Navajo Code Talkers

In this week in military history, we explore the service of the World War II United States Marines known as Navajo Code Talkers who were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal on December 21, 2000.

Only months after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 - the United States Marine Corps found itself heading to fight in the Pacific Theater - and it knew that one of the only ways to win was to maintain an impenetrable radio code that the Japanese couldn’t decipher. The English language was widely understood and would not be effective. Thus, the decision was made to recruit Native Americans who could use their language as an official radio code unable to be cracked by Japanese forces. Ironically, many Native American children and adolescents had been forced by the United States Government into “Indian Schools” in the preceding decades to promote their assimilation and abandonment of their native language.

Fortunately - a sizable amount of Navajo young men fluent in both English and their native language eagerly enlisted in the US Marine Corps to fight, and so began the valorous legacy of the “Code Talkers”. The“Code Talkers” were trained infantrymen and developed two models of code languages: with Type 1 being twenty-six Navajo words that each corresponded to an English letter, and Type 2 consisting of Navajo words that could be directly translated into English.

During the heat of combat - Navajo “Code Talkers” would be assigned in pairs to a small Marine Infantry unit, usually a platoon, armed with their individual weapons and field radio packs. Since the Japanese forces were trained to target and kill enemy Officers, Combat Medics (Navy Corpsmen in the Marine Corps), and Radiomen - Navajo “Code Talkers” served in an especially dangerous capacity. Even so, the battlefield effectiveness and valor of the Navajo “Code Talkers” was best summarized by Major Howard Connor, “Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima.”

The importance of the Navajo Code Talkers and their mission during World War II was so great that their skillset was deemed as a possible asset for future wars - and so their military files were not declassified and made public until 1968.

Join us next time for another segment of this week in military history, with the Pritzker Military Museum and Library.

[heidi.with.an.i]

This helped me a lot in my history presentation