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    Code Talker: The First and Only Memoir by One of the Original Navajo Code Talkers of Wwii
    Unavailable
    Code Talker: The First and Only Memoir by One of the Original Navajo Code Talkers of Wwii
    Unavailable
    Code Talker: The First and Only Memoir by One of the Original Navajo Code Talkers of Wwii
    Audiobook9 hours

    Code Talker: The First and Only Memoir by One of the Original Navajo Code Talkers of Wwii

    Written by Chester Nez and Judith Schiess Avila

    Narrated by David Colacci

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    In the 1920s, growing up on the Checkerboard Area of the Navajo Reservation wasn't easy. There was no electricity or indoor plumbing. The New Mexico summers were hot and the winters harsh. But the beautiful mesas provided bountiful land on which to raise sheep and goats, and the Navajo celebrated their spiritual connection to nature.

    His name wasn't Chester Nez. That was the English name he was assigned in kindergarten. And in boarding school at Fort Defiance, he was punished for speaking his native language, as the teachers sought to rid him of his culture and traditions. But discrimination didn't stop Chester from answering the call to defend his country after Pearl Harbor, for the Navajo have always been warriors, and his upbringing gave him the strength-both physical and mental-to excel as a Marine.

    During World War II, the Japanese had managed to crack every code the United States used. But when the Marines turned to its Navajo recruits to develop and implement a secret military language, they created the only unbroken code in modern warfare-and helped assure victory for the United States over Japan in the South Pacific.

    Chester Nez is the only surviving member of the original twenty-nine code talkers-and this is his story.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Audio
    Release dateDec 12, 2011
    ISBN9781452674988
    Unavailable
    Code Talker: The First and Only Memoir by One of the Original Navajo Code Talkers of Wwii
    Author

    Chester Nez

    Chester Nez is a World War II veteran who indispensably served his country as a Navajo code talker. Judith Schiess Avila is a code talker scholar with the New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities Chautauqua Program. She tours the state giving presentations on the topic. She and Chester have been friends since 2007.

