Corporal, Chester Nez, United States Marine Corps 

January 23, 1921 – June 4, 2014

CPl Chester Nez was born in Chi Chil Tah, New Mexico on the Navajo reservation in 1921.[1] In 1942 Marine Corp recruiters went to the reservation, looking to recruit a large number of young Navajo men to form a special unit.  These men would be trained and later called “Navajo code talkers” with the ability to  encrypt, transmit and decrypt messages using the Navajo language on the battle field. One of the 29 original Navajo code talkers charged with creating and transmitting the code.[2] Nez fought with the 1st and 3^rd Marine divisions at Guadacanal, Bougainville, Guam, Angaur and Peleliu. He was honorably discharged as a Private First Class in 1945 and returned to serve stateside during the Korean War from which he was discharged as a corporal.[3]

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. Nez was one of the five living original code talkers who received the Congressional Gold Medal from President George W. Bush. Prior to his death on June 4, 2014.[4]

Bio organized by E. Garcia

Please note, this biography is incomplete. If you are a relative or close friend of this veteran, we encourage you to contact us at vlgp@sfcc.edu to complete this biography with your story and documentation (if available).

Notes:
Chester Nez Obituary

“Chester Nez” United States Library of Congress

Endnotes:

[1] Chester Nez and Judith Schiess Avila, Code Talker (New York: Berkley Caliber, 2011), 41-90

[2] Obituary: Chester Nez, the last of America’s Navajo code-talkers, died on June 4th aged 93, The Economist, June 21, 2014

[3] Chester Nez, Code Talker, 189-205

[4] “Chester Nez” at Findagrave.com