The native peoples of North American migrated from Asia some 20,000 to 30,000 years ago, bringing various customs and languages, which in turn changed over time. Ironically, one such people, the Navajos, played a part in defeating Japan during World War II, a story told in Windtalkers, directed by John Woo. When the film begins, the Marines are recruiting Navajos, correctly believing that their unwritten language is so obscure that they can speedily relay battlefield messages to artillery positions in the rear without fear that the enemy will break the code. Among the film’s “codebreakers,” as they were called in 1942, are Private Ben Yahzee (played by Adam Beach) and Private Charlie Whitehorse (played by Roger Willie, the only featured Navajo). Meanwhile, Corporal Joe Enders (played by Nicholas Cage) is fighting Japanese in the Solomon Islands in 1943. Following orders to hold his position while his subordinates want to retreat, he is the only survivor as the Japanese outgun his unit. Wounded and temporarily disabled, he is shipped to Kane`ohe Marine Hospital to heal and to receive rehabilitation. Filled with guilt, he hears voices and sees visions of the fifteen men under his command in the fatal battle, but nurse Rita Swelton (played by Frances O’Connor) encourages him and falls in love with him, although he lusts to kill more of the enemy to make up for his mistake. To his surprise, Enders is assigned as a buddy to Yahzee, and “Ox” Henderson (played by Christopher Slater) is Whitehorse’s buddy; the Caucasians are primarily responsible to ensure that the Navajos do not fall into enemy hands, since they might be tortured into divulging the code. On June 16, 1944, Enders’s Marine unit, along with the two Navajos, are ordered to take control of Saipan, an island so strategically situated that air bases can be used for bombing runs at Japan’s main islands. (The film was released on June 14, two days before the fifty-eighth anniversary of the departure of the Marines from Kane`ohe to Saipan, though much of the film was actually shot on the island of O`ahu and none on Saipan.) The war in Windtalkers begins where the Solomon Islands-based The Thin Red Line (1998) left off, showing daytime carnage interspersed with nighttime character development dialog. The battle scenes show an extraordinarily heroic Enders, who takes incredible risks and kills a considerable number of the enemy, whose ineffectuality strains credulity in the film. The story, however, is more about three personality transformations. The first transformation is of Corporal Chick Rogers (played by Noah Emmerich), whose Southern accent explains his animosity toward the Navajos as derived from his father, who used to talk about shooting Indians; in time, when his life is saved by Whitehorse, he shows them respect. The second transformation is of Yahzee, who is shell-shocked in his first battle but becomes bloodthirsty after Whitehorse dies in a grenade launched by Enders when Japanese were trying to capture him as a hostage to learn about the code. The third transformation is of Enders. After his unsuccessful tour of duty in the Solomons, he becomes grumpy and introspective, even ignoring Rita’s love letters, but in time he bares his soul to Yahzee as he gains respect for the human and warrior qualities of his Navajo buddy. Titles at the end credit the Navajo code, which was never broken, with considerable importance in the victory against Japan. However, if filmviewers somehow infer that the theme of film is that the Marines amicably brought the races together during World War II, the fact is that there are no African American Marines in the cast; the armed forces were entirely segregated except for a few special units, and there were doubtless many more bigots in the Marines than Chick. Although Windtalkers was originally scheduled for release at the end of 2001, the film’s theme that diverse kinds of Americans can unite together against a common enemy is clearly a post-9/11 message that filmviewers have seen earlier this year in Hart’s War and We Were Soldiers. MH