Navajo Code Talkers
Related resources: Navajo Code
Talker Dictionary
Choctaw Codetalkers of
WWI
- The Navajo code talkers took part in every assault the U.S. Marines
conducted in the Pacific from 1942 to 1945. They served in all six Marine
divisions, Marine Raider battalions and Marine parachute units, transmitting
messages by telephone and radio in their native language -- a code that the
Japanese never broke.
- The idea to use Navajo for secure communications came from Philip
Johnston, the son of a missionary to the Navajos and one of the few
non-Navajos who spoke their language fluently. Johnston, reared on the
Navajo reservation, was a World War I veteran who knew of the military's
search for a code that would withstand all attempts to decipher it. He also
knew that Native American languages--notably Choctaw--had been used in World
War I to encode messages.
- Johnston believed Navajo answered the military requirement for an
undecipherable code because Navajo is an unwritten language of extreme
complexity. Its syntax and tonal qualities, not to mention dialects, make it
unintelligible to anyone without extensive exposure and training. It has no
alphabet or symbols, and is spoken only on the Navajo lands of the American
Southwest. One estimate indicates that less than 30 non-Navajos, none of
them Japanese, could understand the language at the outbreak of World War
II.
- Early in 1942, Johnston met with Major General Clayton B. Vogel, the
commanding general of Amphibious Corps, Pacific Fleet, and his staff to
convince them of the Navajo language's value as code. Johnston staged tests
under simulated combat conditions, demonstrating that Navajos could encode,
transmit, and decode a three-line English message in 20 seconds. Machines of
the time required 30 minutes to perform the same job. Convinced, Vogel
recommended to the Commandant of the Marine Corps that the Marines recruit
200 Navajos.
- In May 1942, the first 29 Navajo recruits attended boot camp. Then, at
Camp Pendleton, Oceanside, California, this first group created the Navajo
code. They developed a dictionary and numerous words for military terms. The
dictionary and all code words had to be memorized during training.
- Once a Navajo code talker completed his training, he was sent to a Marine
unit deployed in the Pacific theater. The code talkers' primary job was to
talk, transmitting information on tactics and troop movements, orders and
other vital battlefield communications over telephones and radios. They also
acted as messengers, and performed general Marine duties.
- Praise for their skill, speed and accuracy accrued throughout the war. At
Iwo Jima, Major Howard Connor, 5th Marine Division signal officer, declared,
"Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo
Jima." Connor had six Navajo code talkers working around the clock
during the first two days of the battle. Those six sent and received over
800 messages, all without error.
- The Japanese, who were skilled code breakers, remained baffled by the
Navajo language. The Japanese chief of intelligence, Lieutenant General
Seizo Arisue, said that while they were able to decipher the codes used by
the U.S. Army and Army Air Corps, they never cracked the code used by the
Marines. The Navajo code talkers even stymied a Navajo soldier taken
prisoner at Bataan. (About 20 Navajos served in the U.S. Army in the
Philippines.) The Navajo soldier, forced to listen to the jumbled words of
talker transmissions, said to a code talker after the war, "I never
figured out what you guys who got me into all that trouble were
saying."
- In 1942, there were about 50,000 Navajo tribe members. As of 1945, about
540 Navajos served as Marines. From 375 to 420 of those trained as code
talkers; the rest served in other capacities.
- Navajo remained potentially valuable as code even after the war. For that
reason, the code talkers, whose skill and courage saved both American lives
and military engagements, only recently earned recognition from the
Government and the public.
-
Department of Defense Honors Navajo Veterans
- Long unrecognized because of the continued value of their language as a
security classified code, the Navajo code talkers of World War II were
honored for their contributions to defense on Sept. 17, 1992, at the
Pentagon, Washington, D.C.
- Thirty-five code talkers, all veterans of the U.S. Marine Corps,
attended the dedication of the Navajo code talker exhibit. The exhibit
includes a display of photographs, equipment and the original code, along
with an explanation of how the code worked.
- Dedication ceremonies included speeches by the then-Deputy Secretary of
Defense Donald Atwood, U.S. Senator John McCain of Arizona and Navajo
President Peterson Zah. The Navajo veterans and their families traveled to
the ceremony from their homes on the Navajo Reservation, which includes
parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.
- The Navajo code talker exhibit is a regular stop on the Pentagon tour.
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