Chester Nez was one of the original 32 Navajo men (he insists that there were 32 men involved, although the official number is always given as 29) who developed an unbreakable code based on the Navajo language for the U.S. military during WWII. Besides the development of the code and his service in the Pacific, he talks about his early childhood on the reservation, government-run boarding school, and his life after wartime.
There's also an extensive index of the code, which I loved reading. Some of the words were straight translations: "until" in English was the word for "until" in Navajo. Others were easy to understand the connection; "vicinity" became "there about," and "village" became "many shelter." My favorites, though, were the terms that mixed concepts--"when" became "weasel hen," "where" became "weasel here," and "will" became "sick weasel"!
No comments:
Post a Comment