by Joseph Bruchac (5th+)Ned Begay is a sixteen-year-old Navajo is desperately wishes to join the United States in the war against the Japanese, World War II. A person is not allowed to join until they are seventeen but Ned sneaksaround that and joins the Marine Corp. At a time when Indians are being sent to boarding schools and forces to forget everything abouttheir families including their language, it is a surprise when he findsout that he has been recruited into the Marine Corp for that particularlanguage, Navajo. Ned is to become a code talker, a top-secret positionthat no one must actually know he is doing. His job will be to communicateimportant messages back and forth during the war in the Navajo language,which has not yet been broken by the Japanese. Ned soon finds himself right in the thick of the fighting with gunfire, mortars, and extremely long months of fighting on every side. He finds himself on various different islands of Japan including Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima. Read this veryintriguing story of Ned Begay. Ned may be a fictional character but theevents that take place and the code talkers were real. This is a greatnarrative of the events taking place in World War II and the role the Navajo code talkers held during it.
