50 Fun Facts About Code Talker

Navajo had no word for submarine, so which animal phrase did the code talkers use instead?

Iron fish, or besh-lo, joined a coded fleet in which destroyers were sharks and minesweepers were beavers.

In the Navajo code used by the Marines, which bird's name stood for a fighter plane?

Hummingbird, da-he-tih-hi in Navajo, was one of several bird names in the code: a bomber was a buzzard and a dive bomber a chicken hawk.

In Code Talker, what does Mr. Reamer scrub inside Ned Begay's mouth for greeting him in Navajo?

Soap was the punishment for one polite Navajo greeting on Ned's second day at the mission school. An older boy, Jesse Chee, helped him back to the dormitory and comforted him in Navajo.

Major Howard Connor said the Marines would never have taken which island without the Navajo code talkers?

Iwo Jima's first two days saw six Navajo code talkers send and receive more than 800 messages without a single error.

In Joseph Bruchac's Code Talker, to whom does the elderly Ned Begay tell the story of his war service?

His grandchildren ask about a medal he owns, and the whole novel is his answer. He tells it as a Navajo elder would, handing family history on to the next generation.

In the Navajo code, bombs were called by the word for which food?

Eggs, a-ye-shi in Navajo, suited a code in which a bomber was a buzzard, so the bird laid its eggs over a target. Grenades got a food name too: potatoes.

Which 2002 John Woo war film stars Nicolas Cage as a Marine guarding a Navajo radio operator?

Windtalkers cast Adam Beach as the code talker, Private Ben Yahzee, and set its biggest battle scenes during the invasion of Saipan.

In Code Talker, how does non-swimmer Ned Begay cross the boot camp pool after being pushed into the deep end?

Walks along the bottom is what he does, blindfolded, after sinking straight down. Navajo stories link deep water with monsters, he explains, and he is the last man in his platoon to learn to swim.

In Code Talker, a classmate bursts into Ned Begay's dormitory with news of a Japanese attack on which place?

Pearl Harbor changes everything for Ned: within months the Marines are asking for men fluent in the very language his school punished.

Why did the Marines judge the Navajo language ideal for an unbreakable battlefield code?

Few outsiders understood it: by one estimate, no more than 30 non-Navajos, none of them Japanese, could follow the language when World War II began.

In Code Talker, which protective ceremony must Ned Begay undergo before his parents let him enlist?

Blessingway is led by Hosteen Mitchell, a respected singer, who has Ned ceremonially bathed and then sings over him through the night at the family home.

In Code Talker, which Boston-born Marine is secretly assigned to stop Ned Begay being mistaken for the enemy?

Smitty, whose real name is John Smith, had a double assignment that Ned learns of only long after the war. Navajo Marines risked being shot by their own side as supposed infiltrators.

In Code Talker, which blond Marine does Ned Begay offer to teach to read during boot camp?

Georgia Boy admits in the mess hall that he has been memorizing whatever he was supposed to read. The friendship shows Ned that white men do not know everything, whatever his school had claimed.

Which frontiersman, called Red Shirt in Code Talker, led the 1860s campaign that drove the Navajo into exile?

Kit Carson's campaign is family history for Ned: his great-grandfather was a boy when the Navajo were driven hundreds of miles from home.

In Code Talker, on which island does a Japanese sniper shoot Ned Begay in the shoulder?

Guam is also where Ned and his tent-mate take in an orphaned Chamorro boy of about seven. Ned calls the wound itself hardly worth mentioning.

In Code Talker, the bitter Atabrine pills Ned Begay pretends to swallow guard against which disease?

Malaria was carried by the island's hordes of mosquitoes, and Ned fools the officer handing out the awful-tasting pills until he is caught.

What is the traditional Navajo home of earth and logs, like the one Ned Begay leaves in Code Talker?

Hogan doors traditionally face east to welcome the rising sun. The building can be round, cone-shaped, multi-sided or square.

Which award did the first Navajo code talkers receive under a law President Clinton signed in 2000?

Congressional Gold Medal presentations followed in July 2001, when President George W. Bush honored four surviving originals in the Capitol Rotunda.

In Code Talker, which future president does a friend point out to Ned Begay as a young lieutenant?

John F. Kennedy is stepping out of a boat in the Solomon Islands when Ned, shy with strangers, declines the offer of an introduction. The two never do meet.

In Code Talker, which relative drives six-year-old Ned Begay by wagon to the mission boarding school?

His uncle, the only one in the family who had attended a white school, argues that Navajo children must learn English because the laws they live under are written in it.

In Code Talker, which of the Solomon Islands is the site of Ned Begay's first combat landing?

Bougainville greets Ned with jungle, mud and an erupting volcano, and he spends two months there before the Army takes over.

In Code Talker, Ned Begay is fighting on which island when radio brings news of President Roosevelt's death?

Okinawa is the last battle Ned fights, and the news moves him to tears. Few Marines had known how ill the president was.

Which Pima Marine, a friend of Ned Begay in Code Talker, appears in Joe Rosenthal's famous flag-raising photograph?

Ira Hayes hated the fame the picture brought, and in the novel he tells Ned how lonely it is to be the only Indian in it. His story later became a nationally popular ballad recorded by Johnny Cash.

What name is given to the forced 1860s march of the Navajo to Fort Sumner, recalled by Ned Begay's family?

The Long Walk sent some 10,000 Navajos to an internment camp at Bosque Redondo, and they were allowed home only after a treaty in 1868.

In Code Talker, which career does Ned Begay pursue after the war, going to college on the G.I. Bill?

