grade teacher at my old school, had grown up in Oklahoma. He was part Native American. The students called him Hachi Yázha, the little man. He loved music, and on many nights the notes of Freddie’s saxophone had soared out over the grounds of the boarding school like the voice of a mournful bird.

  The bus pulled up to the stop where I waited. I boarded, thinking about the many daylong treks I had made to boarding school in the back of a flatbed truck.

  “How long to Fort Defiance?” I asked the driver.

  “About two and a half hours.”

  The driver was right. In less than three hours, I arrived at Fort Defiance, where I found my old teacher.

  “I liked Haskell,” Freddie told me. “It’s in Kansas. Far away, but farm country, so not so different. Greener than New Mexico and Arizona.”

  Freddie’s alma mater, the Haskell Institute, was an all-Indian high school in Lawrence, Kansas. With Freddie’s help, I applied there.

  I arrived at Haskell during the second semester, with the school year already in full swing. I had some catching up to do, but after fighting in the war, school didn’t seem so scary.

  I found jobs working on several different farms. The wages helped pay for my room and board. Farm families picked me up from the dorm on weekends and returned me in the evenings. I stayed at school all year long to make up for lost time, attending summer classes.

  Before long, Haskell High School, which later became Haskell Indian Nations University, felt like home. Members of 179 different Indian tribes attended the school. I made many friends, notably several young Sioux and Cherokee men. But my closest friends were fellow Navajos. Robert Yazzie was an old friend from Fort Defiance. Then there were Lawrence Padaock, Jack Nez, and Ned Hataathlii, whose surname meant “the singer,” like a medicine man. Ned was a Navy man, and Jack Nez was a Marine buddy, one of the original code talkers, so I had more than just childhood background and school in common with them.

  I dived into school, work, and athletics. I played running back on a veterans’ football team. The beautiful uniforms, complete with pads, cleats, and helmets, sported yellow numbers on a gold field. When I slipped the well-made jersey over my head, I had to grin. Things had sure changed since my days at Fort Defiance.

  Another sports uniform hung in my closet—basketball. My friends and I played on a veterans’ team, again with all the requisite equipment.

  It was a whole different world.

  One day a bunch of buddies and I piled into a car owned by a friend from Fort Defiance. I had the entire weekend off—no farmwork. Since the bars in Lawrence did not serve Native Americans, an Anglo friend had bought beer. We loaded a good quantity of beer into the car, stuffing bottles between and under us. We headed out to fish in one of the many good fishing spots on the lakes surrounding Lawrence, armed with homemade fishing rods consisting of a long stick with a string and hook attached. We actually caught a good quantity of fish with those rods.

  My group of friends kept things interesting. Depending on the season, we might go to basketball or football games, or watch boxing matches. Sometimes we drove to Kansas City, Missouri, the largest nearby city, to hang out. Some of the bars there served Native Americans.

  I had boxed a little at Fort Defiance as a 112-pounder. In the Marines, I took up the gloves occasionally. At Haskell, I played basketball, football, golf, and soccer for fun, but took boxing seriously. My buddies and I watched professional boxing with an eye to improving our own style. Joe Louis, the “Brown Bomber,” was a special favorite. He had won the Golden Gloves tournament before becoming a professional
boxer.

  Haskell’s team, a group of twelve or fourteen men, had five Navajo members. The rest were from other Native American tribes. We traveled to meets in places like Topeka, Kansas; Oklahoma City; and Kansas City, Missouri. Other meets were held at home in Lawrence.

  Six teammates crowded into the station wagon. I had a good feeling about this meet. And I was looking forward to three or four days in a hotel paid for by the school. Luxurious living. I boxed in the 126-pound weight class, and I was en route to Kansas City for the semifinals in the Golden Gloves tournament, where kids from many different schools competed.

  Before the meet, I taped my fingers to protect them from breakage. My hands were steady as I wrapped my bunched fingers. The wrap had to be tight enough so I couldn’t bend the fingers into a complete fist, but not so tight that it impeded circulation. I wrapped my wrist and thumb. Then I donned the twelve-ounce gloves. I’d practiced a lot, with small punching bags and heavy body bags. And I’d skipped rope until I could box for hours without feeling exhausted. I wanted to be ready.

  In the semifinals of the tournament, an African American kid, a really fine boxer, beat me on a decision.

  Once during my boxing career I got knocked out. It happened in Topeka, during another Golden Gloves tournament. It was the third of three rounds when I took a hit to the head. I woke up lying on the mat. Again in Topeka, I had my nose broken, and could never again breathe through my right nostril. After that break, I stayed in the hospital for two weeks, with my face all bruised, and my eyes blackened and swollen nearly shut. That was the worst of my injuries.

  Boxing was a tough sport, and I realized that. But it was a sport where real determination could result in an athlete being recognized.

  But boxing wasn’t my only interest. Alone in my single room, I imitated Bing Crosby, Al Jolson, Perry Como, and Nat King Cole. I had a decent voice, and the very act of singing made me feel free somehow.

  I looked at the notice, cut from a newspaper, that sat on my table. Ted Mack’s Amateur Hour, a popular radio show, was looking for talent. They’d be holding an audition in Topeka.

  It was a very un-Navajo thing to do—trying out for a competition like that. Several of my friends told me I shouldn’t do it. But I had made up my mind. I would audition.

  The audition in Topeka attracted many contestants. I waited to sing my favorite song, not even feeling particularly nervous. Facing the Japanese had changed my perspective on life. After that, facing the audition judges couldn’t be half bad.

  I stood in front of the judges, and the pianist played an introduction. I launched into “I Love You for Sentimental Reasons,” singing into a microphone. My voice was broadcast to Topeka, Lawrence, and Kansas City.

  Ted Mack approached me backstage.

