Posted on 11/20/2011 11:01:13 AM PST by jazusamo
The "greatest generation" won the Second World War and on returning home built America into a super power -- a beacon of freedom. Now those Americans are in their 80s and 90s.
One of them is former Navajo "code talker" Chester Nez -- the subject of a recent article in The Albuquerque Journal, "The Last Code Talker." Now 90 years old, Nez is "the last living member of the U.S. Marine Corps 382nd Platoon, comprised of 29 Navajos who developed a secret code the Japanese were never able to decipher," noted the Journal.
Some 430 bilingual Navajo Americans (fluent in English and their native Navajo) played crucial roles in sending coded tactical messages in their Navajo language during the horrific island-hopping campaigns in the Pacific.
Among the former code talkers' dwindling ranks, there are no cynical post-modernists -- even though Nez, as the Journal explained, had a traditional Navajo boyhood -- attending Indian boarding schools where "the children were forced to speak English and were punished when they were caught talking their native Navajo. It was part of the federal government's efforts to acculturate Native Americans."
It's the Journal, not Nez, which dwells on that, however.
Nez prefers to talk proudly about his military service and, in particular, a Congressional Gold Medal he received: "one of only 29 in existence -- given to Nez by then-President George W. Bush during a White House ceremony July 26, 2001," noted the Journal.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
God bless the Code Talkers.
It makes me so sad that they are leaving us. I saw a PBS program about the WWII hero’s from South Carolina last week and I mist up every time I see them talk about the war. They are still overwhelmed by the loss of some of their buddies.
They are my hero’s. They really are.
Indeed. REAL heroes never beat their chests in public. That’s what instinctively put me off about John Kerry.
I really do wish they had a better pop-culture monument than John Woo’s “Windtalkers” 2002 movie. Damn good actors (Nicholas Cage, Adam Beach, Peter Stomare, Christian Slater, etc.), but they were hobbled with a script that was more redolent with hoary WWII movie cliches than anything the Duke put out back in the day.
I’m sure there are straightforward memoirs by the participants that would have made for better material.
My Dads youngest brother was an aircraft mechanic in the So Pacific and is still living, I believe he’s 88. Two other uncles were Army WWII vets and have passed, they’re going fast.
God bless the all.
You’re correct, my uncles very seldom even mentioned the war, they wanted to put it behind them.
An apostrophe? Really?
How about this:
Heroes.
You're an adult. Learn to spell.
Lighten up, Francis.
My Father saw combat in the pacific. The most he ever said about it was razor blades placed in tree bark by the Japanese to discourage snipers from climbing the trees and that he preferred grenades when he had to fight at night.
You’re an adult. Learn to be civil.
That’s because good people really care about other good people.
My Dad is 89 and saw action in the Bulge among other places. I cajoled him for months about 6 years ago to come to DC and see the WW2 Memorial. He did then and was dazzled. If you have somebody who served, can come out here, and hasn't, make the sale. It's the best pitch I ever made to Dad.
Every year in Charleston, SC, there is a drive to raise money to fly all WWII vets, in the area, to DC. I can’t remember the name of the charity that does it, but every year they have reached it’s goal. News cameras follow them and turn it into a news special.
It’s pretty incredible that they are getting to see the monument.
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