Multicultural diversity. It’s a term with various meanings, but today we’ll learn about an example of multicultural diversity which was a matter of life and death – and I mean that literally. During World War II, the U.S. military utilized cultural diversity by asking 29 Navajo to develop an unbreakable code for battle operations. The last of those 29 passed away in 2014, and he was a man with ties to rural Kansas.
Chester Nez was one of the original 29 Navajo involved in this project. In 2011, he published a book called Code Talker.
Chester was from New Mexico where he grew up herding sheep and goats at the Navajo nation. At age 9, he was forced to go to boarding school by the federal government. Students were required to speak English and were punished for speaking Navajo.
By 1941, he was in boarding school in Arizona when the word came that Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor. Navajo men considered themselves warrior people, so they were prepared to fight.
Continue reading “Kansas Profile – Now That’s Rural: Chester Nez – Code Talker”
