The Navajo Code Talkers — Research Paper
Note: I wrote this research paper back in high school and I want to share it anywhere that I can. This topic is extremely important to me and I think the Navajo Code Talkers should be general knowledge. I did not learn about them until I was in high school and I was already well aware of WWII. I also believe that the National Navajo Code Talker Day (August 14th) should be on every calendar and celebrated as first intended by former President Ronald Regan.
ABSTRACT
The Navajo Code Talkers were a great part in World War II. They helped us win the war, and yet, they are still greatly unappreciated. No one knows who the Navajo Code Talkers are, what they did, or their Native American culture or history.
The Navajo Code Talkers are an important part of history. They are something people never really talk about, and it is something that is never taught in schools. There are many people that do not even know about the Navajo Code Talkers and what they did for us in World War II. Everyone knows about Martin Luther King Jr. and why we “celebrate” Presidents Day; but no one knows about the Navajo Code Talkers, what they did for America, or about the National Navajo Code Talkers Day. The National Navajo Code Talkers Day is not on any calendar whatsoever and it should be celebrated by all, as well as honoring the Navajo Code Talkers on that day because they helped America win World War II and without them, we would have lost the war.
Native Americans, not just the Navajos, were all forced onto reservations long ago because Native Americans have always fought to defend themselves and anyone who had threatened them or their home land, culture or family was their enemy. As a result to fighting the United States, many of the Native Americans were relocated, forced off their lands and moved to reservations. Aside from that however, they were caring people, always trying to help out anyone in need of it during any time of difficulty including even laying down their lives for their people. Before Christopher Columbus, the Anglo-Saxons, the Spaniards, and everyone else, the Native Americans populated the land known as the United States, and there were about 500 different Native American languages.
The first attack was by the “founding father” Christopher Columbus and the Spaniards, whom we gave a day from the calendar to “celebrate” his “discovery” of the “new world”, fighting the Native Americans for the land and killing them, and they believed that the Natives were savages and they had to become civilized. After Christopher Columbus, Spanish settlers went to Mexico and migrated towards what would later become the southwestern part of the United States. Many more settlers after that continued to come, then later forcing their religion of Christianity upon the Natives as well as their language. If the Natives did not speak their language, or had their religion, they became savages and uncivilized, which then the settlers brought upon themselves to make them “civilized” and sending the children to boarding schools.
The Native American children were forced to attend government-operated or church-operated boarding schools. They were not allowed to speak their native tongue and if they did they were beaten. The whole point of the boarding schools was to eliminate their traditional ways of life and replace them with the American culture. They were forced to cut their hair, and give up their clothing for the traditional clothing; they were not allowed to see their families for four or more years, and they were forced to give up their Native American names for English ones. Their religious practices were forcibly replaced by Christianity and they were taught that their cultures were inferior. Their teachers made fun of their cultures, and their ways, making the kids ashamed to be Native American. “The boarding schools had a bad effect on the self-esteem of Indian students and on the wellbeing of Native languages and cultures.”
Many of the Code Talkers had attended those boarding schools, and later on as adults they were confused about how the same government that tried taking away their language would ask for their help in the fight of World War II. However, not all boarding school memories were bad, and the Natives had made friends for life, as well as skills that they would find helpful and use later on in life like carpentry, cooking, science, math, agriculture, and trading. The boarding school life was like that of military life, they had to wear uniforms, march in formations, and of course, cut their hair.
During, not only World War II, but World War I as well, there were Native American languages used to send secret military messages that many people do not know about. In World War I the languages used were Cherokee, Cheyenne, Choctaw, Comanche, Osage, and Yankton Sioux, transmitting messages by telephone, and that helped play a key role in the war, helping the U.S. Army win many of the battles in France that helped the war come to an end. In World War II the languages used were Assiniboine, Cherokee, Chippewa/Oneida, Choctaw, Comanche, Hopi, Kiowa, Menominee, Muscogee/Creek and Seminole, Navajo, Pawnee, Sac and Fox/Meskwaki, and Sioux — Lakota and Dakota dialects (Native Words Native Warriors).
