Last Navajo Code Talker, Dies at 9306/04/2014
Chester Nez, last of original Navajo Code Talkers, dies at 93
Obituary » He was in the 10th grade when Marines recruited him.
By FELICIA FONSECA
Before hundreds of men from the Navajo Nation
became Code Talkers, 29 Navajos were recruited to develop the code based
on the then-unwritten Navajo language. Nez was in 10th grade when he
enlisted, keeping his decision a secret from his family and lying about
his age, as did many others. "It’s one of the greatest parts of history that
we used our own native language during World War II," Nez told The
Associated Press in 2009. "We’re very proud of it." Of the 250 Navajos who showed up at Fort
Defiance — then a U.S. Army base — 29 were selected to join the first
all-Native American unit of Marines. They were inducted in May 1942. Nez
became part of the 382nd Platoon. Using Navajo words for red soil, war chief,
clan, braided hair, beads, ant and hummingbird, for example, they came
up with a glossary of more than 200 terms that later was expanded and an
alphabet. The Navajos trained in radio communications
were walking copies of the code. Each message read aloud by a Code
Talker was immediately destroyed. "The Japanese did everything in their power to break the code but they never did," Nez said in 2010. After World War II, Nez volunteered to serve
two more years during the Korean War. He retired in 1974 after a 25-year
career as a painter at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Albuquerque. |