Code Talker (24 page)

After my wound, the wounding of our squadron leader, our victory over the Japanese Banzai offensive, and the seizure of the Orote Peninsula airfield, the Marines assaulted Sugar Ridge. It was July 30, 1944. The five-hundred-foot-tall, perpendicular ridge offered a clear view of the portion of beach midway down the western shore of Guam, right where we Marines had landed. It also housed multiple Japanese caves, pillboxes, and other fortifications.

Marines made their way up that ridge, scrabbling with boots and fingernails to gain an inch at a time. By midday on the thirtieth, an Allied command post was established, about halfway up. The next day, July 31, 1944, Sugar Ridge fell to the Americans.

After taking the ridge, the Marines were able to move in close to Agana, Guam's largest city. We bombarded Agana with artillery and mortar fire, destroying many of the buildings there. When we moved in for the final conquest, we discovered that it had been abandoned.

After Sugar Ridge and Agana were taken, Chamorro natives began to come out of hiding. Hungry, they climbed the coconut palms for food. Slinging a rope around the segmented trunk and holding it with both hands, they leaned back to pull the rope taut, then worked their way up by sliding the rope up first and following with their feet. It was something to watch. Whenever possible, the Chamorros gave the Americans information about hidden Japanese troops and munitions.

Then, on August 7, we learned that the Japanese had abandoned their fortifications at Tumon Bay, just northeast of Agana Bay. This gave the Marines an opening, and we immediately secured the Tiyan airfield, to the east of Agana Bay and south of Tumon Bay. Code talker Charlie Begay's unit was badly shot up during the assault on the airfield, and Charlie, not breathing and with his throat sliced from one side to the other, was left for dead. We code talkers all felt sick about it. But Charlie somehow woke up and was taken to a hospital ship. He later rejoined us at Guadalcanal. I saw him there, and he was doing all right.

A couple of heavy Japanese tanks tried to ambush the Marines as they moved farther north and east, but we Allies were not taking any more guff from those boys and their Land of the Rising Sun. We repelled the tanks and fighting pretty much came to a halt for us.

I think it was during that quiet time that a couple of us crawled into an empty Japanese bunker to take a look around. The hair on the backs of my arms prickled, and the smell of human feces soon drove us out. I thought about the Japanese who had lived for weeks—and maybe months—in that bunker. Man, the things people will go through in order to wage war.

By August 10, 1944, Japanese resistance on Guam officially ended, just in time for the arrival of four top brass: Admirals Nimitz and Spruance and Marine Generals Holland Smith and Vandergrift. We were done with Guam, except for the occasional enemy soldier left behind, who continued to come down from the island's ridges even months after our U.S. victory.

We took the island just three weeks after our July 21 landing. No one wanted any more long sieges. The Navajo code, still unbroken, had allowed United States troops to move and attack, secure in the secrecy of their plans.

 

 

In a time when black and white soldiers, and even blood supplies, were segregated, the Marines put absolute trust in us Navajo men.

Signal Corps commanding officer G. R. Lockard wrote, “As general duty Marines the Navajos are without peers . . . these people are scrupulously clean, neat, and orderly... They are . . . uncomplaining . . . Navajos make good Marines, and I should be very proud to command a unit composed entirely of these people.”
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Marine Henry Hisey Jr. remembers, “The Navajos were extremely dependable. They were the kind of guys you wanted in your foxhole, so I always tried to choose them when something had to be done.” Hisey asked for help from two Navajos from his unit when he had to do night repairs of some communication wires on Iwo Jima. Moving from the foxholes at night was extremely dangerous. Always on the lookout for Banzai, men fired from their foxholes at anything that moved. Soldiers mistaken for Banzai, like the unlucky code talker Harry Tsosie on Bougainville, ended up just as dead from friendly fire as they would have been from the enemy's guns. But the critical wiring job couldn't wait till morning. The Navajo men agreed to help, and the wires were successfully repaired.
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I'm not saying we were heroes, but we Navajo men always tried to do our best, just like we'd been taught by our families back home.

