Bruchac's Code Talkers Were Treated Before World War II?

In his novel, Code Talker, Bruchac describes the way the Navajo Indians were treated prior to the World War II, despite the mistreating, many willingly signed up for duty when their services were needed. Even after serving their country, they came back to a lack of respect and were forced to keep silent about it until 1969, showing just another way more people were hurt by war, and the serious problems surrounding war time society.

The Code Talkers did not experience the levels of brutality that the Jews did in WWII, however, they were dehumanized by Americans much in the way that Jews were persecuted by Hitler and the Nazis. While the levels of the pain and suffering imposed on the Jews and Code Talkers were vastly different, the reasoning

He proposed the idea of using Navajo to the United States Marine Corps at the beginning of World War II. Johnston was a WWI veteran and was raised on a Navajo reservation as the son of a missionary to their people, he was one of the few who spoke Navajo fluently that was not a native Navajo.

The Navajo language has a very complex grammar structure, not even the closest relative, The Na-Dene family, could understand it. This being an unwritten language, Johnston believed it could make the best indecipherable code yet. Estimates predict that at the beginning of WWII, there were less than 30 non-natives who could even understand the language due to the syntax, tonal qualities, and dialects, all contributing to making it unintelligible to anyone who had not been taught to speak it, or spent an extended period of time around it.

In the beginning of 1942, Johnston proposed the idea to Major General Clayton B. Vogel, Commanding General of Amphibious Corps, Pacific Fleet, and his staff. Johnston's proposal involved the display of Navajo men encoding over 100 times faster than what the Marines computers could. Vogel approved the idea and suggested recruiting 200 Navajo men. 29 Navajo men attended boot camp in May of 1942, becoming the first Navajo Code talkers, creating the Navajo code at Camp Pendleton, Oceanside,

Code books were created to teach the growing number of words to new members, and to be practiced with by veterans. Code books never left the classrooms and were used only to teach and increase speed and accuracy of Code talkers. Code talkers would train under stressful conditions while memorizing and relaying the code, this training proved very valuable in battles such as Iwo Jima. Major Howard Conner, during the first two days, with six Navajo Code talkers, sent over 800 messages without a single error. Major Conner went on to say, "Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima."

While World War II Went on, new words were integrated throughout the program, Marine Divisions throughout Hawaii met to discuss the changes and additions made. Navajo Code talkers continued to code throughout the World War II, the Korean war, and ending early in the Vietnam war, remaining the only military code never to be