The Unbreakable Code: After the War

The Code Talkers had not been nationally recognized until 1969, when the 4th Marine Division Association held its reunion in Chicago. At that time a group of Code Talkers was invited to the reunion and presented with a medallion specially minted in commemoration of their services. In 1971 President Nixon presented them with a certificate of appreciation on behalf of the nation. He thanked them for their patriotism, resourcefulness, and courage. August 14, 1982 was declared National Code Talkers Day by President Reagan, who issued a proclamation of tribute to all members of the Navajo Nation who gave their special talents and their lives so that others might live.

Dan Rather interviewed the oldest Code Talker, Carl Gorman, at his home in 1997, and after the interview said the American way of life might not have survived if it were not for their service. Ninety-year-old Gorman's closing statement reflected the true heart of a Marine when he said, "Old Marines never die. They just go to hell and regroup."

The Navajos today:
Edward S. Curtis was a photographer whose pictures of Native Americans are in museums and private collections across the country. One of the most famous of these, "The  Vanishing Race," was taken in 1904 and is supposed to show the Indians passing into the darkness of an unknown future, stripped of their tribal strength and culture.

The Navajos did not vanish into the darkness, however. Today they are the largest Native American tribe in the United States with a population of over 200,000, and their rich culture is alive and well. They lived through the Spaniards, the Mexicans, the Utes, white settlers, slave traders, the U.S. Army, Kit Carson, GeneralCarleton, the Long Walk, Bosque Redondo, livestock reduction, and boarding school. Many native nations have disappeared, swallowed up into the Anglo world. The Dineh, however, remain distinctly themselves. They have survived.

From the Night Chant

In Beauty (happily) I walk.
With Beauty before me I walk.
With Beauty behind me I walk.
With Beauty above me I walk.
With Beauty all around me I walk.
It is finished in Beauty.

The Unbreakable Code: The Battle for the Pacific

After the shock of Pearl Harbor and the capitulation of Hong Kong, the Phillipines, Singapore, and Corregidor, the United States forces recovered enough to start the advance, island by island, toward Japan. As each island was secured it was used for storing supplies and equipment and, sometimes, an airstrip was built for bombers and fighter planes. Soon the war in the South Pacific became an exercise in island hopping. Communication between them was vital. Headquarters needed to know exactly what opposition they were meeting and when reinforcements would be needed.

The dark-skinned, black haired Navajos soon became a familiar sight at Marine command posts throughout the Pacific combat zone as they huddled over radio sets sending and translating messages into a conglomeration of the Navajo language, American slang, and military terminology. From the twenty-nine Code Talkers at the beginning of the war the number had increased to 420 by the end. The Japanese never broke the code as the Navajos relayed operational orders with a secrecy that enabled the United States to advance from the Solomons to Okinawa.

Control of Iwo Jima was vital to both the United States and Japan. The Japanese leadership knew that the loss of Iwo Jima would be followed by Okinawa's fall and the invasion of the mainland. Their orders were to defend the island at all costs. The first Code Talkers came ashore in the second wave, and six Navajo nets worked around the clock for 48 hours. Their commander reported that in that period alone they sent and received 800 messages without an error. Iwo Jima was one of the bloodiest battles in the Pacific. Six-thousand eight-hundred Americans lost their lives during the 36-day battle. Three of these were Code Talkers. One officer reported the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima were it not for the Code Talkers.

Next: A Valuable Weapon

The Unbreakable Code: Testing the Code

The Code Talker could switch from using the code words to spelling the word from the alphabet, which had at least three terms for the most frequently used letters of the English alphabet. To do this the Talker would use A, B, C to let his counterpart know he was going to spell the word out instead of using the word itself. Example: the word "abandon" is ye-tsan (run away from), but spelled out it would be Apple (be-la-sana) Badger (na-hash-chid) Ant (wol-la-chee) Nose (a-chin) Deer (be) Owl (ne-ahs-jah) Needle (tsah). Note the use of two different words for A and N so as not to establish a pattern for the Japanese code-breakers to study. One of the Anglo marines who worked with the Code Talkers said the Navajo code was American double-talk mixed with a sound like water from a jug being poured into a bathtub.

