Code Talker

The next day, Ned and his parents go to the Marine Corps office near tribal headquarters so that Ned can enlist. When First Sergeant Frank Shinn asks Ned if he is at least 17 years old, Ned simply tells him that he is “old enough to join the Marines” and that his parents will attest to the same. He is allowed to take the oath. In March, 1943, he and more than 60 other Navajo men take the bus from Fort Defiance to Fort Wingate to be sworn in.

Fort Defiance was the place where, in 1863, the Navajo people were first gathered for the Long Walk into exile. Fort Wingate had been their first stop. Now Ned and his fellow marines are making the same journey, but this time “to fight as warriors for the same United States that had treated our ancestors so cruelly.”

The next day, boot camp begins. Some of the men get tears in their eyes when their hair is shaved off to Marine regulations, but Ned laughs at his “plucked turkey” appearance. As the day goes on, large men yell angrily at Ned no matter what he does. On the whole, Ned thinks that the drill instructors’ insults are easier for Navajo recruits to handle than for white recruits. After all, “we were used to having white men shout at us and tell us we were worthless and stupid.”

Ned finds that the expectations of boot camp aren’t too difficult to meet. As Johnny Manuelito had said, long hikes in the sun, carrying heavy loads, and doing calisthenics are fairly standard activities for the Navajos. They are much harder for most of the white recruits from other platoons. Even marching in step is familiar to those who’ve attended boarding school. Weapons training is fun for Ned.

But Ned, like most of the other Navajos, does not know how to swim. The drill instructor blindfolds the men and pushes them into the deep end of a swimming pool. Most of them, forced to sink or swim, manage to struggle across the pool. When Ned is tossed in, he sinks like a rock and walks across the pool underwater. He eventually does learn how to swim, though—he’s the last man in the platoon to do so.

Unlike the white recruits, the Navajo recruits—survivors of poor rations in boarding school—think the food in boot camp is good, and they even gain weight. But Ned also learns about some things he has in common with his white peers. A blond-haired, blue-eyed recruit named Georgia Boy approaches Ned in the mess hall one day and asks if Ned can read. He wants Ned to help him read a note from home. Afterward, Georgia Boy confesses to Ned that he has never learned to read; he’s been getting by in boot camp by memorizing things he is supposed to read. When Ned offers to teach Georgia Boy to read, Georgia Boy beams, and Ned knows he has a new friend.

Growing up in boarding school, Ned had always been taught that white men knew everything. But that day, Ned learned that this isn’t true. He learns, in fact, that “in many of the most important ways, white men are no different from Navajos.” And what’s more, all people can learn from each other.