Chester Nez Quotes
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My wartime experiences developing a code that utilized the Navajo language taught how important our Navajo culture is to our country. For me that is the central lesson: that diverse cultures can make a country richer and stronger.
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It is, I think, one of the greatest honors that you can bestow on the code talkers. I'm really happy about it.
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When we went into the Marine Corps, we didn't know what it was that we were going to do
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We Navajos believe in witchcraft. Cut hair and fingernail clippings should be gathered and hidden or burned. Such things could be used to invoke bad medicine against their owner. People should not leave parts of themselves scattered around to be picked up by someone else. Even the smallest children knew that.
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Quiet! English only!” The dark eyes of a matron bored into me. “English, or you’ll be punished.” I wonder what she said?
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All of the 29 Marines that I went in [with], we got together and made a code in our own language. There were over 400 or 500 words that we made up at that time. We memorized them and everything was up here.
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And nobody knew. The Japanese pulled all of their hair out trying to decipher the code. But it's one of the hardest languages to learn, that's why it was never decoded or deciphered.