After the alphabet and code words were complete, the memory work began. This was the easiest part of the requirements since in Navajo everything is in memory. The songs and prayers and everything else was in the oral tradition.

They tested and retested their coding and decoding skills in the classroom, sending such messages as "Landing wave on beach but loss is high." They started out with messages of a few words and rapidly worked their way up to longer ones. During field trials they were amazed at how well it worked. The messages came out word for word on the other end, including semi-colons, commas, periods, and question marks. When the field trials had ended the received message matched the sent message to the letter.

The code proved to be fast and accurate, but unbreakable? United States Intelligence put it to the test. During the field trials the code was transmitted over radio and picked up by them. They worked on it for three weeks, but could discern no repetition or sequences or pattern. U.S. Intelligence could not break it.

While at Camp Elliot the Navajos received training for general Signal Corps: Morse code, panel codes, signal flags, field telephones and radio (operation and mechanics). They also received combat training. The pilot program was an unqualified success, leading to a recommendation that another 200 Navajos with the proper qualifications be recruited to continue the program. These twenty-nine members of the first class, however, were assigned to various units of the 1st Marine Amphibious Corps and 2nd Marine Division Communications Personnel and shipped out to the Pacific Theater as soon as possible.

Next: The Battle for the Pacific

The Unbreakable Code: Developing the Code

By the end of the first day they had devised the alphabet. They repeated it until it was committed to memory, and fell asleep repeating it to themselves. They had to come up with words in English that had Navajo counterparts. Most letters had two or three words, such as ant, apple, and axe for A, badger, bear, and barrel for B, and so on. Only V, W, X, and Z had one word only. The word for W is weasel and the Navajo word for weasel is gloe-ih.

After the alphabet they created 211 Navajo words to substitute for military terms that were nonexistent in Navajo.
Commanding General=War Chief
Major General=2 Star

Organizations were more difficult, so they substituted Navajo clan names for many of them.
Division=Salt
Battalion=Red Soil

Substitute words for aircraft were much easier. Birds seen on the reservation prvovided easy to remember substitutes.
Dive Bomber=chicken hawk
Fighter Plane=humming bird

Navajo names of fish and water mammals were chosen for ships.
Battleship=whale
Mine sweeper=beaver

Terms frequently used in battle needed Navajo synonyms.
Confidential=kept secret
Conquered=won

Some substitutes were chosen for shape or resemblance.
Bombs=eggs
Grenades=potatoes

Countries took on names with special meanings to the Navajos.
America=Our Mother (loved this one)
Japan=Slant Eye

Because the Navajo did not measure time as the Americans and Europeans did, their language had no terms for months of the year. They chose words that described the season or the events that took place at that time of year.
March=Squeaky Voice
April=Small Plant
May=Big Plant

The Navajo words cannot be pronounced as they are written. The English alphabet alone cannot produce the pronunciation or the true meaning. Many accent and phonetic marks are needed to represent the tone and pitch of each syllable and the gutteral sounds so unfamiliar to the non-Navajo. Even a Navajo would need to know which dialect was being used. 

Next: How the Code Was Used

Unbreakable Code: The Testing Begins

Sorry about the gap between posts. I've been at Killer Nashville since last Wednesday. More about that when I finish up with the Code Talkers.


On February 27, 1942, Johnston arrived at Camp Elliott with four Navajos. He considered fluency in this difficult language impossible for anyone who did not grow up speaking it. His plan,therefore, was to recruit not only those men whose first language was Navajo, but who also possessed a fluency in English as well. On the day of the test, Colonel Jones, who had installed a field telephone in the headquarters building and invited General Vogel and his staff to attend, handed the Navajos six messages similar to those used in military operations and gave them an hour to practice. The men used this time to choose Navajo words to substitute for military terms such as dive-bombing and anti-tank gun.

The testing began. A member of the general's staff would write a message and hand it to one of the Navajos, who translated it into his language and relayed it over the field telephone to a Navajo in another room. This man, in turn, would translate it back into English and prepare a written message. Fifteen minutes later General Vogel inspected the translated messages, and the accuracy convinced him that the Navajo language could be used for code purposes. On March 6 he sent the results of the demonstration and Johnston's proposal to the Marine Commandant in Washington, D.C. "The demonstration was interesting and successful," he wrote in the accompanying letter. "Messages were transmitted and received almost verbatim." He also requested the recruitment of 200 Navajos.

