The outcome of World War II might have been very different if it hadn’t been for the Navajo people and their language.
Navajo Code Talkers were essential for transmitting secure messages quickly in the Pacific theater of operations. Their code was never broken by the Japanese or anyone else.
Beginnings of the Navajo Code Talkers
Before the Navajo code was developed, transmitting secure messages was a time-consuming task . . . time that men under bombardment didn’t have. As the U.S. forces developed plans to take Pacific islands one by one on their way toward Japan, it became clear that a faster, more secure way to transmit messages was necessary.
Other Native American languages, such as Choctaw and Comanche, had been used as codes, including in World War I and II. But World War I veteran Philip Johnston, who grew up on the Navajo Nation as the son of missionaries, suggested to the Marines that Navajo would be the perfect language to use for an unbreakable code.
The Navajo Nation’s isolated location in the Four Corners region that encompasses parts of northwest New Mexico just west of Farmington, northeast Arizona, and a small part of southern Utah, helped ensure that almost no one outside the tribe was fluent in the complex language. In addition, at this time there wasn’t a written version of the Navajo language. The Marines decided to give it a try.
After an intensive recruiting mission on the reservation, 29 Navajo were accepted into the program. They first had to graduate from bootcamp, where they performed exceptionally, and had no idea they were being groomed for a special, secret program. After boot camp, the group found they had more school in store, this time to use their native language to develop an unbreakable code.
Education for Navajo
This generation of Navajo had grown up in the 1920s and 1930s when their educational options were to attend a Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school or one run by a religious order. Either way, these were programs that were designed to force the children to adapt to White society and that punished them, sometimes severely, for speaking Navajo.
It may seem unusual that young Navajo men, whose grandparents had been removed from their land between their four sacred mountains and forced on the 350-mile Long Walk and then given a hardscrabble existence at Bosque Redondo, would feel patriotism. Some said they enlisted to protect their land and their people: the land to which after four hard years their ancestors had been allowed to return, and their people, the Navajo. After having their homeland taken away from them by Americans, they would not see it taken by the Japanese.
But enlist they did, some out of patriotism, others for jobs which were scarce on the reservation, and some for the allure of standing tall like the sharp-looking Marines who recruited them. Later, these young Marines were surprised to find that the language that the government schools had punished them for using was now one that the government was asking, ordering them to use.
The Code’s Beginnings
The First 29, as they were later known, were tasked with assigning a word to each letter of the English alphabet and finding the Navajo equivalent. For example, A was for ant, translated as wol-la-chee, and B was for bear, which is shush in Navajo.
Next, so they wouldn’t have to spell out every word, terms were assigned to phrases they would have to communicate that were unknown in the Navajo language, such as military ranks, kinds of planes, and war ships. For example, a dive bomber reminded them of a chicken hawk, or gini in Navajo. A brigadier general wore one silver star and was called so-a-la-ih.
In all, this first group came up with 263 terms, from months and countries to punctuation. They then had to memorize them so they could use them quickly and efficiently, along with learning other skills required of radio operators. Later groups of recruits added even more words to the code.
Then they had to prove to the brass that what they had developed would work better and be more secure than the code that was currently being employed. They soon showed that Navajo Code Talkers could transmit error-free messages in less than a minute rather than the 30 minutes or more it would take to encode and decode a message using the code machine. The Marines decided to move forward with the program and more Navajos were recruited. In all, there were more than 400 and perhaps as many as 500 Navajo Code Talkers who served in the Marines in World War II.
Navajo Code Talkers in Action
Once deployed, the Code Talkers were used in almost all parts of the Pacific. Their commanding officers, skeptical at first, soon became reliant on the swift, accurate, and secure messages the Navajo relayed. Code Talkers carried their radios on their backs (some decided it was safer to wear it on the front to protect them from bullets as they ran toward the enemy) and had to be able to transmit messages under heavy fire, asking for air support or directing heavy artillery.
Only 13 Navajo Code Talkers were killed in action. One of the First 29 was killed by friendly fire when he was mistaken in the dark for a Japanese soldier. In fact, several Code Talkers experienced being led by gunpoint to commanding officers to determine if they were truly Marines or Japanese soldiers wearing a Marine uniform. Some Code Talkers had Marines assigned to them for their safety, from the enemy and other Marines.
According to the website Intel.gov, “The Code Talkers participated in every major Marine operation in the Pacific theater, giving the Marines a critical advantage throughout the war. During the nearly month-long battle for Iwo Jima, for example, six Navajo Code Talker Marines successfully transmitted more than 800 messages without error. Marine leadership noted after the battle that the Code Talkers were critical to the victory at Iwo Jima. At the end of the war, the Navajo Code remained unbroken.”
Honoring Navajo Code Talkers
When the war was won, Code Talkers didn’t come home to special recognition. In fact, their program stayed a heavily guarded secret until it was declassified in 1968. The word then finally came out about how the Navajo language was essential in defeating the Japanese and how this was the only oral military code that was never broken.
One important positive effect of the declassification of the project was a renewed interest in learning the Navajo language. Learning Navajo language, history, and culture is now required in all schools on the Navajo Nation.
In 1982, President Ronald Reagan declared August 14 National Code Talkers Day, a day still celebrated annually by the Navajo. In 2001, the First 29 were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by President George W. Bush, with four present to accept the honor.
Honor the Code Talkers at the Window Rock Tribal Park and Veterans Memorial in Window Rock, Arizona, where there is a sculpture of a Code Talker. You can also visit the New Mexico Veterans Memorial and the Navajo Code Talkers exhibit at the Gallup Cultural Center in Gallup, New Mexico.
There is a group working to create a Navajo Code Talkers museum, but they need to raise a great deal of money in order to reach their goal.
As of January 2024, three Navajo Code Talkers were still alive: Peter MacDonald, John Kinsel Sr., and Thomas H. Begay.
To the Navajo Code Talkers and their families, we say ahéhee’, thank you.
