Guadalcanal Invasion: November 4, 1942: Approaching Guadalcanal
- Get ready to be thrown headfirst into the action, Shmoopers. You can catch your breath later.
- Chester Nez, our Navajo Marine here, is on a ship heading to Guadalcanal, an island that is part of the chain of the Solomon Islands in the Pacific.
- The Japanese have invaded the island, and Nez and his Marine buddies are on their way to re-capture it from the Japanese.
- Yup: we're smack dab in the middle of the Pacific Theater of World War II.
- Chester tells us that he volunteered to join the Marines after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii in 1941.
- On board the ship, Nez goes to the mess hall, where he meets up with twelve other code-talking buddies. They all want a swig of beer—war is stressful (understatement of the century).
- Nez informs us that the he and the other code talkers on the ship—along with nineteen others—had helped come up with a super-duper secret military code using their native Navajo language. The code was developed as part of a plan to take back the Pacific islands from the Japanese.
- On ship, the Navajo Marines practice transmitting messages to each other using the 200-plus-word vocabulary of the code.
- Their shipmates—the rest of the American Marines who belong to the 2nd Marine Division—don't know about the Navajo Marines' top-secret mission. They think they're speaking Navajo to each other, when in fact they're practicing their super-duper unbreakable code.
- The Navajo Marines, Nez included, head to the barracks area in the ship.
- There, they're briefed on what's going to go down when they land on the island of Guadalcanal. Hint: nothing fun.
- A high-ranking officer addresses the gathered Marines and gives it to them straight: some of the men standing in front of him won't be returning home after the battle for Guadalcanal. Why? Because they'll be dead.
- But hey, it's all worth it because the Marines are defending their country and their families.
- Nez looks over at Roy Begay, another Navajo Marine, who is his code-talking partner. Nez is scared, and he can see that his buddy is too.
- Nez gives himself a little pep-talk. He tells himself that he can do this. He takes some corn pollen from his medicine bag and touches it to his tongue and then gestures east, south, west and north. Why the heck is he touching corn pollen to his tongue and gesturing all over the place? Because in Navajo culture, this is a protective ritual.
- Finally, the ship approaches the northern shore of Guadalcanal. American battleships begin pounding the shore of the island.
- Nez watches from the ship as the Marines of the first assault wave scramble down rope nets, onto boats, and begin making their way toward shore. Sounds simple, doesn't it?
- Nez and his buddies don't disembark on this first assault wave: they wait for their turn.
- As Nez watches the Marines disembarking, he reminds himself of why he's here.
- After bombing Pearl Harbor, the Japanese have basically taken over the Pacific islands. The U.S. has no bases on any Pacific islands other than Hawaii, and they need these bases and airfields established on other islands in order to attack the power-hungry Japanese and stop them in their tracks.
- Nez gives us a bit of background about the fight between the Americans and the Japanese for control the Pacific Islands. The Americans have been losing.
- In August 1942, they'd suffered the worst naval defeat in 130 years, when the Japanese had sunk a bunch of American ships off of Guadalcanal, in the Battle of Savo Island.
- By the time Nez and his buddies arrive on Guadalcanal in November 1942, there have been loads of casualties on both the American and Japanese sides in their fight for Guadalcanal and other islands in the Pacific.
- We return to Chester and his Marine buddies. Now Chester and a group of Marines are on a Higgins boat, on their way to shore.
- They land on the beach, but Japanese artillery shells are flying around and there are explosions everywhere.
- On land, Chester and his buddies are assigned to Signal Officer Lieutenant Hunt. He and his partner Roy Begay are ordered to move to the tree line along the beach to start digging foxholes (a hole that the Marines hide in during battle).
- Chester and Roy test their radio equipment to make sure it's working.
- The TBX radio they'll be using to transmit messages is wireless and is operated by cranking (who has the time to be tripping all over wires in the middle of battle?)
- Chester and Roy crouch in the foxhole the first night (yes, they actually sleep in those holes—not very comfy, we imagine).
- They pray together, and Chester recites a traditional Navajo prayer.
- Chester remembers his home, Chichiltah (which means "Among the Oak Trees" in Navajo), back in New Mexico.
- He remembers the beautiful view from his grandmother's land. He cheers himself up by thinking about how proud his family will be of him when he goes back home.
- He is going to make it back home, isn't he? We hope so.