How did Frank Chee Willeto feel about being drafted?

Growing up in the southwestern United States, did
you ever expect to see as much of the world as you
did serving as code talkers with the United States
Marine Corps?
Peter MacDonald: Not me. You can ask Frank here.
Frank Chee Willeto: For my part, I was just going to
school, and many of my friends were leaving to go into
the service. I couldn’t leave because I was under age . . .
However, I finished the eighth grade and had gotten a
job in 1943, and six months later I was drafted, but only
because I had lied about my age so I could be drafted.
Did you expect to be a code talker from the beginning?
Chee Willeto: When I was drafted, a sergeant came up
to me and asked if I was a Navajo; I said yes and he told
me to come with him. I was sent to a Navy doctor for the
physical, but it wasn’t really much of a physical, because
he only asked me four or five questions and he said, “You
passed the physical.” That’s how I got involved in San
Diego and got to be in the Marine Corps.
So for you everything really happened quite quickly?
Chee Willeto: Yes. After that I went to basic training for
eight weeks, and after that went to Camp Pendleton, and
I found myself with more Navajos in the barracks. And
then I found out that we’d be carrying communications
equipment. At that time I did not know we were going to
use our own language. I later heard that the first 29 Navajo

who volunteered had made the code, and I had to be
taught the code.
What was the training like to learn the code?
Chee Willeto: The first thing was that there was no
paperwork; everything had to be memorized. We couldn’t
go back to our barracks with anything. Nothing. So after
another eight weeks, I found myself on a ship to go
overseas to the South Pacific. We were shipped out to
Hawaii, where we spent more time, and then we went
north to the island of Saipan.
MacDonald: We were segregated to learn the code. The
Navajo language itself is difficult to learn but was coded
[by the Marines] so that not even a Navajo who had
not gone through code school could tell what we were
talking about. That was why a place was set aside at
Camp Pendleton, which was under guard all the time,
like the Manhattan Project. Those of us who went in and
learned the code couldn’t take notes out of the classroom.
That was why the code was never broken by anyone,
particularly the Japanese, who could never decipher it.
But more than that, it was very efficient. You could write
something down in English, but when the code talker
starts reading it in Navajo, he is coding it. On the other
end, the Navajo hears Navajo words coming in and he
decodes them as he is hearing them. The speed and
efficiency of this is fantastic, as opposed to other methods
of coding and encrypting a message.