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jwkelly 's review for:
Code Talker: A Novel about the Navajo Marines of World War Two
by Joseph Bruchac
This is a Booktalk.
Have you ever wanted to go to a boarding school. Like Harry Potter where you stay at the school and you leave your parents at home. Sounds kinda fun. In the early part of the 20th century the United States actually forced Native Americans to go to boarding schools. The idea was that the white people felt they could educate the "Native American" out of the kids. They would not allow them to talk about their own culture and they did not allow them to speak their own language. This novel Code Talker, by Joseph Bruchac is the story of one boy who went to a school like this when he is six years old. He took on the Americanized name they gave him Ned and he learned how to be American. Then America went into World War II and it turns out the Ned and the other Navajo young men happen to have a secret weapon that will help the US defeat the Japanese. That weapon is their language. The Navajo language is one of the most complex languages and until recently it was not even written down. The marines realized that it could be used to create a virtually unbreakable code. So Ned and his Navajo friends go to war. They fight a war for a country that has no respect for their own nation. While not a true story it is based on truth. The Navajo language code was one of the only codes that the Japanese never broke.
Have you ever wanted to go to a boarding school. Like Harry Potter where you stay at the school and you leave your parents at home. Sounds kinda fun. In the early part of the 20th century the United States actually forced Native Americans to go to boarding schools. The idea was that the white people felt they could educate the "Native American" out of the kids. They would not allow them to talk about their own culture and they did not allow them to speak their own language. This novel Code Talker, by Joseph Bruchac is the story of one boy who went to a school like this when he is six years old. He took on the Americanized name they gave him Ned and he learned how to be American. Then America went into World War II and it turns out the Ned and the other Navajo young men happen to have a secret weapon that will help the US defeat the Japanese. That weapon is their language. The Navajo language is one of the most complex languages and until recently it was not even written down. The marines realized that it could be used to create a virtually unbreakable code. So Ned and his Navajo friends go to war. They fight a war for a country that has no respect for their own nation. While not a true story it is based on truth. The Navajo language code was one of the only codes that the Japanese never broke.