The Navajo Code Talkers

Paul, Doris A. The Navajo Code Talkers. Pittsburgh: Dorrance 19739. Print.

First Sentences:

Every syllable of my message came through. Sometimes we had to crawl, had to run, had to lie partly submerged in a swamp or in a lagoon, or in the dead heat, pinned under fire. But there was no problem. We transmitted out messages under any and all conditions.

Description:

I've always been fascinated (but not good at solving) codes. Over the years, however, dedicated amateurs and professional code-breakers have broken all codes. All, that is, except one: the Navajo code utilized by America during World War II.

Doris A. Paul's The Navajo Code Talkers is the definitive history of this code and the men who created and successfully employed it. Extensive interviews with the Navajo Code Talkers gives the narrative a deeply personal account of each man's commitment to the program. reflecting the intense, maybe desperate need for the code to work.

The Navajo nation, in an edict from their Tribal Council at Window Rock in June, 1940, expressed their commitment to "aid and defend our Government and its institutions against all subversive and armed conflict." After the official call to arms went out, 

Navajo men appeared at their agencies, carrying old muskets and hunting rifles, asking where they could fight the enemy. Many were turned away, heartbroken and humiliated that they could not fight because they could not speak English.

But those who spoke English were recruited to counteract the Japanese proclivity to break any English code. During close fighting, messages containing vital information about positions of troops, coordination of attack times, and battle news had to be delivered quickly, with no time for transcription of complex codes. A simple, unbreakable, easily transported code was needed.

Previously, Choctaws had been employed briefly during World War I to simply relay messages via telephone to stymie German interception. Later, Comanches, Creek, Choctaw, Menominee, Chippewa, and Hopi were used as communicators, but in the limited capacity of speaking only their own language. What was needed was an untranslatable Native American language, but updated by creating new terms for military items like "tank," "machine gun," "barrage," etc.

The Navajo language was suggested as the perfect platform:

The Navajo tongue is an extremely difficult language to master, and should a non-Navajo (particularly German or Japanese) learn to speak it, counterfeiting its sounds would be almost impossible.

Twenty-nine Navajo men were recruited from reservation schools and trained by the Marines for a pilot program. For some, this was the first time off the reservation. Firsthand accounts from interviews with the original Navajo Code Talkers revealed the challenges, expectations, and actual dangers to their jobs:

We wrung our minds dry trying to figure out words that would be usable, that would not be too long, and that could be easily memorized. After all, in the heat of battle, the code talker would have no time to take out a chart and look up vocabulary for an urgent message.

A sample alphabet and terms are reproduced in the book, containing examples like:

"Gini" (literally "Chicken Hawk") is the Navajo word created for "Dive Bomber" 

"Be-al-doh-cid-da-hi (sitting gun) = Mortar" 

"Joy-sho" (buzzard) = Bomber  

"Lo-tso" (whale) = Battleship

"Toh-yil-kal" (Much Water) = River 

"Tsisi-be-wol-doni" (bird shooter) = Anti-Aircraft 

The Code Talkers worked eight hours a day with walkie-talkies under field conditions. They had to remember this new vocabulary, speak into the 80-pound radio sets, and quickly, accurately translate incoming messages. After training, code talkers were utilized to request medical supplies, coordinate troop movements, and relay operational orders.

I found the recollections of surviving code talkers incredibly interesting for painting a picture of life in war in which they contributed a vital part. There was real pride in accomplishment, as well as humor in their voices. They were at Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal, New Guinea, Okinawa, the Solomon Islands, and many more places, bringing a tense aspect of the war alive for me. 

I recommend this for readers interested in the lives and contributions to our country by Native Americans, the development of a unique code, and World War II as told by those men who were there.

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:] 

McKay, Sinclair. The Secret Lives of Codebreakers: The Men and Women Who Cracked the Enigma Code at Bletchley Park. 

For the first time, the an in-depth look people behind the super-secret operation that broke the Enigma code and shortened the war by two years, saving millions of lived. (previously reviewed here.) 

Hodges, Andrew. Alan Turing: The Enigma.   

The man and his team who cracked the German Enigma code in World War II to change the course of the War.

Happy reading.

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 435 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

News of the World

Jiles, Paulette. News of the World. New York: William Morrow. 2016. Print.

First Sentences:

Captain Kidd laid out the Boston Morning Journal on the lectern and began to read from the article on the Fifteenth Amendment.

He had been born in 1798 and the third war of his lifetime had ended five years ago and he hoped never to see another but now the news of the world aged him more than time itself.

Description:

In Paulette Jiles' novel News of the World I found a job I might be good at (had I been living in 1870). Civil War veteran Captain Jefferson Kidd tours the small towns of Texas armed with current issues of American and international newspapers. He rents a meeting hall, charges ten cents a head, and reads articles of interest to local townspeople hungry for news and entertainment. While there are still some anger in this southern state over the results of the Civil War, if Kidd can avoid talking about current politics he can usually make it through the presentation safely and move on to the next town.

At age seventy-one, he deserved peace like a river but apparently he wasn't going to get it at present.

