Customer Reviews

Navajo Code Talkers (We the People (Compass Point Books Hardcover))

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Code Breaking was an important part of World War II. The success of the Allies against the Axis powers was due in part to the ability to break Japanese and Nazi codes. Of course, enemy code breakers were trying to do the same thing with Allied codes. During the war, about 400 Navajos who served in the U.S. Marines Corps were employed as code talkers, sending and receiving codes messages. The code they invented was never broken by the enemy and was based on the Navajo language. In a war that would be ended by the advanced technology of atomic bombs, the simple elegance of using a Native American language to befuddle Japanese code breakers is one of the most interesting footnotes of World War II.

In "Navajo Code Talkers," Andrew Santella begins with how Pearl Harbor got the United States into the war and how being able to communicate battle plans and information over long distances was crucial to military success. The Japanese listened in to American military radio messages (there is even a photograph of them doing this) and the American military had developed codes that were so complex they took hours to translate messages. Then Philip Johnson, a Los Angeles engineer who was the son of missionaries who had worked the Navajos, came up with the idea of using the Navajo language to make a simple code that would be almost impossible to break. Santella explains how the pronunciation and tone of each syllable is crucial in Navajo, and how the Army had used Native American languages in both World War I and World War II (File this under the "I did not know that" category). I always thought the Navajo simply spoke in their own language, but indeed a code was developed based on the language.

After providing a section on the history of the Navajo, Santella looks at the training of the original 29 Navajos as code breakers, emphasizing the clash with Navajo traditions. Then we get to the interesting section, which explains how the code was created. Basically, they used Navajo words to represent each English letter, from Wol-la-chee (ant) for "A" to Besh-do-tilz (zinc) for "Z." Because some English letters could be represented by as many as three different Navajo words (e.g., be-la-sana for apple and tse-nill for axe), the code could be complicated by simple means. They also used Navajo words for English words, such as Gini (chicken hawk) for dive-bomber and Ne-hem-ah (Our mother) for America. I can see a bunch of school children across the country are going to use the material in this book for a poster presentation (those are getting a lot more complicated than they were in my day, that is for sure).

The rest of the book look at how this worked on the battlefields of most of the major battles fought in the Pacific theater, what happened when the Navajos returned home after the war. It was not until 2001 that Congressional gold medals were presented to each of the 29 original code talkers, only five of who were still alive. Silver medals were awarded to all of the Navajo code talkers later in 2001. This goes in the better late than never category, but this We the People book makes it clear the honor is richly deserved. Even young students who are not particularly interested in books about war will find this story fascinating. In the back of the book Santella provides the names of a couple of books, a safe web search engine to use for an Internet search, an address for the official group that represents the Navajo code talkers, and a trio of sites in New Mexico and Maryland that young readers can actually visit.

My 8 year old/second grader son REALLY enjoyed this book, as did my husband when my son was doing his 'out-loud' homework. My son has gotten fairly good at reading -- above grade level now after starting the year pretty average to below-average. His teacher has attributed this to the fact he is finding books with topics or characters that are interesting to him.

I won't belabor the content here--the other review and the publisher's blurb do an excellent job with that. What I do want to point out for potential readers is that the way the story is told is challenging (a relatively high lexile score) yet done in a very interesting and approachable way that should have a fairly broad appeal. Even the so-called reluctant readers can find this one interesting.

Also, codes can be a lot of fun at the grade school level (I'm thinking ig-pay atin-lay) and now my son is trying to come up with his own code...

Highly recommended!

JTG