Kenji Kawano

small but important pictorial book honoring some of our WWII Navajo warriors who's communications helped win the war in the Pacific. It is fitting that the author and photographer is of Japanese descent and became an honorary member and the official photographer of the Navajo Code Talkers Association.
During World War II, as the Japanese were breaking American codes as quickly as they could be devised, a small group of Navajo Indian Marines provided their country with its only totally secure cryptogram. Recruited from the vast reaches of the Navajo Reservation in Arizona and New Mexico, from solitary and traditional lives, the young Navajo men who made up the code talkers were present at some of the Pacific Theatre?s bloodiest battles. They spoke to each other in the Navajo language, relaying vital information between the front lines and headquarters. Their contribution was immeasurable, their bravery unquestionable. The photographer has recorded them as they are today, recalling their youth. Black-and-white photographic portraits of 75 survivors from the Navajo radio operators whose native tongue proved an unbreakable code to the Japanese during World War II. The introduction includes a few photographs from the period.
The American offensive in the Pacific during World War II [was] hampered by the Japanese ability to crack the most secret U.S. Codes. Navajo was virtually unknown outside the reservations, ... and [their] code proved uncrackable. Kenji Kawano's striking photographs capture the quiet dignity of the surviving veterans as they recall their actions ―Los Angeles Times
"When I was going to boarding school, the U.S. government told us not to speak Navajo," recalls Teddy Draper Sr. of Chinle, Arizona, "but during the war, they wanted us to speak it!" Speaking their native language--which the Japanese could not decode--Navajo soldiers were instrumental in U.S. marine victories in the Pacific during World War II, relaying vital information between the front lines and headquarters. Kenji Kawano, a native Japanese photographer whose black and white images of surviving "code talkers" are unusual for their sensitivity, notes with some irony that these soldiers were his father's enemies at one time.… (mais)

A really outstanding book. I am so grateful that Kenji Kawano undertook this labour of love while so many of the Code Talkers were still with us. The book could have been improved by more text. Each photograph of a Code Talker bore a short quotation relating to his memories of the War. Surely some of the men photographed (not Mr Lewis Ayze, who said tersely "These stories I don't care to relate", but others) still had something to say about their Code Talker training or their life after they returned home. Instead, understandably, there are a great many short comments about incidents under fire. This is a good book and earned its place on the WWII shelf but it could have been better.… (mais)