Next: Permission Granted

The Unbreakable Code: Navajo Belief About Death

One Navajo belief that has caused many difficulties for them in their dealings with outsiders over time is their fear of death. This was especially true of the Navajos who fought in America's wars of the 20th Century. They are not afraid of dying, but want no part of anything that has already died. The Navajo faith teaches that people are not totally extinguished at their deaths. Unlike Christianity, however, the traditional Navajo religion did not assign the souls of the dead to an afterlife in another world. Traditional Navajos believed that the evil part of a dead creature or person lingered on Earth. The chindi, as these spirits were called, returned to the place where the person had died to terrorize the living. Chindi were to be avoided at all costs. Once a person was dead, his or her name was not to be mentioned again, even if the dead person was a loved one.

If a person died in their hogan, the body had to be taken out through a hole in the northern wall, since north is the direction of evil to a Navajo. The hogan was either burned to the ground or abandoned and allowed to fall in on itself. One of the greatest favors a belegana (white person) could offer to Navajos was to bury their dead relatives for them. Burial was an ominous task, and elaborate ritual precautions had to be taken to protect those who had to perform it.In the Pacific war, Navajo Code Talkers were surrounded by chindi. They lived among death and slept among death. They had to pull bodies of dying and dead comrades out of vine-choked ditches and slimy rivers; they huddled in fox holes all night long while dead enemies lay in the darkness around them.

Next: Troubles with the US government

The Unbreakable Code: The Female Principle

Even during the Nineteenth Century the Navajo treatment of their women was strikingly different from that of most other tribes. This equality was close to the women's rights doctrine of today. The marriage ceremony was simply eating a meal together, and divorce was just as easy. The goods were divided equally with the children going with the mother. Free love went along with women's rights. None of the women were chaste, and venereal disease was always a problem.

A Navajo man would never make a bargain without consulting his wife or wives, and they never struck their women. Because of being treated well, Navajo women were better looking than the average women of other tribes, and consequently were coveted by the slave traders. Their main deity is a woman, who assists the Navajo after death to fight his way through the evil spirits and get across the great water barrier to the other side. She will not do this unless they have treated their women well.

Next: How the Navajo death beliefs affected the Code Talkers during the WWII.

The Unbreakable Code Part 1

A few years back I started reading Tony Hillerman's mystery novels set on the Navajo reservation and became fascinated with the Navajo culture. I started doing research of my own on them and came across the story of the Code Talkers assigned to the Marines in the Pacific. This is such an intriguing story I wanted to share it with others, but I'll have to do this in several posts. First, a little background.

Julius Caesar said, "I came, I saw, I conquered." His descendants and their kin, not wishing to be outdone by their famous ancestor, did likewise in the New World. They came. They saw. They took. They came, those restless Europeans, some searching for riches, others yearning for a better life than the one they left across the sea. Some fled religious persecution that ravaged the European continent. Still others came to escape the gallows. They came, for whatever reason. They saw a vast and beautiful land with room for all, it would seem, who had the tenacity and the grit to tame it. And then they took and took and took.

American for the Americans, from sea to shining sea. That was the belief in the middle of the Nineteenth Century as the United States geared up for its push to expand westward. Newspapers and politicians touted Manifest Destiny, the notion that the Americans were divinely sanctioned to cover the continent with their own brand of enlightenment. Americans were the chosen, ordained by God to extend the national boundaries from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Canada to Mexico, and that's what they set out to do. However, there was a problem. Someone was already here, and they didn't go gently into the night.

The Navajos were one of the many native nations that lived in the southwestern section of the continent. They were primarily located in northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southern Utah. The Navajos and their linguistic cousins, the Apaches, arrived in the Southwest sometime in the mid-fourteenth century. The traditional homeland area of the Dineh, meaning "the people," which is the name Navajos use to refer to themselves, is at the Gobernador and Largo tributaries of the San Juan River seventy miles west of Santa Fe. The earliest Navajos were organized into small groups with a headman whose job was to lead the people to find food and water.

Next: The arrival of the Spanish.