Synopsis
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 warfare.
About Chester Nez
See more books from this AuthorOn the battlefield, Navajo code talkers would use voice transmissions over the radio, spoken in Navajo to convey secret information.
| Read Full Review of Code Talker: The First and On...Written with code talker scholar Schiess Avila, Nez's fascinating memoir details his experience as one of the original 29 "code talkers"âa group of Native American soldiers who kept U.S. transmissions safe from the Japanese during WWII.
Aug 01 2011 | Read Full Review of Code Talker: The First and On...“Code Talker: The First and Only Memoir by One of the Original Navajo Code Talkers of WWII” (Berkley Caliber, $26.95) by Chester Nez with Judith Schiess Avila, tells the story of Nez, who grew up on the Checkerboard, a land of Navajo and non-Navajo near the Navajo Nation.
Dec 11 2011 | Read Full Review of Code Talker: The First and On..."Code Talker" is a fascinating melange of combat in the Pacific theater, the history of the Navajo people and the development of a uniquely American code that remained unbroken by the Japanese throughout the war and classified until 1968.
Sep 13 2011 | Read Full Review of Code Talker: The First and On...A few years ago, I had checked out Native American Code Talker in World War II to learn a bit about the history of the use of a code developed from the Navajo language.
Jul 03 2012 | Read Full Review of Code Talker: The First and On...An aggregated and normalized score based on 349 user ratings from iDreamBooks & iTunes