Marine Recruit: Late 1930s, Early 1940s
- Chester is on a truck on his way back to Chichiltah. He's finally finished eighth grade, the last grade in the school at Fort Defiance. Yay!
- But he still has four more years of high school to go. Oh. That sucks.
- He's enrolled in a junior high school in Gallup, New Mexico. This school is way different from his school in Fort Defiance.
- Even though classes are also in English here, students speak Navajo openly in the hallways. Chester can't believe his ears. And there are no horrible matrons and bullies in this new school. Phew. It's much better than the school in Fort Defiance.
- Partway through tenth grade, the government decides that Chester has to move to a new boarding school in Tuba City, Arizona.
- (We guess because the Gallup school is just too much fun. Does the government have it in for Chester or something?)
- Chester doesn't like the Tuba City school as much as the Gallup school, but hey, it's still better than the horrible school in Fort Defiance.
- At school in Tuba City, students begin hearing news broadcasts about war (that's World War II, people) breaking out in Europe.
- In the late spring of 1940, the Navajo Tribal Council, the highest Navajo governing council, passes a resolution of allegiance to the U.S.
- Just in case the American government gets drawn into the war, the Navajo is on its side. Very kind of the Navajo, considering the American government has messed them up again and again (remember the Great Livestock Massacre?).
- On December 7th, 1941, news of the Japanese bombing of an American base in Pearl Harbor in Hawaii reaches the Tuba City School. Whoa. This is serious business now. War's come to the American homeland.
- Chester gives us a little historical lesson on U.S.-Japanese relations here. At one point in time, the Japanese and the Americans were friends.
- The Japanese had sided with the allies—the U.S. and Britain—during World War I.
- But in 1937, the Japanese invaded China. In reaction, the U.S. nationalizes all Japanese assets in the U.S. in 1941.
- In retaliation, Japan signs a pact with Germany and Italy—the bad-guy Fascists in the war in Europe—in September of 1941. And the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor.
- The school principal calls the students together to explain what's happened in Pearl Harbor. Chester discusses the events with his friends, including Roy Begay, another student at the school.
- The U.S. is now officially at war. Chester and his friends decide that they will join the military if they're asked, and they'll put their awesome Navajo-warrior-butt-kicking skills to good use.
- The Navajo are famous warriors, after all.
April to June 1942
- Marine recruits arrive in April 1942 at the Tuba City school looking for fluent English and Navajo speakers.
- By this point in 1942 the Japanese have conquered Hong Kong, Guam, Wake Island, and have attacked the Australian port city of Darwin. Those Japanese are on a serious rampage. Will Chester and his buddy Roy Begay help stop them?
- You bet. Chester and Roy decide to join up with the Marines. They go with Marine recruiters to Fort Defiance, where they find 200 other young Navajo.
- Chester is interviewed in English by Marine recruiters. Only thirty men out of the hundreds that are there are going to be selected to join the Marines.
- Both Chester and his friend Roy make the cut. Hurrah!
- One of the thirty men picked drops out, which leaves twenty-nine men, "the original twenty-nine," which includes Chester and Roy.
- Wait—which "original twenty-nine?" The original twenty-nine code talkers!
- On May 4, 1942, the new recruits head to Fort Wingate, New Mexico, where they're sworn in as U.S. Marines.
- Then they all head to the Marine Recruit Depot, just outside of San Diego, California.
- The new Marines walk around San Diego and take in the sights. It's their first time in such a big city.
- Chester and the new Navajo Marines don't yet know that they're part of a secret mission. That's coming later.
- But first, Chester gives us a little background on this secret mission. Get ready for some serious info.
- This secret mission is the brainchild of Philip Johnston, the son of a missionary couple who lived on a Navajo reservation.
- Johnston knew that Navajo is a very complex language, and that it's unwritten. He realized that it would make a great basis for a secret military code.
- Johnston convinces a senior communications officer in the Marines to test out the potential of a military code based on Navajo.
- Another top-ranking officer would observe the trial and rule on the potential of the Navajo code.
- Johnston finds four Navajo men fluent in English and Navajo and gives them the task of coming up with Navajo words for various military terms.
- Then the Navajo men and the Marine communications men have to transmit military messages using the new vocabulary.
- During this trial, the same messages are transmitted using the "Shackle" code—the standard military code used to transmit messages, which involves a long process of encoding and decoding messages written in English.
- The military messages take an hour to be sent and received using standard Shackle code.
- But the same messages are transmitted in forty seconds using the vocabulary that the four Navajo men have come up with. Wow. That's quite a difference.
- Johnston's trial convinces Marine brass to give the Navajo code a serious go. Thirty (now twenty-nine) Navajo Marines are recruited—among them our hero Chester—to take part in the secret mission of developing the code.
- Up until this point in the war, the Japanese have cracked every single military code that the Americans have come up with.
- The Marines are desperate for something that the Japanese can't crack.
- But before the Navajo Marines learn about their secret mission, they have to complete Marine basic training: a.k.a. boot camp.
- Chester is jolted from sleep at 5 a.m. It's the wake-up call for the new recruits' basic training.
- The Marines run along the beach carrying pails of sand and water.
- They then spend half an hour on an obstacle course, and spend the rest of the morning doing exercises.
- After lunch, the drill sergeant tells them that they all have to learn to swim. Luckily, Chester knows how to swim—he'd taught himself as a young boy by swimming in the family's reservoir—but many of his buddies don't.
- A few days into training, an instructor (a corporal), lines up the Navajo recruits and punches them each in the gut, telling them he's checking if they're getting tough.
- When the corporal reaches Carl Gorman, one of the Navajo recruits, Gorman hits him back. The corporal and Carl put on boxing gloves and duke it out. Chester and the other Marines root for their friend Carl.
- Even though boot camp is a challenge (how can it not be? it's boot camp), Chester and his buddies work hard at learning everything.
- They do a good job, and the Marine Corps newspaper in San Diego, the Chevron, runs an article about their platoon, Navajo Platoon 382.
- Platoon 382 impresses their instructors at the rifle range, where they earn one of the highest scores on marksmanship.
- They also have to do hand-to-hand combat training with bayonets (yikes!). They get bruised up during the training but hey—it's all in a day's work.
- They also attend communications school and learn various codes, including Morse and semaphore (which uses flags).
- They learn to fix radios and take them apart. Though they don't know it at the time, but radios are going to be super important when they get to their secret code work later.
- After completing seven weeks of basic training, Platoon 382 stands for final inspection on June 27, 1942. They're ready to rock 'n roll.
- They're praised by the commanding officer of the base. The Marine Corps Chevron runs another article about them.