CHESTER NEZ AND THE UNBREAKABLE CODE: A NAVAJO CODE TALKER’S STORY, by Joseph Bruchac and Liz Amini-Holmes

 


Bruchac, J. & Amini-Holmes, L. (2018). CHESTER NEZ AND THE UNBREAKABLE

    CODE: A NAVAJO CODE TALKER’S STORY.  Albert Whitman & Company.

 

As a young Navajo boy, Chester Nez had to leave the reservation and attend boarding school, where he was taught that his native language and culture were useless. Chester refused to give up his heritage. During the summers, Chester practiced his native language so it would not be lost forever.  Years later, during World War II, Chester—and other Navajo men like him—was recruited by the US Marines to use the Navajo language to create an unbreakable military code. Suddenly the language he had been told to forget was needed to fight a war. Platoon 382 became the Navaho Code Talkers.  Chester, along with twenty-eight other Navahos created this unbreakable code.  After the code was completed and approved, the platoon was shipped to the Pacific (minus two that stayed behind as instructors).  The code proved successful in battle because the Japanese never broke it.

This is a picture book biography and contains backmatter including a timeline and a portion of the Navajo code.  There is an author’s note that tells what Chester did after his service.  It also talks about how the Code Talkers were eventually honored with a special day honoring them, and metals at the White House.

There are many cultural markers in the story.  The first page of the story talks about how when Chester was eight years old, he was taken from his family to attend boarding school.  His original name was Betoli, but he was forced to change it because he needed an English name. When he returned home in the summers, he could practice his Navaho traditions. He spoke his language to keep it alive as well as caring for his sheep and praying using corn pollen.   When Chester was in the tenth grade, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. By this time, Chester felt the United States was his country.  “Chester thought about how his ancestors stood up against enemies.  He should act with the same courage.  Protecting his homeland was an honor.  “I am a warrior,” Chester said to himself.  “ I will fight for this land.””  Not long after, he is recruited by the US Marines Corps.

The illustrations in the story show cultural markers.  At the beginning of the story, the Navaho in the pictures are dressed in bright colors with headbands and long hair.  When Chester goes through the “Enemy Way” a ceremony to help someone who has been exposed to war, the illustrations show Chester in English clothes at the beginning of the ceremony (the left page) and in Navaho clothes at the end of the ceremony (the right page).  I would say this symbolizes his healing transformation. 

 

Publisher’s Weekly: “Bruchac movingly draws a parallel between the trauma of indigenous boarding schools and war. Amini-Holmes’s paintings capture the nightmarish atmosphere of both: at school, Nez’s terror is embodied by red-eyed crows that fly away with locks of his sheared hair, while in his postwar dreams, birds morph into sharks resembling dive bombers.”

 

Kirkus: “Bruchac’s story dares to go beyond the war in highlighting the postwar trauma that Chester experienced, demonstrated in a beautiful yet haunting illustration that symbolically captures his pain. This tale of a real-life Code Talker humanizes the main character by giving readers the whole picture of his connectedness to home and family, which is reinforced in Amini-Holmes’ textured paintings, which resonate on an almost ethereal level.”

 

Other books about Navaho Code Talkers:

THE UNBREAKABLE CODE, by Sara Hoagland Hunter and Julia Miner   ISBN 978-0873589178

CODE TALKER: THE FIRST AND ONLY MEMOIR BY ONE OF THE ORIGINAL NAVAJO CODE TALKERS OF WWII, by Chester Nez and Judith Schiess Avila  ISBN 978-0425247853

SEARCH FOR THE NAVAJO CODE TALKERS, by Sally McClain ISBN 978-1933855776

 


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