During World War II, the Americans were hesitant at first to enter into the war, until Japan had attacked us at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. We were losing the war, the Japanese were able to easily break the codes we would send out and they knew everything we had sent. It was later found out by a fake message that was sent out and they had attacked there. After we found out that the Japanese could easily read our codes, we had to create a new code that would be very hard to break. So, the government turned to the reservations to get recruits to join the Marines, convinced that the Navajo’s speaking their own language would stun even the best Japanese code breakers.
The Navajo Code Talkers were Native American soldiers who helped the United States win WWII. Navajo was a language the Americans tried so hard to get rid of and to break, who knew it would later on help us out in WWII? The idea had come from a man named Phillip Johnston who was a missionary’s son; he had been brought up on a Navajo Reservation and he spoke the language known as Diné.
To the Navajo’s the language was simple and easily understood, to the outsiders however, it would be something that they could not even get the gist of; it is a very complex language to learn. For example, if the commanding officer gave a Code Talker a message to translate into Navajo, he would speak into the radio to another Code Talker, and that receiving Code Talker would then write the message down, in English, and it would be as clear as if that commanding officer had spoken to him directly. If they had said, “Message for Arizona,” it meant that they wanted a Code Talker to receive that message.
The Navajo language had the advantage of being naturally complex and virtually unwritten; meaning that the language “is not only dependent on accurate pronunciation”, but on the tonal emphasis on the word as well, because it can change the whole meaning of the word or sentence if it is not said correctly.
Given the past history between the Native Americans and the government, it still was not a surprise for the Navajo’s to jump right in and help the Americans with the war. One video that was interviewing a Navajo Code Talker, he had said, “I think the Navajo tribe, I think they did the right thing because of how badly they were treated in the past, they were still willing to protect their land, they were willing to protect people that punished them, willing to protect people that conquered them, there is no Code Talker that would say ‘the heck with that, the heck with the United States, the heck with America’ they’re going to say, ‘this is my mother, this is my land, this is my everything that I have right here.’”
In 1941 and 1942 the Marine Corps started to recruit Navajo Code Talkers. It had been Philip Johnston who came up with the idea to recruit them. He was a WWI veteran and heard about the success the Choctaw had doing the same thing by telephone. He was not Navajo but being a missionary’s son, he was brought up on a Navajo reservation and he had spoken the language.
According to a Navajo Code Talker Chester Nez, a Major in the military took them into a room and told them that they needed to create a code out of their own native language. Then he closed the door to the room, and locked it behind him. Nez and everyone else was very confused. He said, “What does he mean by making a code in our own language? We sat there for about three or four minutes thinking, ‘how are we going to develop this code?’” So, in addition to the Navajo language being complex, and already hard to learn, they had to come up with a code in order to stop the Japanese from decoding their messages. The Navajo’s would use words like the word for “potato” in English would be used to describe a hand grenade, “hummingbird” in English would mean fighter planes. In addition to those words as well, they would play word games to make it even more confusing, and even harder for the words to be cracked.
The Natives were to be looked out for and protected because of the language that they held. The huge bulky radios that they carried around made them easy targets for snipers. They were the lifeline of the attacks, as they reported casualties, emergencies, and enemy movements. Another Code Talker had said that his officer in the war had told everyone, “I want you guys to protect this God damn Indian because we need him. He’s got secrets that cannot be understood by the Japs.” The same Code Talker even had a story where he talked about how once he was crouching down in a hut, just near a window for him to look out of, and one guy said to him, “What are you doing there? You need to move or you’ll be an easy target.” The Code Talker switched positions with his companion, and seconds later, the man lie dead next to him. He had said, “That would have been me if he didn’t tell me to move. It should have been me lying there dead, not him.”
