AZ: The History of Arizona podcast · David Rookhuyzen

Episode 249: The Code Talkers, Part III: Do You Have a Navajo

·32 min·2 clips

One code talker kept transmitting while his partner was killed beside him.

1. AZ: The History of Arizona podcast episode 249 covers the Navajo Code Talkers in the Pacific War. 2. Host David Rickhausen frames the story using Chester Nez, Roy Begay, Samuel Holliday, and historian Robert S. McPherson, whose commentary and books supply battlefield detail. 3. The episode asks what happened when the Navajo code moved from training to Guadalcanal, Saipan, Peleliu, Guam, and Iwo Jima. 4. Nez and nine other Code Talkers left October 1942 for Hawaii and then New Caledonia after leave was denied. 5. Rickhausen says more than 400 Code Talkers were eventually trained and serving across Pacific theaters by the end of the war. 6. The episode describes New Caledonia as a French-controlled island east of Australia, south of Vanuatu, and southwest of Fiji and Tonga. 7. McPherson's commentary adds that the Pacific Ocean was treated in Navajo tradition as male and dangerous, with ceremonial rules about eating ocean food. 8. Holliday recalls his father praying to the ocean and his own visit to an aquarium where he asked sea animals not to harm him. 9. The Code Talkers practiced their code on the ship and told other Marines they were "speaking Navajo." 10. At New Caledonia, they trained for combat and learned to use radios such as the TBX, which Rickhausen says weighed about 80 pounds. 11. Nez's memoir describes the radios as a new world for men who had grown up without electricity. 12. On Guadalcanal, a skeptical signal officer tested them with a message that would have taken about four hours in Shackle code. 13. The Navajo transmission finished in less than three minutes with no errors, and the officer approved them for active duty. 14. The episode explains that Marines sometimes mistook Navajo traffic for Japanese signals and tried to jam it. 15. To identify themselves, Code Talkers began messages with "Arizona" or "New Mexico" and wrapped them with dates and the Navajo words for "Roger" and "out." 16. Nez also notes a backup phrase meaning "do or die" that could be used if a Code Talker was captured. 17. The narrator cites battlefield accounts of mortars, foxholes, blood, and artillery, including a code talker continuing to send messages after his partner was killed. 18. Other examples include Harry Tososi being shot by a U.S. corpsman, Charlie Begay surviving a throat wound, and Holliday losing hearing after an artillery shell exploded nearby. 19. The episode's tone is explanatory and military-historical, with long stretches of narration, quoted memoir material, and repeated attention to radio procedure under fire. 20. Listeners interested in World War II communications, Navajo history, and Pacific combat would likely stay engaged, while listeners seeking light or fast-moving conversation might skip it.

As heard by us

A clear, ground-level look at the code talkers as Marines, not symbols.

AZ: The History of Arizona keeps the Navajo Code Talkers grounded as Marines doing hard wartime work, not as stand-ins for a larger legend. David Rickhausen opens with With the Old Breed, then follows the code talkers through Peleliu, Okinawa, Guadalcanal, and the wider Pacific,…

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Why you'd press play

You want a Pacific War story where language can outrun gunfire.

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