  “Where were you born, son?” Ted asked.

  “In New Mexico,” I told him. “I grew up near the Navajo Reservation at Chichiltah.”

  “And what are you doing here in Kansas?”

  “I’ve already fought in the war. A Marine. Now I’m getting an education.”

  Mack continued to talk with me for a quarter hour or so, asking about my life and my military service. I could not speak about my code talker past, but spoke in generalities about the war.

  Although I was not selected to be a finalist on the show, I felt pleased that at least I’d given it a shot. After my experience as a Marine, I expected to fit into mainstream America. Trying out for Ted Mack was only the beginning. I continued to sing at parties and high school events.

  I graduated from Haskell, and moved on to the University of Kansas at Lawrence.

  Late 1940s and 1950: University of Kansas

  The University of Kansas was a Native American school, famous as the home of Olympic triathlete Jim Thorpe. I lived in a dorm at my old high school, Haskell, where I worked at various jobs like window washing and cleaning to pay for my room and board. I commuted to the nearby university by bus. There, I majored in fine arts. I planned to become a commercial artist.

  The assignments in college fascinated me. I created “storyboards” for advertisements and learned about human anatomy in “life” classes. I utilized many different media—watercolors, oils, pastels, pencil. My favorite subjects were landscapes. Each class taught me something new and expanded the horizons of my artistic knowledge. I studied great artists of the past like Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, learning how to manipulate color, shadow, and light.

  We students had to defend our paintings in front of the entire class. I felt that stomach-churning feeling that I’d experienced back in my boarding school days. But I reminded myself that I was a Marine. I relaxed. My southwestern landscapes with powerful skies—done entirely from memory—were well received.

  A group of my Native American friends gathered frequently for cookouts, where we prepared and served traditional foods like mutton and fry bread. An intriguing young woman, Ethel Pearl Catron, often accompanied the group. She, too, was Navajo, with jet hair curled and parted in a popular style.

  I approached Ethel. She had a lovely smile.

  As we talked, I soon learned that she was in trade school, training to become a boarding school matron, like her mother. I couldn’t help thinking how matrons had changed since my school days. She and I went to the movies and went dancing together. Ethel was easygoing with a ready laugh. But she knew how to be serious as well. She had definite plans for her future and took her schoolwork seriously.

  With Ethel, there were always things to do and things to talk about. And we could talk in Navajo. I was lured by the prospect of continuing to use my native language, which had played such an important part in my life. Although I’d had two other serious girlfriends, one from Wisconsin, a member of the Sac and Fox tribe, and a young Navajo nurse whom I’d known in grade school, I felt Ethel was the woman for me. I was in love.

  But after two years at the University, thoughts of a personal life or further education were blotted out by world events. I had joined the Reserves while at Haskell in order to earn some extra money, and I was called to take part in another war.

  1950 to 1951: Korean War

  I sat outside the hogan at Chichiltah. I had received my orders to report for duty in the Korean War. But as I looked at the faces of my family, I didn’t have the heart to tell them.

  I stayed for a few days, helping with anything that needed doing, talking with Dora and Father, but never revealing my call to war. The man who owned Cousins’s Trading Post (not the same trading post my father worked for), Bob Cousins, drove me to the train, stopping to buy me a big steak dinner.

  In Albuquerque, I met the other reserves who’d been called to active duty. There were men from the Navy, the Army, and other branches of the service. We men boarded a troop train that delivered us to California.

  On September 14, 1950, I returned to my old stomping grounds, Camp Elliott near San Diego. This time a new menace, Korea, threatened my country.

  It was a tough time. Although North Korea’s aggression against South Korea dominated the news, I had convinced myself that the United States wouldn’t enter into a full-fledged war there. I knew I’d done my duty in World War II and had hoped that would be the end of it. But my country needed me again.

  At Camp Elliott, I met quite a few World War II veterans. There were some Navajo Marines, and even a couple of code talkers, although none were the men with whom I had developed the code. It was good to be able to discuss our experiences in the war, and even to compare notes with the other code talkers. We were allowed to discuss the code with one another, although not with outsiders.

  We were assigned work detail while waiting for transport to our official assignments. I was placed with the other communications men, although I don’t believe my superiors knew about my code talker service. The other communications personnel and I were issued M1 30-30 rifles and new uniforms.

  “I haven’t told my family yet,” I confided to one of the other Navajo men.

  “Me eithe
r,” the man replied. “Couldn’t face it.”

  “We’d better write to them before we hit Korea. Who knows what it will be like over there.”

  I wrote to my family, knowing that Father would resume the ritual he’d begun when I fought in the South Pacific. He prayed three times per day—morning, noon, and evening—for my safe return.

  After five days at Camp Elliott, I shipped out to Hawaii!

  Not a bad assignment. I admit, I had been worried about being assigned to combat in Korea. After the things I had seen in World War II, that would have been difficult duty to face. But my luck was holding. It didn’t look as though that was going to happen.

  In Korea, I knew that autumn would be chilly and winter would be cold with deep snow. Hawaii, with its temperatures in the high seventies to the mideighties, was heaven. It rained a lot more than it did in New Mexico, but I didn’t live in a foxhole, so that was no problem. The barracks in Pearl Harbor were dry and warm.

  I turned in my M1 rifle and was given a pistol, which the brass felt was easier to carry. I alternated between performing guard duty and unloading transport ships. The physical work of unloading ships was a tension-free job that proved particularly relaxing. And the beaches were warm, clean, beautiful—and free of dead bodies.

  My next assignment was Pocatello, Idaho.

  In Pocatello, as in Hawaii, I performed guard duty—this time at a depot that sent supplies to troops overseas. It was an “all service” base, one that consolidated supplies for the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard. I patrolled on foot at times, but mostly by Jeep, with a partner. The depot was huge.