The World of Words: Vocabulary for College Success ... - eLibrary

Passage 261■ Making ConnectionsTo connect new vocabulary to your life, write extended responses to thesequestions.1. Describe a person you know or know about who is charismatic.2. Describe what you imagine your life will be like at the zenith of yourcareer.3. Do you think you are a gregarious person? Why or why not?PassageIntelligence Under Fire: The Story of theNavajo Code TalkersWhen Marines raised the U.S. flag on the island of Iwo Jima in 1945, a photoof Ira Hayes, a Navajo Indian, and his fellow soldiers became world famousas representing the heroes of one of the hardest-fought battles of World WarII. But unlike Hayes’s picture, the role of the Navajo code talkers in the battlehas only recently come to wide attention. This is their story.Copyright © Cengage Learning. All Right Reserved.In many ways (1) the nadir of U.S. justice is the treatment of NativeAmericans. In 1863, for example, the U.S. Army destroyed crops and animalsof the Navajos and forced them onto reservations. There, childrenattended Bureau of Indian Affairs schools, where they were forbidden touse their own language. One man remembers being chained in a basementfor daring to speak his native Navajo language!But the language that the schoolmasters disdained would prove tobe a powerful weapon in World War II. When the United States enteredthe war in 1941, over one hundred Navajos, some as young as fifteen, volunteeredto fight. (2) In a show of bravado, some even brought their ownrifles, which would have been useless against the powerful weaponry ofJapan and Germany. As it turned out, though, Navajos and the languagethey spoke proved to be one of the most precious resources of the war.Experts concur that communication becomes extremely difficultduring warfare. Fighting units can be miles apart, (3) yet they must synchronizetheir attacks. But, of course, their messages must also be keptfrom the enemy. Communication may be put into code, but (4) the enemyhas “code breakers” who try to read the messages and disseminate themto their troops. In World War II, the conquest of the Pacific islands occupiedby Japan was particularly challenging, and a good coded communicationsystem was needed.