On this date… 14 August 1982
National Navajo Code Talkers Day
It’s the only US military “code” that has never been broken in war. It’s ironic that Navajo was chosen since, before the outbreak of WWII, many Native students had been forced to attend government and parochial schools which did not allow them to speak their mother tongue, often living in harsh conditions and suffering through severe forms of assimilation and punishment in an attempt to “Americanize” them. When the war broke out, the Navajo, or Diné, population numbered about 50,000, many of whom could not speak the language. While the population has risen to more than 350,000 as of 2017, with more than 170,000 speakers, those numbers are again on the decline. Yet without Navajo spoken during the war, it’s likely that WWII would have lasted longer and cost more lives. It was on this date, 14 August 1982, that President Ronald Reagan proclaimed National Navajo Code Talkers Day to honor all the contributions of the Native Americans – including, but not limited to, Cherokee, Choctaw, Comanche, Chippewa, Creek, and Sioux – who aided in the war effort.
Years before, in World War I, the US military used the Choctaw language to transmit secret tactical messages. After the war, both Germany and Japan sent students to the US to study Native American languages and cultures, thereby threatening the secrecy of the military codes. But then top military brass became aware of the complexity of Navajo.
According to many linguists, Navajo is the most complex language to learn. It has a complicated, irregular grammar (like the English verb, “to be”, which becomes I am, you are, he/she is, etc.) is tonal (like Chinese), and requires a level of familiarity with Navajo customs to fully understand the language. It probably also has a word that means “to throw out a window,” but it’s likely hard to say. It’s nearly impossible for someone not born into the language and culture to learn it. Which made it the perfect “code” to use in war.
Despite being wary of using another Native language, in early 1942 the Marine Corps allowed a pilot program to recruit 30 Navajo speakers (later 29 after one dropped out) to develop the code for use in the Pacific theater of the war. The speakers first assigned a Navajo word to each English letter, and further developed it by creating special words for planes, ships and weapons, which didn’t exist in Navajo. For example, the names of different birds were used to stand for different kinds of planes.
The initial phase was so successful that the Marines expanded the program, which eventually included more than 460 Native Code Talkers who were used in every major operation involving the Marines in the Pacific theater. The lexicon consisted of more than 400 words, spelled phonetically and memorized, elminitating the need for a codebook, saving vital time. The “code” gave important information, including the locations of the Japanese military and US soldiers, where to position artillery, and other wartime communication. The Code Talkers translated their information, sent, and re-translated their coded messages in two and a half minutes. By comparison, had a traditional code been sent from English, it would have taken at least 30 minutes, sometimes up to three hours, to relay the same information, essential time soldiers in combat didn’t have.
Upon the end of the war, the Code Talkers returned home but were forbidden from talking about their roles because it was classified. The program was only declassified in 1968, and it wasn’t until 1982 when Reagan gave the Code Talkers a Certificate of Recognition and declared 14 August Navajo Code Talkers Day. In 2000 President Bill Clinton signed a bill awarding Congressional Gold Medals to the original 29 Code Talkers, which President George W Bush presented to the four surviving Code Talkers in July 2001.
To learn more, read Navajo Code Talkers by Nathan Aaseng or Unsung Heroes of World War II: The Story of the Navajo Code Talkers by Deanne Durrett. Or watch the documentaries Navajo Code Talkers: The Epic Story directed by Allan Silliphant or True Whispers: The Story of the Navajo Code Talkers written and directed by Valerie Red-Horse, amongst many others.