But his well-ordered life is upset when his friend Britt, a freight hauler, asks him to return a ten-year-old girl to her relatives in San Antonio 600 miles away. The girl had been captured by the Kiowas five years earlier, but was recently released to the army to avoid battles with the soldiers. She spoke no English and definitely had not wanted to leave her Kiowa family. 

Kidd agrees to take her and together they start their long, dangerous trip. Johanna, (Kidd refers to her by her original name), slowly learns some English and gains trust in Kidd. Together they fight off a gang of men who want to buy Joanna for ugly purposes, but Joanna proves herself a valuable fighter when the going gets tough, even finding a unique use for the dimes Kidd had earned at his last lecture.

Throughout the journey, the two grow closer with each stop they make or person they encounter, or just as they walk and ride the miles closer to San Antonio. Kidd begins to wonder about his own life and what the best course of action would be for Johanna, a child who already had lost two families.

This is a gentle story of a hard world filled with choices, strong people, and survival. Kidd is a thinker and he contemplates what is right and wrong for Johanna as well as for himself as they face new people and the challenges of the harsh land around them. I loved the story and both of these interesting characters. Highly recommended.

Maybe life is just carrying news. Surviving to carry the news. Maybe we have just one message, and it is delivered to us when we are born and we are never sure what it says; it may have nothing to do with us personally but is must be carried by hand through a life, all the way, and at the end handed over, sealed.

Happy reading. 

Fred

(See more recommended books)
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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Haruf, Kent. Plainsong

In the tiny Montana town of Holt, two elderly batchelor brother farmers take in a pregnant, friendless teenage girl and learn to open their lives and hearts to a new person.

The High Divide

Enger, Lin. The High Divide: A Novel. New York: Algonquin. 2014. Print.

First Sentences:

That summer was cool and windless, the clouds unrelenting, as if God had reached out his hand one day and nudge the sun from its rightful place.

Way out on the lip of the northern plains the small town lay hidden in fog, the few moving about at this hour ghostlike, not quite solid: the shopkeepers, the man driving his water-wagon, the dressmaker with her quick, smooth strides. In a clapboard house a stone's throw from the river, a lean, squared-shouldered man knelt before an old flattop trunk.

Description:

Picture yourself stretched out on the grass next to a stream in some friendly woods. Dappled sun, light breeze, the water gurgling. Complete relaxation.

Now imagine someone sitting nearby, out of sight, reading to you in a soft, soothing voice. Sometimes the words blend with the sounds of the river, gently washing over you in your relaxed state. Simple, quiet words with the strength to penetrate your dreams and create a world of images, people, and life.

Such was the effect on me of Lin Enger's new book The High Divide: A Novel. High Divide and the storytelling skills of Enger lulled me deep into its languid story of love, separation, guilt, forgiveness, and redemption. I was completely absorbed by the simple phrasings and clear pictures of life and hard landscape of the western prairie of Minnesota in the late 1800s. 

Ulysses Pope, a carpenter, husband, and father of two young boys, leaves his rustic Minnesota farm and family early one morning, leaving only a note that reads, "A chance for work, hard cash." Six weeks later after no further communication, his sons sneak away from their home to look for him, riding trains and venturing into cities far beyond their comprehension to guess at his trail, relying on the kindness of strangers but also facing the hostilities of others.

With all her three men gone Gretta, Ulysses' wife, decides to set out in a different direction to search for her sons and her husband. She worries that what she finds might answer questions about her quiet husband, his military life in the Civil War, and possibly a world involving another woman. But Gretta's money has run out and therefore must forge ahead to at least get Ulysses to settle their debts.

And who really is this Ulysses and what are his reasons to desert the family he loves without an explanation? As we walk with him and his dogged pursuit of his secret quest, we realize that he is a kind, strong man, but also one driven by inner demons kept from his family and beyond their power to overcome.

Each chapter follows one of these individuals on their travels as they slowly gain wisdom, strength, and experience that hopefully will lead them to their goal. The travelers encounter Civil War friends, Indians, a Smithsonian Museum curator, buffalo, and a mysterious woman who help or frustrate their quests.

The strong, quiet writing style in High Divide is suburb. Author Enger's words flow over you as if you are listening to a hidden voice gently relating an epic story of strong-willed people and the challenges they face. Enger's power of description brings each character and the old West vividly alive. Look at how he describes Ulysses' younger son;

[His son] still gave off that clean child-smell, like carrots pulled from the garden. 

Can the longing for a home, a family, and a place in life, be more clearly and strongly stated by Gretta as she considers her life?  

Home was something that should compass about you like the wind, Gretta thought -- you shouldn't have to think about it. And you certainly shouldn't have to build it out of nothing at all, with only love and your bare hands, the way she'd had to do.

So grab a comfy chair in front of the fire, sit under a tree, or loll in bed as Enger's words flow over you and incase you into the world of Ulysses and Gretta in the 1880s. A lovely, lovely experience.

Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Young, Carrie. Nothing to Do But Stay

Wonderful memoir about the people and life in the small farming community on the North Dakota plains. (previously reviewed here)