Unbreakable Code: July to September 1942
- Platoon 382 can't wait to go on their ten-day leave after finishing boot camp.
- But they're told by an officer they can't go home just yet. They still have a secret mission to get through.
- Chester writes a letter home to his family telling them he's joined up with the Marines. Wait—is this the first that his fam is hearing about this?
- The Navajo Marines are sent to Camp Elliott near San Diego. There, a Marine officer tells them that their task is to devise a military code using the Navajo language.
- The officer puts them in a room together and tells them that they need to come up with a Navajo word for each letter of the English alphabet.
- Left to work alone in the room, the Marines come up with English words—an animal, a plant, or an object—for each letter. Then they translate the English word to Navajo.
- The letter "A," for example, becomes "Red Ant" in English. They then translate that word to Navajo: wol-la-chee. They do the same for each of the letters of the alphabet.
- By the end of day one, the Marines have made good progress. They work well as a team.
- After all, Navajo culture is built around working together; the Navajo have to cooperate with each other to herd their livestock.
- When they're not working on the code, Chester and his buddies explore San Diego and go out drinking.
- They need to blow off some steam after a hard day of work.
- It takes the Marines five days to come up with Navajo word equivalents for the full English alphabet.
- In battle, the Navajo code words will never be written down: it's too dangerous. If they're written down the Japanese might get their hands on the code, and that would be a disaster for the Americans.
- So Chester and his Marine buddies have to learn everything they come up with by heart.
- The Marines also have to come up with Navajo words for certain military terms that are used a lot in battle.
- Three new Navajo Marines join the group to help with the military terms.
- Given that there are no Navajo equivalents to the English military terms, the Marines have to get creative with their translations.
- For example, for the word "fighter plane," they use the Navajo word for "hummingbird," since a fighter plane and a hummingbird kind of look alike, don't they? They both fly, at least.
- Once the Marines finish the development phase of the code, they're set to the task of testing the code in the real world on radios.
- At one point, a military officer who doesn't know about the Navajo Marines' secret mission hears the code on the radio.
- Troops along the California coast are ordered to go into "condition black"—which means that the military's weapons are at the ready.
- The officer who'd heard the code had thought that the Japanese had invaded the U.S. mainland at San Diego.
- One of the colonels involved in the Navajo mission has to explain that this is a special Navajo code the Marines are developing. Talk about a close call.
- The top Marine brass are divided about the effectiveness of the new code—which is much faster and more efficient than the conventional Shackle code.
- Some of the high-ranking officers think that the Navajo recruits are cheating—how could their code be so efficient? It seems too good to be true.
- The Navajo Marines are ordered to test the code under more rigorous conditions. The code, again, works.
- Clearly, these Navajo Marines aren't cheating: they've just come up with the best military code ever. So even the doubters in the Marine brass have to admit that the code is working.
- Even expert code breakers from the U.S. military can't break the code; it's that good. They try for weeks, but can't do it. After this, the Marine brass are convinced that the Navajos have done a pretty amazing job.
- After thirteen weeks, in September 1942, the Marines graduate as Navajo code talkers, Marine Corps MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) number 642 and are each promoted to Private First Class.
- The Marines want a leave (hey, they've earned it: they've been working their butts off for weeks now).
- Again, officers tell them that they can't get a break. They need to head straight to the Pacific, where the Americans are losing the war to the Japanese.
- The Marines prepare to board ships headed to the French islands of New Caledonia.