Author J. Patrick Lewis and illustrator Gary Kelley have collaborated on three books thus far about talented unsung heroes of World War II; this is the third.

They begin with a brief history of the Navajo beginning in 1864, when the U.S. Government drove them from their land, burned their homes, and forced them to march 350 miles to a reservation. Anyone who fell behind was shot. Every Navajo, the author informs us, knows of “The Long Walk’ and “marks time from that monstrous event. No one can understand the story of the Navajo without grasping the depravity of this debacle.”

On the reservation, schools were opened, but many children were forced to go away to boarding schools in order to be cleansed of their native culture. At the boarding schools, they were forbidden to speak their traditional language, and harshly punished if they did not speak English.

Nevertheless, their “unique, enormously difficult, and unwritten” language came in handy during World War II. An Anglo missionary’s son who had grown up with the Navajo convinced the Army that their language would constitute a code unbreakable by the Japanese. As the author observes, “Suddenly, bilingual Navajos had become valuable. Recruited into the military that had once sought to destroy their ancestors, the ‘code talkers’ were born.”

A platoon of 29 code talkers was formed, and the author gives a description of how the code worked, as well as examples of words for “battleship,” “bombs,” “destroyer” and other relevant terms.

The book explains:

“The work of the code talkers cloaked the American troops’ movements wherever they went. Accounts from Japanese newspapers described people’s confusion. To them, Navajo words sounded like ‘a strange earful of gurgling noises….”

The Navajo were part of every Marine assault in the Pacific from 1942 to 1945. They were credited for the success at Iwo Jima and elsewhere.

After the war, however, they were sworn to silence about the role they played. It was not until 1968 that the military lifted the ban on information about the code talkers. In 2001, the original 29 men received Congressional Gold Medals for their contributions.

The end of the book includes the author’s notes on Native languages, the artist’s notes, and a short bibliography. (Oddly, the names of the 29 are nowhere included. You can learn more about them, however, at a website devoted to them, here.)

Kelley is an outstanding illustrator. In this book he employs pastels, most of which are done in dark earth tones punctuated with spots of color (to show the sun or the U.S. flag, for example) for the portrayal of military scenes. Soldiers faces have angular outlines, whereas those of civilians are more rounded - an interesting way to convey the solemnity and seriousness of war. This technique also lends an emotional depth to his illustrations.

Evaluation: This author/illustrator team is terrific. Their books offer powerful testimony about the contributions of minorities to the United States at times of its greatest need. ( )