“More than 12,000 American Indians served in World War I — about 25 percent of the male American Indian population at that time. During World War II, when the total American Indian population was less than 350,000, an estimated 44,000 Indian men and women served.” (Native Words Native Warriors). In addition, many teenage Navajo Code Talkers lied about their ages, and as young as fifteen went into World War II to protect their people and their land. 420 Navajo’s served in World War II, and fortunately many Navajo’s still speak their language today and will continue to speak it for future generations and there are over 250,000 Navajo tribal members.
As the war continued to progress, and a Navajo Code was adapted, a Code Talking school had been created as more and more Navajo’s came in and started learning the codes. Eventually, more than 400 Navajo’s were recruited as Code Talkers, those who enlisted, and those who were drafted into the war. There were many Code Talkers from 16 different tribes who served in the Army, the Marines, and the Navy.
There were two different kinds of codes, type one codes and type two codes. Type one codes were developed by using their language and then creating a secret code with it. Type two codes were just messages translated from English into Navajo, for example, “send more ammunition to the front” would be a type two code. In order to create a type one code, the original first recruited Navajo’s had to use things that were familiar to them. Chester Nez, one of the first 29 Code Talkers said in a 2004 interview, “So we start talking about different things, animals, sea creatures, birds, eagles, hawks, and all those domestic animals. Why don’t we use those names of different animals — from A to Z. So A, we took a red ant that we live with all the time. B we took a bear, Yogi the Bear, C a Cat, D a Dog, E an Elk, F, Fox, G, a goat and so on down the line.”
Here is an example of some of the words they used:
Now see if you can translate the following message: MOASI NE-AHS-JAH LHA-CHA-EH DZEH GAH DZEH MOASI DZEH TKIN A-KEH-DI-GLINI DZEH LHA-CHA-EH
This is the English translation: C-O-D-E R-E-C-E-I-V-E-D
Here’s how the message is decoded: MOASI (C-Cat), NE-AHS-JAH (O-Owl), LHA-CHA-EH (D-Dog), DZEH (E-Elk), GAH (R-Rabbit), DZEH (E-Elk), MOASI (C-Cat), DZEH (E-Elk), TKIN (I-Ice), A-KEH-DI-GLINI (V-Victor), DZEH (E Elk), LHA-CHA-EH (D-Dog). (Native Words Native Warriors)
The Navajo, Hopi, Comanche, and the other Code Talkers, all had to come up with words for the military terms, like weapons, ships, and planes. They were then given pictures they would come up with words that then would seem to fit the pictures. For example, the Choctaw word tushka chipota means warrior soldier, and the word in code meant soldier. The Navajo word atsá means eagle, and the word in code meant transport plane. Paaki in Hopi means houses in water and in code it means ships. Finally, wakaree´e in Comanche means turtle, and in code, the word means tank. Charles Chibitty, a Comanche Code Talker said in a 2004 interview with the National Museum of the American Indian, “Well, when they first got us in there for Code Talkers, we had to work that out among our own selves so, we didn’t have a word for tank. And the one said it’s like a [Comanche words] he said, it’s just like a turtle, you know. It has a hard shell and it moves and so we called it a wakaree´e, a turtle.”
The Code Talkers did not just speak into a hand held radio, it was more complex than that. They had to know how to operate both the wire and the radio equipment, carry it on their backs, and know how to set up and maintain the electronic wires or lines. The messages were given to them in English and then they had to translate them into code without writing them down. The other Code Talker would then receive the message, and write it down in English and then entered it into a message log book. “The Code Talkers also sent messages in English and the messages were only coded if absolute security was needed.” (Native Words Native Warriors)
Code Talkers were spread out all over to serve in World War II. The Navajo’s and the Hopi were located in the Pacific to fight against the Japanese, the Comanche’s fought against the Germans in Europe, and the Meskwakis fought the Germans in North Africa. Many other Code Talkers from other tribes fought in many other locations as well.
