Code Talker: Chapter 18 Summary & Analysis

The next two days are spent establishing the base on Cape Torokina and exploring the island. Its jungle terrain is especially foreign to Ned. There is even an erupting volcano. But there are also hordes of mosquitoes, meaning that everyone has to take awful-tasting Atabrine pills to ward off malaria. At first Ned enjoys tricking the watch officer, who distributes the pills, by just pretending to swallow them, but eventually he is found out.

At night, the Japanese often launch banzai attacks. In such attacks, Japanese soldiers leave their posts and come running at their enemies with a single weapon or even just their bare hands. Because of these nighttime attacks, the marines are ordered never to leave their foxholes at night. This leads to tragedy when one of the original code talkers, Harry Tsosie, is accidentally shot to death after he leaves his foxhole at night for some reason and is thought to be an enemy.

Ned and the other code talkers are kept busy even when the rest of their battalion is moved off the line. One day, for example, there are signs that the Japanese have just retreated. Marines are busily foraging through the personal belongings the Japanese have left along the trail. But the Japanese have started booby-trapping some of these items, knowing the Americans like to take them as souvenirs. After two marines are wounded by shrapnel in this way, Ned and his partner Bill Toledo send an urgent coded message warning all units about the traps. If they hadn’t, Ned is sure that many more would have been wounded or killed. As soon as they finish sending that message, a Japanese mortar round lands right where Ned and Bill had been standing.

They spend two months on Bougainville, which Ned remembers as “hard and strange.” Between the thick mud, the mosquitoes, and the volcano, Ned thinks that the very earth seems unhappy about the war. In December, there’s even an earthquake. The marines get their first clear sight of the enemy when the quake sends Japanese snipers falling from the tops of palm trees.

On Bougainville, Ned spends a lot of time with Smitty, a friend of his from Camp Elliott. Long after the war, Ned learns that Smitty had a double assignment—not only to serve in their Signal Corps unit, but also to watch over and protect Ned from other marines, so he would not be mistaken for an enemy in disguise because of his skin tone and the “sort of Asian look that a lot of us Navajos have.”

One day, Smitty points out a brown-haired lieutenant getting out of a boat and asks Ned if he’d like to meet him. The lieutenant is the son of Joe Kennedy and will probably become a Massachusetts senator if he survives the war. Ned declines, since he’s shy around new people, but later he finds out that Smitty’s prediction was correct. He never does meet JFK, since the code talkers are only invited to the White House many years after his presidency.

On December 26, the Marines pack up to move off Bougainville. They’ve successfully established the American presence on the island, and with the help of the Seabees (the naval construction battalion), they’ve prepared everything for the Army takeover. Ned can finally relax. He also receives a letter from his parents, assuring him of prayers, and there’s a P.S. from his younger sister, complaining of boredom at school. Ned mails his parents his unwashed fatigues for use in a protection ceremony.