UNSPOKEN HEROES OF THE PACIFIC.

Byline: Phillip Zonkel Staff Writer

IN THE SUMMER of 1942, 29 young Navajo Indian soldiers were put in a room at Southern California's Camp Elliot as part of a top-secret mission.

``(The officer) left and locked the door,'' says Chester Nez, who was one of the young Navajos. They had been put in that room to devise a code based on their native language. ``That was one of the hardest things we ever tackled.''

Until then, the Japanese had cracked every encryption U.S. forces had used,

and the Marines were desperate for an unbreakable code. As it turns out, the Navajo language was ideal. Its syntax and tonal qualities make it unintelligible to any untrained listener.

``The language wasn't known outside this country, and it was hardly known inside the country,'' says Ted Fernald, associate professor of linguistics at Swarthmore College. ``The Japanese couldn't write it down to begin to decipher it.''

Over the next several months, for 12 hours a day, seven days a week, Nez and his fellow Marines used basic Navajo words to represent 263 common military terms nonexistent in Navajo language. For instance, an observation plane was an owl, a hand grenade was a potato and a tank was a tortoise.

For words or phrases not covered by the code, other Navajo words were substituted for a letter of the alphabet. Letter by letter, the code talkers could spell out words and phrases.

The Navajo code talkers then memorized the entire code and went into combat. During the first 48 hours at Iwo Jima, six code talkers sent and received more than 800 error-free messages.

And the baffled Japanese were never able to crack the code.

``The Navajos are the real heroes,'' says ``Windtalkers'' director John Woo. ``They saved a lot of Marines' lives and helped win the war.''

Though the Navajo code talkers were heroes among their people, ``Most people in America will probably learn about them in this movie,'' notes Fernald.

But this being Hollywood, you can bet that history was tweaked.

In Woo's film, Sgt. Joe Enders (Nicolas Cage) is assigned to protect Pvt. Ben Yahzee (Adam Beach), a code talker. If Yahzee is captured by the enemy, Enders' orders are to ``protect the code at all costs.''

The film says ``inspired by true events,'' but the bodyguard scenario isn't one of them.

U.S. Marine Corps Capt. Matt Morgan, a technical adviser on ``Windtalkers,'' says the ``mission is more important than the man'' scenario is accurate, but, ``They didn't go out and select people and say, 'You're going to watch the code talker.'

``What would happen a lot of times was a commander would go, 'Hey, you, stick with the code talker,' as a sort of walking identification card (so he wouldn't be mistaken for a Japanese soldier). There was a natural suspicion of racism inherent in the Marine Corps,'' Morgan says.

Steven Jack, an executive producer on the History Channel's ``History vs. Hollywood: 'Windtalkers' '' special that airs 11 p.m. Monday, spoke with several code talkers but didn't hear about bodyguards.

``A couple of them said they may have been assigned Marines, but they were unaware of it.''

After the war, the Navajo were sworn to secrecy and quietly returned to the reservation. No parades or special recognition followed.

``We only told (family and friends that) we fought a war,'' says Nez, 81, who was assigned to the 3rd Marine Amphibious Corp.

``When it was declassified in 1968, then I told my parents what I did. They were so happy to know that we had used the Navajo language and made it into a code.''

Last July, the 29 original code talkers, of whom five are alive today, finally received public appreciation - Congressional gold medals.

Albert Smith, 80, a code talker and code consultant on the film who joined the service at 15 and was assigned to the 4th Marine Division, says, ``We did it not only for our people and our country but for the rest of the freedom-loving people of the world so that their languages, no matter what kind they have, could grow with their children and expand.''

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Photo:

Chester Nez, 81, left, an original Navajo code talker, with movie code talker Roger Willie.

John McCoy/Staff Photographer