Biography on tap for code talker
By Bill Donovan
Special to the Times
WINDOW ROCK, Dec. 8, 2011
Samuel Holiday
Samuel Holiday, 87, of Kayenta, is collaborating with Utah historian Robert S. McPherson to put his life on paper and give another account of what it was like to use the Navajo language as a code during World War II.
And if McPherson succeeds in his personal goal for the book, it will go beyond Holiday's wartime heroics and fully describe his cultural context as a Navajo man of his time.
Holiday, who was born in 1924 under a formation in Monument Valley known as Eagle Rock, was raised as a traditional Navajo in an area so remote that he didn't see his first Anglo until he was 8 years old at a trading post.
This changed when he entered Tuba City Boarding School, which led to him joining the Marines and fighting in several major battles in the Pacific, including Iwo Jima, Kwajalein, Saipan and Tinian, as a code talker.
McPherson, a professor of Native American studies at Utah State University, Eastern San Juan Campus in Blanding, is the author of 10 other books on the culture of the Navajo and the Four Corners area, including one that won the 2010 Utah Book Award for Nonfiction.
He said Holiday's daughter contacted him this past spring about writing her father's life story. The fact that the family contacted him probably came as no surprise since McPherson had previously written a book with John Holiday, a practicing medicine man from Monument Valley who is the half brother of Samuel Holiday.
"A Navajo legacy: The life and teachings of John Holiday," is published by the University of Oklahoma Press and is part of its Civilization of the American Indian series.
McPherson said he was attracted to the idea of working with Samuel Holiday because of his own background in the Special Forces, having served for a total of 38 years on active duty and in the reserves.
Because of that and his interest in Navajo culture, McPherson said he had a "working knowledge" of code talkers' role in World War II and so was attracted to the idea of going even deeper into the subject.
His involvement comes at a time when interest among the American people is as high as it has ever been. With less than 50 of the 400-plus original code talkers still alive, members of the Navajo Code Talkers Association are in great demand to give speeches and make public appearances.
This interest has spilled over into the book world with several books on the code talkers either published recently or in the works.
In September, Berkley Books published "Code Talker," the autobiography of Chester Nez, one of the original code talkers.
McPherson said the book he is working on with Samuel Holiday will be based on interviews as well as accounts written a decade or so ago by Holiday's son during a time when the family first considered doing a book on his life.
"His son was able to come up with excellent information but he wasn't a writer so the family was looking for someone to help," McPherson said.
McPherson's work with Samuel's half brother has made them view him as something of a family historian, so they turned to him.
But McPherson said he wants to do something with the Samuel Holiday book that other books on the code talkers have not done, and that is tell the story of the code talkers in the context of Navajo culture.
He said he hopes, with the family's help, to complete the manuscript by spring 2012 with publication to follow in mid-2013.
Persons interested in sharing their experiences with Samuel Holiday can contact McPherson by e-mailing him at bob.mcpherson@usu.edu.