 

 

My foot was healing well. I stood by the tree line and wolfed a can of spaghetti and meatballs. Man, that was good. Then I decided to take a short walk. The U.S. military on Guam had built a heavily guarded stockade for our Japanese prisoners, and I walked down a small hill to take a look. I was standing by the fence when a prisoner, young looking, just a boy really, walked up to me. He looked me up and down. He appeared to study my arms and then looked down at his own arm. His skin looked about the same color as mine. We stared into each other's eyes from opposite sides of the stockade fence, saying nothing.

I knew the Japanese behind that fence ate well—U.S. rations. They had plenty of water to drink. Medical care was provided for any who needed it. Many of the U.S. troops resented the fact that the enemy prisoners were so well treated. They knew these men had tortured and killed American military troops. And rumors were circulating that one hundred percent of captured Americans had been killed by the Japanese.

It was growing dark, and I turned away from the fence. A wonderful smell, straight from home, reached my nostrils. My stomach growled.
Fry bread.
Several Navajo men had worked it out with the supply depot. Every so often they got deliveries of flour and lard, or butter if no lard was available.

A couple of my buddies approached. “D'you smell that?”

Francis, who was with them, tilted his head back. His eyes closed. “Fry bread. Let's go.”

Lard, ladled into a helmet, was already melted and boiling when we stepped up to the butane stove. Dough, crisp and golden, sizzled in the fat.

All of us Navajo men knew how to make fry bread. First we'd dump two or three heaping tablespoons of lard into a helmet. We'd heat that up while making the dough: a couple cups of flour, some salt, and baking powder if it was available. We added warm water to the flour mixture and made a ball of dough. We flattened the dough and dropped it into the hot lard. As the dough fried, the “cook ” turned it with a stick.

We men swore we could smell that fry bread turning golden in its oil from two or three miles away.

More than medical services were provided to the native Chamorros on Guam. My code talker buddy Wilsie Bitsie got the Red Cross to promise they'd find a good home for a seven-year-old Chamorro boy whose entire family had been killed. When Wilsie met him, the boy had been alone for a while, and he was scared. He attached himself to Wilsie. We Marines made sure he had enough to eat, and that he felt safe. He seemed like a really good kid. Brave.

I watched as a Red Cross representative talked to the boy, who spoke perfect English. It sounded as though the Red Cross would take good care of him. I know Wilsie hated to leave him, but what else could he do? We were at war.

The good treatment of the prisoners and natives on Guam made me glad to be an American. I knew that captured Japanese were not
always
well treated, but I feel sure that any Americans who mistreated the enemy were ashamed. There was no boasting, and no one wanted to talk about that kind of thing. The two cultures—Japanese and American—differed drastically in the way they valued human life.

I readied my equipment in preparation for leaving Guam. This time we didn't leave by ship. As I boarded the ponderous transport plane, a C-47, I wiped sweaty palms on my pants. It was my first time flying. It was probably the first time for most of us code talkers, who were climbing on board. I settled myself and my gear. The craft began to taxi. We left the ground in an amazingly short time, this heavy craft loaded with men and cargo. Noise from two large engines, driving the dual propellers, roared in my ears. Turbulence jostled my equilibrium. Still, the effect wasn't nearly as bad as the rolling of a ship had been before I'd developed my sea legs.

Among the other passengers on the plane was a general. The officer knew about our secret mission, knew we were code talkers. He engaged us in conversation. We told him about being recruited, and he told us what a difference we were making on the islands. He talked about how the code had allowed the United States to make headway against the Japanese in the South Pacific. Everyone felt real good about that.

The general's uniform, I noticed, was free of the stars worn by most generals, although it sported four discreet black bars. He talked easily, treating me and the other men as equals, pulling no rank.

I looked across the fuselage at one of the other code talkers. The man glanced at the general and back at me, raising his brows. Everyone seemed to appreciate that the general didn't try to be a big shot.

