Chester Nez

Chester Nez (January 23, 1921 – June 4, 2014) was an American veteran of World War II. He was the last surviving original Navajo code talker who served in the United States Marine Corps during the war. It was from one of the government-run boarding schools, in Tuba City, Arizona, that Nez was recruited into the Marine Corps.

Code talker Nez kept his decision to enlist from his family. He and 28 other Navajos formed Recruit Training Platoon 382 at Marine Corps Base San Diego in May 1942. The 29 who graduated from boot camp, including Nez, were then assigned to the Camp Elliot, California, where they were tasked with creating a code for secure voice tactical (battlefield) communications. At the time, tactical radios were not equipped, as they are today, with encryption/decryption technology, allowing the enemy to listen to radio traffic, often with disastrous results. The Navajo language was chosen because its complex syntax and phonology made it exceedingly difficult to learn as a second language, and it had no written form. Nez stated the developers used everyday words, in order to easily memorize and retain them. In 1942, he was among the code talkers to be shipped out to Guadalcanal, where they worked in teams of two: one to send and receive, the other to operate the radio and listen for errors. Nez also fought in Bougainville, Guam, Angaur and Peleliu. He was honorably discharged as a private first class in 1945 and returned to serve stateside in the Korean War from which he was discharged as a corporal. From 1946 to 1952, Nez attended the University of Kansas to study commercial arts, but by 1952 discontinued his studies after having exhausted funding from his G.I. Bill; he was awarded an honorary bachelor's degree by the Kansas University College of Liberal Arts and Science on Veterans Day, 2012.

Following his military service, he worked as a painter for 25 years at a V.A. hospital in Albuquerque. In 2011, he wrote the memoir Code Talker: The First and Only Memoir by One of the Original Navajo Code Talkers of WWII with Judith Avila. – President George W. Bush.

Death Nez died on June 4, 2014, from kidney failure in Albuquerque, aged 93.