In many Native American cultures and tribes, they believe that after going to war it affects the soldier’s wellbeing and makes it difficult for him to return to and live his everyday life, upsetting the balance. In order to bring their lives back into balance the tribes do a special tribal ceremony to make it easy for the soldier’s once again to live their lives in peace, and be spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and physically healthy. Not only do the tribe’s ceremonies make it easier for them, but many of the soldiers are Christian, so going to church praying, and going to services helped them during their healing processes as well. However, in the Navajo way, they have a different way of bringing their soldiers home. When a Navajo soldier returns from war his family will decide if they can sponsor a ceremony for him, then they will contact a medicine man, or spiritual leader, and the medicine man will then talk to the soldier and then from that decide what kind of ceremony would be the best for the soldier. According to the Navajo Code Talker John Brown Jr., when he had returned from the war they had a Squaw dance (also known as the Enemy Way Ceremony) for him, and all of the bad images of the rotting Japanese, the smell of the dead people, and the blood, had all gone away. He said, “And I imagine they killed that evil spirit that was in my mind. That’s what it’s about. There’s a lot of stories there. It takes a long time to talk about it. It usually takes a medicine man to explain everything properly. But it works.”
Native Americans always honor and respect their veterans. They celebrate and honor them with dances and songs, and many people will go to the veterans because they believe that the veterans will give out good advice because of what they had to endure in the war and strong mental abilities and many experiences. Depending on the community the veterans are celebrated a bit differently. For example, at powwows the veterans will carry their tribe’s flags, the American flag, an Indian Eagle staff, and other important banners as well, leading in the powwow dancers. This is only one of the lasting traditions to show respect to the veterans and what they have done for their people.
After coming home from the war, the Native Americans had a hard time finding jobs, the jobs were scarce and getting training for a job or education for a job was hard to do. Racism was also very huge and still going on so it made it even harder for them to find jobs, even eating and drinking in certain places did not accept the Natives and they did not even get to vote in national or state elections, and although there was the Indian Citizen Act of 1924 that granted full United States citizenship to the Native Americans, some states still refused to let them vote, and it wasn’t until 1948 in New Mexico and Arizona and 1957 in Utah were they allowed to vote. Many Natives stayed in their home communities, farming and fishing, ranching, and doing whatever work that they could find. Others were forced to move to different larger urban areas where work was easier to get. Some Natives worked to help preserve their languages, artists, educators and professionals in other kinds of fields too.
40 years later after Iwo Jima, Pearl Harbor, and the Navajo Code Talkers, in 1982, the then President Ronald Regan declared that August 14th, would be the National Navajo Code Talkers Day. It is still not seen anywhere on any calendar and many people still cease to know about the Navajo Code Talkers and what they have done for their country. What can we do about it? We can educate people about the Navajo Code Talkers, and all of the other Code Talkers out there too, and telling them what they did for us and making a new tradition for generations to come. Celebrate August 14th in honor of them.
On July 26, 2001, four Native American men, of the original 29 Code Talkers “were awarded the highest civilian award US Congress can bestow, putting them on a level with previous distinguished recipients such as George Washington, Jesse Owens and Robert Kennedy. President Bush told a packed audience in the Capitol building that the four Navajo inspired the “respect and admiration of all Americans”, and that the nation’s gratitude was expressed “for all time” in the medals he was about to give them. The Code Talkers were in the U.S. Marines from 1942 to 1945 in the Pacific.
Works Cited:
The National Museum of the American Indian 2004
Traveling Smithsonian Institution exhibition Native Words Native Warriors,
Web. 30 May. 2014.
Lennon, Peter, Theguardian.com 22 August 2002 “Secret Army” Ceremony for the Navajo Code Talkers
Web. 30 May. 2014.
ICTMN Staff, Indian Country today media network.com 14 August 2013 Honor the Native Warriors: Today is National Navajo Code Talkers Day
Web. 30 May. 2014
