[Annotator's Note: This interview was conducted with a group of Navajo veterans present, many of whom can be heard off-camera. Keith Little, a Navajo code talker in the US Marine Corps, is on camera, but does not speak in this segment. Navajo code talkers, also called Diné code talkers were one group of many Native American groups of code talkers which are people employed by the military to use a little-known language as a means of secret communication. Samuel Tso, a Navajo code talker in the 5th Marine Division is off-screen and answers the interviewer's question.] Samuel Tso [Annotator's Note: born 22 June 1922 near Many Farms, Arizona] went to Charles H. Burke High School [Annotator's Note: at Fort Wingate near Gallup, New Mexico]. While there, the name was changed to Fort Wingate High School [Annotator's Note: now Wingate High School in McKinley County, New Mexico]. His home was in Arizona. He went to Wingate in 1937. His parents were very poor. He never saw his family for the four years he was in high school. In his senior year, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. The following Monday, he went to class and only two of them showed up. All the rest had gone home. Most of them became the "First 29" [Annotator's Note: name for the first 29 Navajo recruits, May 1942, who developed the Navajo code] in the Marine Corps. Tso joined after high school. He thought the government would give him transportation back home, but they did not. He did not have a dime in his pocket. He was told to walk home and find a job. His suitcase was heavy. He found wire at a fence and made a sling to pull the suitcase. He did that for miles. He made it to the main highway, which is now US 40 [Annotator's Note: US Route 40, also called US Highway 40]. He hid his suitcase in an arroyo. The suitcase is still there. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks all of them why they joined the US Marine Corps instead of the US Army.] Tso joined by changing his age. He was 18 at the time [Annotator's Note: in 1940] and could not find a job. He went to the railroad station and asked to be a common laborer. He was told he could not work there because they did not hire 18-year-olds. The man there told him to come back in the afternoon. He came back and said he was 21 years old. He got a job on the railroad. The draft board came around and checked the employees to see if they were registered for the draft. He was then drafted.

[Annotator's Note: This interview is conducted with a group of Navajo veterans present, many of whom can be heard off-camera. They were all Navajo code talkers in the US Marine Corps. Navajo code talkers, also called Diné code talkers were one group of many Native American groups of code talkers which are people employed by the military to use a little-known language as a means of secret communication. The segment begins with the interviewer having already asked another Marine how he came to join the Marine Corps. He then asks Keith Little who served in the 1st Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Division.] Little [Annotator's Note: born in Tonalea, Arizona in 1925] enlisted on his 17th birthday. The day after, he hitchhiked to Gallup, New Mexico to the recruiting station. He had to hitchhike to Fort Defiance [Annotator's Note: in Apache County, Arizona] where the men going into the service boarded transportation to Phoenix, Arizona. He enlisted because the way the attack [Annotator's Note: the Pearl Harbor attack] was told over the news was that it was a sneak attack, and he did not feel good about that. He wanted to retaliate by being a Marine – the greatest fighting man in the world. [Annotator's Note: Another unnamed man offscreen now speaks.] This man was in the eighth grade in 1943. Most of his buddies at his government school were leaving for the Marines. He wanted to go too. His mother told him he was not old enough. He stayed in school until he graduated from the eighth grade. He got a job in Arizona and registered for the draft. He lied and said he was 18 years old. He was drafted and went to Santa Fe, New Mexico for his physical. While there a Marine stopped by him and asked him if he was Navajo [Annotator's Note: a Native American person of the Navajo Nation]. He was taken out of the line to a Navy doctor who examined and passed him just by asking him questions. He then joined the Marines and went to San Diego for basic training. After that he went to Camp Pendleton [Annotator's Note: Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in San Diego County, California] where he saw a lot of Navajos carrying communication equipment. They were learning the code made by the "First 29". He passed code school. They could not use paper and had to memorize everything. He did not know he had just become a Navajo code talker. [Annotator's Note: Another unnamed man offscreen now speaks.] In October 1942, he was in school at Crownpoint Boarding School [Annotator's Note: in Crownpoint or Tʼiistsʼóóz Ńdeeshgizh, New Mexico]. A young Navajo, Marine came to the school who was part of the "First 29" in his Marine blues [Annotator's Note: Marine Corps dress uniform]. He spoke to the students about the job and life of being a Marine code talker while never mentioning boot camp. This man and five others got together and talked about joining. They decided to join for the challenge. They were sent to Fort Wingate for their physicals. All but one passed who was underweight. They were sent to lunch and then the underweight man passed. They all joined and went to San Diego for boot camp.

