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Code Talker: The First and Only Memoir By One of the Original Navajo Code Talkers of WWII

by Chester Nez · 2011

The first and only memoir by one of the original Navajo code talkers of WWII-includes the actual Navajo Code and rare photos. Although more than 400 Navajos served in the military during World War II as top-secret code… more

6 quotes ★ 4.27 (9,282) History

Quotes from the Book

We Navajos believe in witchcraft. Cut hair and fingernail clippings should be gathered and hidden or burned. Such things could be used to invoke bad medicine against their owner. People should not leave parts of themselves scattered around to be picked up by someone else. Even the smallest children knew that.
5
Quiet! English only!” The dark eyes of a matron bored into me. “English, or you’ll be punished.” I wonder what she said?
3
I'm not saying we were heroes, but we Navajo men always tried to do our bet, like we'd been taught by our families back home
Seeing death come, on either side, was something I never forgot.
Torn between two cultures, we were unable to fully embrace either one. We didn't know where we fit.
Everything that happens in our lives happens in relationship to the world that surrounds us.

About Chester Nez

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About the book

The first and only memoir by one of the original Navajo code talkers of WWII-includes the actual Navajo Code and rare photos. Although more than 400 Navajos served in the military during World War II as top-secret code talkers, even those fighting shoulder to shoulder with them were not told of their covert function. And, after the war, the Navajos were forbidden to speak of their service until 1968, when the code was finally declassified. Of the original twenty-nine Navajo code talkers, only two are still alive. Chester Nez is one of them.

In this memoir, the eighty-nine-year-old Nez chronicles both his war years and his life growing up on the Checkerboard Area of the Navajo Reservation-the hard life that gave him the strength, both physical and mental, to become a Marine. His story puts a living face on the legendary men who developed what is still the only unbroken code in modern w

Book details

First published
2011
Genre
History
Goodreads rating
4.27 (9k ratings)

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