Teacher is a goal Ned set as a schoolboy, and being thrown out of a bar that refused to serve Indians, while in uniform, hardens it. He wants Navajo children to learn their own language and history.

In Code Talker, what does Ned Begay carry in a pouch and scatter at dawn as a daily prayer?

Corn pollen links Ned to home throughout the war: he prays with it on the morning of a landing, and it is part of the ceremony that sends him off to the Marines.

In Code Talker, which corporal from the first all-Navajo platoon returns to recruit and inspires Ned Begay to enlist?

Johnny Manuelito stands tall in a spotless uniform and reports that not one man of the Navajo platoon washed out of boot camp. He later instructs Ned at code school.

In Code Talker, which Navajo ceremony finally frees Ned Begay from his nightmares after he returns home?

Enemyway, as Ned tells it, was first held for Monster Slayer, a hero sickened by all the killing he had done. On its first night Ned dreams of the jungle at peace.

In Code Talker, the surname Begay comes from Mr. Reamer mishearing Navajo words with what meaning?

Son of, or biye' in Navajo, is what Ned said when he called himself the son of a man with a gray mustache. He adds that many Navajo children of his era got the surname the same way.

In the Navajo code, as in Bruchac's Code Talker, America is named with words meaning what?

Our Mother, ne-he-mah in the code, sat beside other country names built from description: Britain was 'between waters' and Germany 'iron hat'.

In Code Talker, which Japanese word names the suicide planes Ned Begay is ordered to keep secret from home?

Kamikaze means 'divine wind', a name first given to the typhoons that scattered Mongol invasion fleets in the 13th century.

After boot camp in Code Talker, Ned Begay proudly claims which old nickname for a United States Marine?

Leatherneck comes from the stiff leather stock that Marines once wore around the neck. A Marine magazine carries the same name.

In Code Talker, which nickname do white Marines give almost every Native American serviceman Ned Begay meets?

Chief was not meant as an insult, Ned says, so he hated to correct the friends who used it for men of many different tribes.

At the end of code school in Code Talker, the Navajo recruits sing a Navajo translation of which song?

The Marines' Hymn, the oldest official song in the US armed forces, closes a program of dances the recruits stage for their Camp Elliott instructors.

In Code Talker, which desert plant do the Navajo Marines secretly cut for water on a Hawaii training march?

Prickly pear keeps their canteens full while the rest of the platoon staggers, so Lieutenant Stormy sends the Navajos back to fetch water for everyone. They never tell him.

In Code Talker, what must Ned Begay wear before his class after Mr. Straight overhears one Navajo greeting?

A dunce cap comes from the same man who praised Ned's research paper on Japan, and it leaves Ned doubting that the white world will ever respect a Navajo.

In Code Talker, veteran code talkers recall opening radio messages by shouting New Mexico or which other state?

Arizona or New Mexico, called out loud, told nervous American radio operators that the strange words were not Japanese. A lieutenant was won over when a message went through in two and a half minutes.

Which Los Angeles civil engineer, raised on the Navajo reservation, proposed the Navajo code to the Marines?

Philip Johnston, a missionary's son and World War I veteran, had the idea, but the code itself was devised by the first Navajo recruits.

Which president honored the Navajo code talkers with a Certificate of Recognition and a day in their name?

Ronald Reagan named August 14, 1982, as Navajo Code Talkers Day, almost four decades after the men had come home from the war.

Which last survivor of the original Navajo code talkers wrote a 2011 memoir that is also titled Code Talker?

Chester Nez died in 2014 at the age of 93, the last of the men who had built the code. After World War II he returned to the Marines to serve stateside during the Korean War.

How many Navajo recruits formed the first all-Navajo Marine platoon, which created the code in 1942?

29 men were sworn in at Fort Wingate in May 1942 and became Platoon 382, remembered as the First Twenty-Nine. The youngest of them was only 15.

In a 1942 test, Navajo speakers relayed a three-line message in 20 seconds; how long did code machines need?

30 minutes was what the machines of the day needed, and the gap persuaded the commanding general to recommend recruiting 200 Navajos.

Soldiers of which Native nation sent coded US Army messages in World War I's Meuse-Argonne Offensive?

Choctaw soldiers got the job after a captain overheard two of them, Solomon Louis and Mitchell Bobb, chatting in their own language.

Code talkers from which Native nation landed at Utah Beach on D-Day with the Army's 4th Infantry Division?

Comanche code talkers called a bomber a pregnant bird and a machine gun a sewing machine. Some of the 14 men were wounded in Europe, but none was killed.

Joseph Bruchac, who wrote Code Talker and founded the Greenfield Review Press, identifies with which Native nation?

Abenaki language and culture are a family project for Bruchac, who has performed traditional music with his sister and sons as the Dawnland Singers.

Which capital of the Navajo Nation is home to a World War II memorial honoring the Navajo code talkers?

Window Rock is named for a sandstone formation with a hole through it, and it is also home to the Navajo Nation Museum and the tribal zoo.

In which theater of World War II did the Navajo code talkers of the Marine Corps serve?

The Pacific war took them to every Marine division: Navajo code talkers served in all six, as well as with the Marine Raiders.

Why did the Navajo code talkers go without public recognition for over twenty years after World War II?

Their work was classified until 1968, so the men came home unable to tell even their own families what they had done in the war.

The Navajo call themselves the Diné, a word in their own language with what meaning?

The People is the meaning of Diné; the traditional homeland between the four sacred mountains is called Dinetah.

In Code Talker, what does Ned Begay tuck into his pack instead of eating the big breakfast before a landing?

A steak sandwich proves a wise choice: Ned eats it hastily in a foxhole while shoveling out black sand during the battle that follows.