[Annotator's Note: This interview is conducted with a group of Navajo veterans present, many of whom can be heard off-camera. They were all Navajo code talkers in the US Marine Corps. Navajo code talkers, also called Diné code talkers were one group of many Native American groups of code talkers which are people employed by the military to use a little-known language as a means of secret communication.] Neither Keith Little, with the 1st Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Division, nor any of the other men, knew each other. When the first reunion came about [Annotator's Note: after the war], they got to know each other. They associated with each other from then on, because in the service, they had been in different units of the Marine Corps. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks the group to talk about the Navajo code and its originations and uses. An unnamed man offscreen answers.] In 1941, after Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941], and the beginning of the war, the Japanese went to the Philippines. The United States found that their own codes were being broken and messages were being decoded [Annotator's Note: by the Japanese]. A white man named Philip Johnston, whose father was a missionary on the Navajo reservation, suggested using the Navajo language. In February 1942, they tried it out by sending messages and it was accurate. The recruitment of Navajos began. The "First 29" went to boot camp. At Camp Pendleton [Annotator's Note: Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in San Diego County, California] they developed the code that would be used. The code was used in many ways. They followed the English alphabet somewhat. There are more words in Navajo for each letter that mean many different things. Their birds [Annotator's Note: words for birds] became airplanes, their fish became warships, and their ground animals became war equipment. "Potato", in Navajo, became "hand grenade." The men who came in later, memorized the code. They were not allowed to use paper in any way. The Japanese found themselves hearing a different language and tried to find out who was using it. They got some captured Navajo soldiers in the Philippines and took them to Japan. They interrogated them. The Navajo understood the words but could not figure the code either. The Japanese could not break the code. The Army personnel who were Navajo [Annotator's Note: the captured soldiers] hated the code talkers because they were tortured by the Japanese over it. They want a museum in New Mexico next to Arizona to get down to the basics of the code and its history and uses. [Annotator's Note: The speaker references Tso being on Iwo Jima.] Major Howard Connors said that if were not for the code talkers, Iwo Jima would not have been won [Annotator's Note: Battle of Iwo Jima, 19 February to 26 March 1945 at Iwo Jima, Japan].

[Annotator's Note: This interview is conducted with a group of Navajo veterans present, many of whom answer questions from off-camera, in addition to Keith Little, a Navajo code talker in the 1st Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Division. Little speaks first.] The code was based on the English language for the battlefield. They took that vocabulary, and each word was given a Navajo-coded name. All of it was memorized, making the Navajo code talker a walking machine. When translating an English message, they only used the coded name. The English vocabulary was never mentioned or used. There were over 600 words to memorize along with their counterparts. This is why it was so confusing to the enemy. After World War 2, all other codes had been decoded, but not the Navajo. The commanders only got the decoded messages. Other Navajo [Annotator's Note: who were not code talkers] could not understand the message even though they knew the words. This makes it hard to even describe it. [Annotator's Note: Another unnamed man joins in.] He served with the 3rd Marine Division with other code talkers [Annotator's Note: 3rd Battalion, 9th Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division]. They all communicated amongst themselves up the lines of battle order. On the battlefield, he went with the battalion commander and a radio man finding out what the front-line troops needed. The code talkers could not carry notes for helping transmit messages. The code was fast and easily used. When they landed on Bougainville [Annotator's Note: Bougainville campaign, part of the Solomon Islands Campaign at Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, November 1943 to November 1944], a Marine coded message came in and it took an hour to decode it. The commander was discouraged and said to give it a code talker who resent it in Navajo. The decoding took less than five minutes. A company on the frontlines was reporting their position in the jungle. He had that job then for the rest of the war and it went well. He and his commander stayed in touch after the war. [Annotator's Note: Keith Little rejoins the conversation.] They all have a little different story. The use of the code saved countless lives by eliminating the delays caused by conventional code use.

