Code Talker describes military experience

  • Published
  • By Keith Pannell
  • 27th Fighter Wing Public Affairs
CANNON AIR FORCE BASE, N.M. (AFPN) --  The pride in Teddy Draper’s voice is evident as he talks about events that helped America win the war in the Pacific 62 years ago.

Mr. Draper, who was born on a Navajo Indian reservation in Canyon Del Muerto, Ariz., was one of the Marine Corps Code Talkers who mystified the Japanese forces as the Americans battled their way toward the Japanese mainland.

“When we were at the induction station in 1943 taking the entrance tests, I told them I wanted to join the Air Force,” Mr. Draper said. “They said … I was going into the Marines.”

Mr. Draper said he had been happy on the reservation, learning the ways of his ancestors when he and many of his fellow Navajo decided to fight for their country.

“We did eight weeks of basic training, then they sent us to Camp Pendleton for eight weeks of communications training,” he said. “We had to learn to be radio operators (and) switchboard operators who sit in the command posts, and even how to run cable.”

“We had a lot to learn in a short time. We developed a code based on our language. It wasn’t just us talking in Navajo. We had to develop code words to make it even more difficult to break,” Mr. Draper said.

After training in Hawaii to learn how to disembark a troop ship and storm a beach, Mr. Draper and the rest of the 5th Marine Division headed west to take on the Japanese.

Then-Private Draper and his fellow Marines hit the beaches of Iwo Jima on Feb. 19, 1945, walking into a wall of Japanese gunfire that raked the sand from one end of the beach to another.

“We had nothing to hide behind,” Mr. Draper said. “They hit us with everything they had -- rifle fire, machine gun fire and artillery. It was like hail hitting the sand.”

The Code Talker vividly recalls those first hours on the beach at the foot of Mount Suribachi. He also recalls the first time he escaped death.

“I was running from crater to crater with four other Navajo, and I felt something smack my pants,” Mr. Draper said. “I looked down and saw a bullet hole in my pants near my shin. I yelled back at the Japanese that they had missed their only chance to kill this Navajo.”

Mr. Draper jumped into a large bomb crater and began setting up his equipment when he discovered a missing cable which was needed to connect the radios. The radios were connected to Mr. Draper’s switchboard by those cables so that commanders could issue orders to individual outposts and the outposts could report what they were seeing in the battle.

His sergeant ordered him to go back to the landing craft and get it. So, Mr. Draper had to make a mad dash 150 yards back to the water and then run back to the temporary command post.

“My sergeant told me I had earned a medal for that. I told him I wasn’t interested in a medal; I wanted to be promoted. A couple of days later, I was a corporal,” he said.

The Japanese almost made the Code Talker eat his words the second day on the beach.

“A mortar hit about 20 yards to my right and killed two men I was with,” Mr. Draper said. “It made me blind and deaf for a little while, but I went to the aid station, and they fixed me up, and I went back to work. By that time, there were only a couple of Navajo left alive to run the radios for the entire division, so I wasn’t allowed to be wounded.”

In the explosion, a piece of shrapnel had smacked Mr. Draper on the bridge of his nose. He considers himself very lucky to be alive.

Today, Mr. Draper and the rest of the remaining Code Talkers speak to the public, educating Americans about the American Indian contribution to the war.

“When we came home, they told us we couldn’t talk about what we did because it was still secret. Everyone else got celebrations and parades, and we stood on the side and watched,” he said.

So, the Navajo formed the Code Talkers Association and began traveling around the country to let people know about their formerly secret mission. They began their public tour by marching in the Rose Bowl Parade in 1977.

“The television announcers didn’t even know who we were,” Mr. Draper said. “The announcer said we were from Arkansas, not Arizona.”

Since that march, Mr. Draper said much of the nation, including Hollywood, has embraced his group. Though, he said, Hollywood changed the Navajo Code Talker story some to make it look better on the big screen.

Mr. Draper was finally awarded the Purple Heart in 2003 for the wounds he received in 1945.

Because of the secrecy surrounding their part in the war, many of the Code Talkers, including Mr. Draper, never received military benefits.

That was rectified in 2003 when Mr. Draper and other Code Talkers were awarded full benefits, retroactive to their time in service. He was also awarded the Silver Star at the same time.

Mr. Draper makes several speaking engagements a year on behalf of the association. Otherwise, he said he is tending to the corn, peaches, watermelon and other vegetables on his land in Chinle, Ariz.

“My 12 children and 52 grandchildren also keep me busy,” he said.