TCC honors Navajo code talkers, heroes
by Caren Penland, reporter

    Native Americans did not just sit and watch the United States wage World War II, instead they joined the Marines and received credit for several major victories, a Navajo Code Talker told TCC audiences last week.

    The code talkers were given the task of creating an unbreakable code based upon the complexity of the Navajo language—a code that the Japanese never deciphered.

    Thomas H. Begay, one of the 29 Navajo recruits, and Nonabah Doris Begay, his wife, participated in Native American Heritage Month and Veterans Day celebrations throughout the district.

    Nonabah Begay, explaining that she enjoyed translating primary songs such as Happy Birthday and Mary Had a Little Lamb into the Navajo language, demonstrated her ability when she asked the crowd to rise for the national anthem.

    While her husband stood tall to salute the flag, she performed an ancient rendition of the Star Spangled Banner in Navajo for the awestruck audience. Heavy applause followed the Navajo’s solo.

    Begay, a U.S. veteran, said he is as proud to have served his country as he is of his heritage and openly expressed his patriotism.

    “We serve our country well. I want to thank you all for standing up united this morning for the national anthem. Our commanding chief, George W. Bush, needs us to do that,” he said.

    Begay made no pretensions that his task as a code talker had been easy even though he has a strong hold over his own language.

    The Navajo language, he explained, is the only one that cannot be mastered properly without having learned it during childhood.

    “Even for the Navajos, it was hard. Many recruits failed the tests because it was so hard. And we do everything by memory: all the prayers, everything and this too. There were 508 codes to remember with no book,” he said.

    The code talkers used animals to reference everything from planes to bombs. And if someone could not remember a word, then they could just spell it out since the words used for the alphabet made no sense put together, Begay said.

    “Jump, for example—J. U. M. P. written out—would go: Jackass-You-Mouse-Pea,” he demonstrated with laughter from the audience.

    Begay joined the Marine Corps when he was just 16. He explained that his people kept no records, and, therefore, he could not have been proved underage.

    “My age is flexible,” he laughed.

    The veteran assumed when he went to boot camp that he would be trained as an aerial gunner.

    “I wasn’t familiar with a lot of things, and these other Navajos were the same way. But we adapted to the new environment,” he said.

    Soon, he found out that he had been taken to the Code Talker school and had been assigned to a “special project.” The recruits were kept away from the public and told they would be court-martialed if they spoke to anyone about the project.

    Begay is proud of his people’s success.

    “We did something nobody did. They never broke our code,” he claimed.

    A woman in the audience asked if the talkers had been assigned as riflemen in order to prevent capture.

    “I asked, but they would never tell us anything. We didn’t know a lot of what was going on, but when there were only two of us left in my division, they made us stay in different foxholes. They kept us individual, so they protected us that way,” he said.

    In reference to the gold metals the Navajo Code Talkers will receive next month, Begay expressed a desire to see a real military declaration, rather than to see the government give out medals that he felt anyone had the opportunity to earn.

    A man questioned the couple about an upcoming film called Wind Talkers, which is supposed to explore the tale of the 29 recruits. He wanted to know if they had previewed it.

    The veteran answered that he had been called for that purpose, but that the film has been postponed until next June, so they had not seen it yet.

    Despite the prestige Begay and his colleagues have earned in recent years, being a Native American in the military still came with many disadvantages. For instance, he was never promoted even though he had met all the requirements.

    Begay and his wife even had difficulties obtaining their legal passports. After sending off the applications, they received a letter from Houston saying that the United States issues passports only to American citizens. The letter followed Begay’s service in both WWII and the Korean War.

    “I thought after all this service and time, now I’m not a citizen?” he reflected sadly.

    After some research, the couple located their baptizing records in an old church and a very old trader to vouch for Begay’s birth on U.S. soil.

    Despite the setbacks, the Begays have many excellent memories.

“We’ve been places; we’ve met so many people,” she said.

    She then proceeded to sing a native song, which she later translated as an expression of joy: the wonderfulness of life and the beauty of all people.

    Both expressed regret that so many of the young Navajo now do not know their native tongue. Since all laws and papers are in English, many young Navajos seem to believe they do not need to learn the complex, old language.

    “It’s just too hard for them,” the veteran explained.

    The Begays appear in a video produced by the History Channel, In Search of History: The Navajo Code Talkers.

    “We’re on TV,” they both laughed.