[Annotator's Note: This interview is conducted with a group of Navajo veterans present, many of whom answer questions from off-camera, in addition to Keith Little, a Navajo code talker in the 1st Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Division. The interviewer asks the group to talk about why they think the Navajo code was important. Samuel Tso, a code talker with the 5th Marine Division speaks while Little listens in.] Tso took the radio on his back and was lying flat on Iwo Jima [Annotator's Note: during the Battle of Iwo Jima, 19 February to 26 March 1945 at Iwo Jima, Japan]. As soon as they got beyond the sand dunes, the Japanese shot his radio and rendered it useless. They had no radio communication then. He got a walkie-talkie. The firing was intense, and he had to lay prone in whatever cover he could find. Most of the time, the messages were requesting support by tanks or flamethrowers [Annotator's Note: ranged incendiary device that projects a controllable jet of fire]. The code coming in was decoded in his head and given to a runner or commander. Most of the time there were sergeants who used the runners. That is how they operated on Iwo Jima. He would jump into crater shell holes. The men on the north side of the crater would get shot. They were being seen from Mount Suribachi by the Japanese. The men on the south side were covered. The recon company [Annotator's Note: reconnaissance company] was told to cut Iwo Jima in half. They would send messages about how to fight. It was too fast for the Japanese to catch on. When they cut the island in half, the Japanese ran out of ammunition. The fighting was close and was mostly hand-to-hand combat. Some guys almost went nuts. Tso found it best to have the sergeants explain and give pep talks to the Marines. Gunnery Sergeant Fontaine [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling] assembled them all and said they were no longer playing games. He told them to sleep with live ammo and to shoot and ask questions later. There were three Navajo code talkers there with him: Raymond Smith [Annotator's Note: US Marine Raymond R. Smith, Senior] and Ambrose Howard. They were given lead. They dug in and watched for infiltrators on four-hour watches. One night, Smith threw a hand grenade at an incoming Japanese. If he had not done that, Tso would not be here today. That same night, the men up above them were all killed in the line. Only one corpsman [Annotator's Note: enlisted medical specialist in the US Navy who may also serve in the US Marine Corps] survived it and the Marines shot at him while he was trying to get back. Howard jumped up and said to stop shooting at him. He knew it was his friend by his voice. The corpsman made it in. Tso radioed in for dive bombers. The code was Navajo for "chicken hawk". The flew in and strafed the area to keep the Japanese down so the soldiers could move. The Japanese named the Corsairs [Annotator's Note: Vought F4U Corsair fighter-bomber], the "sound of death." When Tso heard them coming, he wanted to get up and cheer. It was critical to use the code to get that cover right that minute. The same for flamethrowers to burn the Japanese in the trenches. Tso can almost still smell the burning bodies.

[Annotator's Note: This interview is conducted with a group of Navajo veterans present, many of whom answer questions from off-camera. The subject, Keith Little, a Navajo code talker with the 1st Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Division, does not take part in this segment. The interviewer asks a man off camera where he served during the war.] He served on Saipan [Annotator's Note: Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands] and Okinawa [Annotator's Note: Okinawa, Japan]. He went into the Marine Corps in late 1943. On Saipan with the 2nd Marine Division, he was told the island had been secured the week before [Annotator's Note: The Battle of Saipan, part of Operation Forager, 15 June to 9 July 1944; Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands]. He only took part in the mop-up work to clear the Japanese still hiding in the mountains. He was being used as a regular Marine by carrying the air-cooled machine gun [Annotator's Note: Browning M1919 .30 caliber air cooled light machine gun]. He did that for about three weeks. There were a lot of caves. They had a demolition team and used flamethrowers [Annotator's Note: ranged incendiary device that projects a controllable jet of fire] on them. The battle of Iwo Jima [Annotator's Note: Battle of Iwo Jima, 19 February to 26 March 1945 at Iwo Jima, Japan] was going on. He then went to Okinawa. The United States thought about April Fool's [Annotator's Note: an annual custom consisting of playing tricks, practical jokes, and hoaxes] and 1 April they invaded Okinawa [Annotator's Note: Battle of Okinawa, codenamed Operation Iceberg, 1 April to 22 June 1945 at Okinawa, Japan]. When he was getting to the landing barge, they only got one clip of four bullets instead a full belt of ammunition. There were supposed to be 30 men in the landing barge, but there only ten. They also did not have the usual machine guns. They did not land though and returned to the ship. They had faked the landing to fool the Japanese. The main force went in from the west side and cut the Japanese off from the mainland. On 14 August [Annotator's Note: Victory Over Japan Day, 15 August 1945] he was in a hospital and heard yelling and car horns going off. A colored guy [Annotator's Note: an ethnic descriptor historically used for Black people in the United States] ran in and said the war was over. He returned home to San Diego [Annotator's Note: San Diego, California]. When had first left San Diego, he weighed 130 pounds, when he returned he weighed only 90 pounds. He had problems with his ankles and got shots every three hours. He does not know what kind of shots. He went into the hospital in San Diego. He asked for a medical discharge later and had no proof of being in the hospital. He had to wait for his points to accrue and then was discharged in 1946.