The Marine brass was like that; none of them that I met pulled rank. I met then-Colonel (later General) “Chesty” Puller on a ship off Guadalcanal, and he was the same, personable and concerned. He became one of the most decorated Marines in history, earning five Navy Crosses and numerous other citations, and had already earned his share of awards, but in battle we fighting men all became equals.

A bout of turbulence shook the aircraft. I noticed the tense expression on Francis's face and on the faces of the other code talkers. But the turbulence paled compared to the fear we all had of being shot down by the Japanese.

Luckily, the trip back to Guadalcanal was much quicker than it would have been by ship—and safe.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Peleliu and Angaur

We slept stacked four or five high in the belly of the transport ship. I woke every time the man above me turned in his hammock. The odor of bodies, strong in the poorly ventilated hold of the ship, filled my nose. I pulled my blanket over my head, concentrating on the comforting aroma of the wool.

When I woke up, the anticipation of battle hung like something oppressive and palpable in the air. There was only so much time we could kill by loading bullets into cartridge belts and playing cards. The rest of the time it was difficult not to worry. On this, my fourth campaign, I was an old hand at sea travel. I barely noted the movement of the ship and never felt sick—which was lucky, because our trip to Peleliu would take a good two weeks.

I ran a series of new code words through my mind. Command had declared that the unbreakable and widely acclaimed Navajo code would be the only means of communication during the landing on Peleliu. The 1st Marine Division, not our 3d, was assigned the assault, but they didn't have enough code talkers to support the battle plan. Several of us 3d Division code talkers were asked to go along. Francis and I, along with Roy Begay and Roy Notah, had embarked from Guadalcanal around September 1, 1944.

 

 

Operation Stalemate had begun without a lot of fanfare. Peleliu was an island shaped like a lobster claw and located 470 miles east of the Philippines and about 500 miles north of New Guinea, in the Palau Island chain. It was a tiny island, only six miles long and approximately two miles wide. Nothing hinted that it would be, in many analysts' opinion, the worst battle of the war.

More than thirty thousand Japanese soldiers, strategically placed across the various Palau Islands, lay in wait for American troops. Approximately one-third of those enemy soldiers waited on Peleliu.

The Japanese defenders on the small island had constructed an impressive network of heavy-duty tunnels and fortified caves, some with sliding steel doors. There were approximately five hundred caves. Often the entrance shaft to a cave dropped straight down, maybe four or five feet, and horizontal tunnels branched off at the bottom, but some of the tunnels and caves were buried as many as six stories deep. These were designed to withstand American bombs. It took a direct artillery hit into the entryway, with a large-gauge ninety-millimeter shell that exploded once inside, to have even a minor effect on those subterranean fortifications. They were wired with electricity and lighted, somewhat dimly, with bare bulbs. In addition, Peleliu was so heavily covered with vegetation that U.S. reconnaissance had trouble spotting any enemy fortifications. As a result of these two factors—the strength of the cave/tunnel system and the invisibility of the enemy—we would soon land on an island whose 10,700 defenders had not been substantially weakened by U.S. artillery and air strikes. Although the island was battered mercilessly before our invasion, most of the enemy fortifications and troops had survived. And U.S. brass, believing the island had been largely subdued from the air, was unaware of their survival.

The general formula for numbers of invading troops needed to overcome entrenched troops was three to one. Thus we needed thirty thousand Marines to vanquish the ten-thousand-plus Japanese hidden in caves and tunnels on the island. The First Marine Division, the primary invading division on Peleliu, had only about nine thousand infantrymen, plus their 11th Regiment, Division Artillery. These numbers were reinforced with “support” personnel, many of whom would not do the real fighting or get anywhere near the front lines. We 3d Marine Division code talkers were among the reinforcements who would join the 1st Marine Division infantrymen in the thick of combat. I later found out that Colonel “Chesty” Puller had warned that this was not enough combat personnel. Still, Field Commander General William H. Rupertus bragged that his Marines would take Peleliu in three or four days.