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    Reviews for Code Talker

    4/5

    68 ratings9 reviews

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    • 4/5
      First hand account of the Navajo Code Talkers of WWII. Excellent read! I had never heard of the Navajo Livestock Reduction done by our government in the 1930s, which Chester Nez lived through and still volunteered to serve. Amazing journey.
    • 4/5
      This is the real deal.
      Absolutely fascinating memoir of one of the most vital solutions to freedom in the Western Pacific.
      If you like history and don't know the facts on these marvelous men - READ IT.
      READ IT anyway - they saved our skins!
    • 4/5
      Though I'm not normally a fan of military memoirs, I was surprised to find myself reading most of this book in one sitting, and that part being during Chester Nez's service. The battles are well explained and give excellent context for the dangerous mission Nez and the other code talkers accomplished. The parts explaining Nez's childhood, especially the Great Livestock Massacre (For all the reading I did on The Great Depression as a Political Science major in college, I never read about that part of the Indian Reorganization Act, a fact that still makes me seethe) were equally engaging. Readers will learn much about early 20th Century Navajo life and World War II's Pacific Theater from this book.Nez's voice comes through strongly in this memoir and the information and chapters are well-organized. Though it's not the best writing out there, it certainly very good and the Nez's compelling life story more than compensates for sometimes lackluster description. Overall, an informative and engaging read, which is really all I ask from a biography/memoir anyway.
    • 4/5
      This is the story of Chester Nez's life - written because he was one of the original 29 creators of the Navajo code used in the Pacific theatre of WWII. However, the book covers his whole life, which was normal for him and his people, and very different for this reader. He was born and grew up in Northern New Mexico, on lands just outside the Navajo reservation. He and his brother and sister followed the herd of sheep and goats, watching over them. His maternal grandmother was the head of the household. As all children do, he learned the language, religion, and culture of his people. This book reveals a flavor of that to us.Much later he went to boarding school, where the only language spoken was English, and the only religion was Catholic. Later, as a high school student, he joined the Marines - specifically recruited because he was fluent in both Navajo and English. The heart of the book is his description of how he helped to create the code, and how he and his fellow code talkers used it in combat. He was a key member of the various Marine Divisions to which he was assigned, as a communications person in the battles to take the islands of Guadalcanal, Bouganville, Peleliu, and Guam. My father served in the Navy in WWII, but the war ended just as he was trained and ready to enter combat. This tells what he might have faced, if he had been in combat in the Pacific. Chester Nez could not tell anyone at home what he had done - the existence of the code talkers was classified until 1968. So he mustered out at the end of his service as a Private First Class, despite seeing heavy combat, albeit at at the absolute front lines. And he could not tell his family his experiences until it was declassified. He eventually was awarded a gold Congressional Medal of Honor - handed to him by President George W. Bush. The entire code is listed as an appendix at the back of the book. For anyone interested in Native American history, or World War II in the Pacific - fascinating reading!
    • 3/5
      Listening to the audio was very much like sitting at grandfather Nez' feet and hearing his life story. The story line is focused, but the language is repetitive and unoriginal, which made for some impatience. But I was glad to have heard the bulk of it, as Nez' contribution to the war was significant, and he certainly deserves a respectful listen. So I didn't squirm or roll my eyes in his presence.I learned a lot more about the Pacific war theater than I have been exposed to before, and that was also a good thing. I will probably move on to other accounts of this aspect of the war, and sample some of the fiction as well.PS: What a brilliant communication coding concept!
    • 3/5
      Joy's review: Well, just about everyone else in the book group really enjoyed this book. The story is of a very interesting life: Navajo boy grows up herding sheep, goes to boarding school where his mouth gets washed out with lye soap if he speaks Navajo, becomes a Marine and helps develop the Navajo code that is uncrackable during the war, goes home to a state that does not allow him to vote. That's what the group liked. I just found the conversational style of the book quite dull and would have preferred to read it as an article in Smithsonian or such.
    • 5/5
      I was vaguely familiar with the Code Talkers prior to reading this book. I found it extremely interesting to read Chester Nez's memoir: the story about his Navajo youth at home and the beliefs engrained by his family, his life adjustments and education at boarding school, the origins of the code talkers, his strong sense of duty on-the-ground as a Marine in some of the most deadly battles in the South Pacific during WWII, and his life afterwards.This was a captivating, page turner.
    • 5/5
      As uncomfortable as history can be for us this is an important book to read. The history of the war filled with the personal history of the author was well put together and had a good pace to the reading. A good change from the usual US History class books that are assigned to students.
    • 5/5
      Code Talker by Chester Nez is a recounting of the Navajo Nation's invaluable contribution to the WWII war effort in the Pacific theater by the only living member of the original 29 Code Talkers. His recollections were then transcribed by co-author Judith Schiess Avila.Before getting to the development of the code, Nez describes his childhood, his time in a boarding school — back in the unfortunate days when English was enforced and the speaking of Navajo resulted in punishment. Named Betoli by his family, it was at the boarding school that he was forcefully renamed Chester Nez.Nez's emersion in English, though gave him a valuable skill when he and twenty-eight other Navajo men joined the Marines. They were brought together to create a double encrypted code that could be spoken over the radio from one Navajo trained in the code to another. By making a spoken code back in the days before computer encryption, the time needed to relay a message was slashed to mere minutes (instead of hours). The accuracy of the message went up and the ability of the Japanese (or anyone else listening) to decode it was impossible. As Nez reminds readers in every interview transcript I've read, a Navajo speaker not trained in the code wouldn't understand the message any better than anyone else hearing it.Although I've been fascinated with Navajo culture — and the language — since 1990, this is the first time I've read anything about the Code Talkers. What drew me to the book is, of course, Chester Nez's firsthand account. Now, that he was one of the creators of the code is a special bonus. But it should be noted that all 400 Code Talkers had important parts to play. The code was also expanded over time by later speakers.The copy I read came from my wonderful local library, but I would like to own a copy. It's something I want to re-read.