Unbreakable Voices: Chester Nez and the Navajo Code Talkers

Long before he became a crucial asset to the United States military, Chester Nez was a young boy growing up on the Navajo Reservation in New Mexico. Born in 1921, Nez spent his early years herding sheep and speaking only his native tongue, Diné Bizaad. However, during the early twentieth century, the United States government actively sought to assimilate Native American children. Nez was sent to a government-run boarding school where administrators strictly forbade the use of the Navajo language. Students who spoke it were severely punished, forced to wash their mouths out with soap. The government sought to erase the very language that would, ironicaly, later save thousands of American lives during World War II.

In 1941, the United States entered the war, facing a formidable adversary in the Pacific Theater. The Japanese military was highly skilled at intercepting and deciphering American radio communications, rendering traditional military codes useless. Recognizing the urgent need for an unbreakable cryptographic system, Philip Johnston, a World War I veteran who had grown up on the Navajo Reservation, proposed an audacious idea: use the Navajo language as a military code. Because Navajo is an unwritten, tonal language with incredibly complex grammar and no written alphabet, it was virtually impossible for anyone who had not grown up speaking it to understand.