[Annotator's Note: This interview is conducted with a group of Navajo veterans present, many of whom answer questions from off-camera. The interviewer asks Keith Little, with the 1st Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Division, about his experiences on Iwo Jima, Japan.] Samuel Tso [Annotator's Note: with the 5th Marine Division] interjects that Little did not see the flag raising [Annotator's Note: United States flag raised on Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima, Japan, 23 February 1945 during the Battle of Iwo Jima, 19 February to 26 March 1945 at Iwo Jima, Japan]. [Annotator's Note: The unnamed man speaks at this point.] There were a lot of men on the north side [Annotator's Note: of the island] who did not even know about the flag raising. When you go into an invasion, you spend a lot of time on the ship and get tired of it. [Annotator's Note: Another conversation starts taking place in the background.] When he got to Iwo Jima, he was glad to get off the ship. On 19 February [Annotator's Note: 19 February 1945], he peered over the side and saw all kinds of ships and all kinds of firing going on. He could see planes getting shot out of the sky and falling into their landing area. His anxiety and fear was high, and he wanted on solid land. He got up on land and found cover. He set up in a rock quarry where there was a hidden gun emplacement. Every time they moved; they were shot at. He had made three prior landings, and this was the most intense. The Japanese had tunnels all over and were moving. Every attack was frontal. They had to burn them out of the caves. He was still satisfied to be on solid land despite everything. He wonders how he got through. You automatically do your work because what you do saves others. He was on the island for the entire battle. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer now asks Mr. Toledo, Bill Henry Toledo, about his experience.] Toledo's division [Annotator's Note: 9th Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division] landed about three days after the initial invasion. He could not see the first flag raised because it was small. Then they put up a bigger one and he could see it from out in the ocean. The sand was deep and hard to walk on. The 5th Division [Annotator's Note: 5th Marine Division] was on the left and the 4th [Annotator's Note: 4th Marine Division] was on the right. They went up to the airfield. They did not know about the Japanese tunnels. The Air Force had been bombing and the Navy had been shelling for about 30 days and it did not bother them [Annotator's Note: the Japanese]. There were about 20,000 Japanese there. When the 4th and 5th landed, the Japanese came out. The Marines lost a lot of men. The island was supposed to be taken in one week, but it took 36 days. They secured the airfield and damaged bombers returning from Japan landed there. That saved a lot of planes and men. The Marines had a 33 percent casualty rate. Towards the end, there were three hills that all had concrete pillboxes on them connected to the tunnels. He advanced on Hill 632C with his 9th Regiment. The Japanese opened up. It was hard to hide because the jungle was gone. The commander laid down a barrage on the hill. He wrote the message, and Toledo used the Navajo code to send it to another code talker. He requested the artillery fire on the hill. Within five minutes, the barrage hit the hill. The Marines went in and destroyed it. They moved to the end of the island then. His regiment lost a lot of men at that hill.

[Annotator's Note: This interview is conducted with a group of Navajo veterans present, many of whom answer questions from off-camera. The interviewer asks them if any have returned to Iwo Jima, Japan. Samuel Tso, a Navajo code talker with the 5th Marine Division, holds up a string of beads. ] Keith Little [Annotator's Note: with the 1st Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Division] went back to see Mount Suribachi. [Annotator's Note: Little had been on the north side of the island and did not see the United States flag raised on Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima, Japan, 23 February 1945.] On 23 February 1945, Tso went to sleep in his foxhole [Annotator's Note: during the Battle of Iwo Jima, 19 February to 26 March 1945 at Iwo Jima, Japan]. Towards morning, he was dreaming an Indian maiden came to him and told him if he wore some beads he would send him, he would return. His buddy kicked him awake and asked if he was having a nightmare. The dream was clear, and he remembers all the details. His parents were not educated, and he had no girlfriend back home. He got up and everybody went to breakfast. They returned and asked him what was wrong. Mail call came, but Tso never went because he never got anything. Al Mertz [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify] came running back with a letter for Tso. There was something in it. There was no return address. The beads were in the letter. He put them on, and all fear disappeared from him. He stood up and said he was going home. The men laughed at him and said it was horseshit. He wore them anyway. Towards the end of securing the island, his unit was on the frontline. An officer told them their help was needed. He took them to a place between Hill 268A and Hill 268B they called Death Valley. They had to run across and look for machine gun nests. Tso took the first post. Around noon, Tso started running as ordered. As he ran, a whole bunch of Marines were shot down there and lying on top of each other. Some asked for help. The sergeant told them not to help them. They ran into a machine gun. They were told to just go back and report it. The rest of the Marines were running back with him to the hill. They made their reports. Tso's sergeant chewed him out for stopping to help the wounded. The stretcher-bearers preparing to go out were so scared their teeth chattered. Ambrose Howard sent a coded message for artillery, mortar, and rocket fire on the machine gun nests. Tso thought that must be what Hell looks like. Within 30 minutes, they stopped firing. The Marines were sent across the valley and received no enemy fire. Recon company [Annotator's Note: reconnaissance company ] was sent back to the ship. That was the happiest day of Tso's life. He hung onto to that beaded necklace. He has been wearing it for over 60 years. He is taking them to the Happy Hunting Ground [Annotator's Note: concept of the afterlife associated with some Native American peoples] with him.