Chester Nez

Chester Nez is the last living member of the original code talkers. When Chester was going through grade school he was taught to not speak his native tongue, if he was caught speaking the language he was brought up by, he would be beaten. Chester could not even perform the traditions that was used too. Then when Chester joined the marines as a young man, he was told he would have to use the language that he was beaten for as a boy. He and 27 other men volunteered to come up with an unbreakable code that the Japanese could not break. They first needed to come up with the code because the Japanese were breaking all of the codes they had come up with before. The code didn't take that long to make because the Navajo Indians were taught to share growing up. The men came up with a code that related simple English words to the war item, which they than transferred to the Navajo translation. For example, they called tanks turtles, so they then transferred turtle into their native language of Navajo. After Chester had come back from the war he could not tell his father about his experience in creating the code, which made Chester feel sad. Chester's story is a lot like Louie's from Unbroken because both of them had to face many different types of challenges throughout their entire war career. Louie had the struggle of being trapped in the POW camps while Chester needed to come up and remember a code he had just made and learned. Chester was very honored when he said, "I'm very honored to be one of the original code talkers." Because of what Chester and the original code talkers did they helped the USA to win WWII.