September 1944: Peleliu
- Chester and the other Navajo Marines are on a transport ship. Again. Chester is worrying about the next battle. He's on his fourth campaign, and he hasn't had a proper break yet. Still no R&R.
- How long can he keep doing this? It's not like he's an Energizer bunny. He's human, after all.
- The Marines are on their way to land on the island of Peleliu, and Marine command has decided that the Navajo code—which has still not been broken by the Japanese—will be the only means of communication during the landing on the island.
- The 1st Marine Division, not Chester's 3rd, has been assigned the attack on the island, but because they don't have enough code talkers, Chester and Francis, along with Roy Begay and his partner, have been asked to go along with the 1st Marine Division to take part in the assault.
- Peleliu is an island in the Palau chain in the Pacific. More than 30,000 Japanese troops are stationed all over the Palau Islands, waiting for the Americans.
- On Peleliu, the Japanese have constructed a network of tunnels and fortified caves, where they can hide from the Americans.
- The Americans don't quite have enough troops to take the island, but Field Commander General William H. Rupertus has decided to go ahead with the assault anyway.
- When the first wave of Marines lands on Peleliu's southern tip on September 15, 1944, the Japanese go all out: they attack ferociously.
- Francis and Chester are dropped off onto the volcanic coral reef that surrounds the island, since their Higgins boat can't reach the beach.
- Bullets and artillery shells are flying everywhere. The Americans are battered badly by the Japanese as they attempt to land.
- Chester and Francis barely make it to the beach. A runner dives down and hands them a message.
- They send it over the radio, and then run from their spot so that the Japanese don't pinpoint their radio location.
- The Japanese continue attacking the landing Americans, but the American troops manage to hold them off. Finally—the next morning—the Japanese retreat. The Americans have managed to chase them away from the airfield near the beach.
- Even though the Americans have cleared the Japanese from the airfield, they can't make use of it because they'd be exposed to the Japanese hiding out in the their fortifications in the mountain overlooking the beach and the airfield.
- Still, the Americans have to cross the airfield to get to the Japanese. Chester and Francis are among them.
- As they run across the airfield, they watch some of their buddies go down as they get shot, killed, or mutilated by Japanese fire.
- U.S. troops manage to hold onto the beach and the airfield through the second day of fighting, but they can't get supplies because Japanese artillery is keeping the Higgins boats carrying the supplies from landing.
September 1944: Angaur
- Chester, Francis, Roy Begay and Roy Notah are ordered by a lieutenant to head over to the island of Angaur, to help out a division of the Army stationed there.
- The Army, unlike the Marines, doesn't have any Navajo code talkers. And now the Army needs the help of the Navajo Marines in order to transmit plans and strategies during their attack on Angaur.
- The four Marines head over to the island in a pontoon plane (a plane that lands on water).
- On their first night on Angaur, the Marines and the Army guys listen to the voice of Tokyo Rose coming out of Japanese loudspeakers.
- That's the name the Army soldiers give to the women who speak every night, in perfect English, to try and demoralize the American troops, telling them that they'll die alone in battle, and that their families will forget them. Sheesh, those Japanese clearly know how to do psychological warfare.
- The next evening on Angaur, Francis and Chester are stopped by two U.S. soldiers as they're returning from an assignment. The soldiers accuse them of being "Japs," and point their guns at them.
- Chester and Francis try to explain that they're Marines, but the soldiers don't believe them. It's hard enough having to worry about Japanese soldiers, but now Chester and his Navajo buddies have to worry about American soldiers?
- Chester convinces one of the soldiers to get a hold of someone from the communications center to prove their identity. A communications officer arrives and tells off the soldiers for capturing their own Marines.
- On September 20, 1944, a few days after the code talkers arrive on Angaur, the Army captures the island from the Japanese.
- The Navajo code talkers are sent back to Peleliu, where the battle is still raging.
September to late November 1944: Back to Peleliu
- Back in Peleliu, the Americans try to take over the Japanese positions in Umurbrogol Mountain, but the Japanese stop them. The Marines nickname the mountain "Bloody Nose Ridge."
- On September 23, a regiment of the Army arrives to help the Marines, who are clearly undermanned and aren't making much headway against the Japanese.
- With the help of the Army, the Marines capture northern Peleliu on September 30, 1944.
- In mid-October, General Roy Geiger declares that Peleliu is secure. But the island isn't secure yet. The Americans have captured some parts of the island, but there are a lot of Japanese still fighting from the mountains.
- Nez wakes up in bomb crater. He's confused about when he'd arrived back on Peleliu from Angaur.
- In the mess tent one morning, Chester's name is called by the mail sergeant. He has a letter from home. Yes!
- But a lot of the lines have been blacked out, because the military censors letters coming and going to the soldiers. Chester has to destroy the letter after reading it, as Marine command doesn't want the Japanese to get their hands on any of the letters.
- The Marines, with the help of the Army, attack Umurbrogol Mountain again, and they eventually take out the Japanese there.
- Three days before the Americans officially defeat the Japanese on the island, Colonel Nakagawa—commander of the Japanese troops—shoots himself dead. Instead of surrendering or being caught, many of the Japanese officers prefer to kill themselves.
- Finally, the Americans have full control over the island.
- Some of the code talkers have been wounded on Peleliu, which Chester tells us was the toughest battle of the Pacific.
- One code talker, Tommy Singer, dies while making his landing on the island. Sob.
- Uh-oh. The Japanese somehow learn that the unbreakable code used by the Americans has something to do with the Navajo language.
- A Navajo soldier—who is not a code talker—is captured by the Japanese and tortured. The Japanese want him to reveal the code.
- The poor guy has no clue what they're talking about. Thankfully, the code is safe (though we do feel sorry for this guy who's been tortured for nothing).
- Once the Marines realize how important the code is, they assign bodyguards to the code talkers, though the code talkers themselves don't know that they have them. Until after the war, that is.
- Once again, while their Marine buddies go off to chill and relax on R&R in Australia, Chester and the code talkers are sent back to Guadalcanal to make preparations for landing on Iwo Jima. Will this ever end?