NAVAJO CODE TALKERS

On the night of 26 October 1918 two WWI companies of the Army’s 142^nd Infantry became trapped near Chufilly, France.  To affect their withdrawal in the face of German radio code breaking prowess, the Army turned to several officers who were members of the Choctaw nation.  These radioed instructions to the beleaguered companies in their native language.  The withdrawal went unusually smoothly, prompting Army officials to investigate the regular use of Native American languages for secure tactical transmissions.  The idea was abandoned however, after realizing that no such dialect contained words for modern military innovations like “machine gun” or “tank.”

Decades later, after Pearl Harbor, Marine Corps MGEN Clayton B. Vogel, Commanding General, Amphibious Forces, Pacific Fleet, rekindled interest in Native American tongues.  The Comanche, Sioux, Chippewa, and Pima-Papago languages were all considered, however on February 28^th, 1942, four volunteers from the Navajo reservation near Flagstaff, Arizona, were brought to MCB Camp Elliot (modern NAS Miramar) for an experiment.  These four successfully translated, sent, and received five simple telephone messages between adjoining rooms.  Vogel was impressed enough to call for the recruitment of a cadre of Navajos, and on this day, the “First 29” reported for boot camp to MCB San Diego (modern MCRD).  None dropped out, and after graduation these 29 were whisked away to top secret quarters at Camp Elliot.  Here, they worked for weeks to devise standard Navajo language substitutions for non-Navajo military concepts.  “Submarine” became “iron fish,” “grenade” became “potato,” and “sailor” became “white cap.”  In practice this system evolved to a code-within-a-code that, in final form, sounded unintelligible even to an uninformed Navajo.  For example the message, “Request artillery and tank fire at 123B, Company E move 50 yards left flank of Company D” would have been transmitted by the code talkers as, “Ask for many big guns and tortoise fire at 123 bear tail drop Mexican ear mouse owl victor elk 50 yards left flank ocean fish Mexican deer.”

The Navajo code talkers served in every Pacific campaign from Guadalcanal to Okinawa.  They were uniquely Marine (the Army dismissed a similar idea early in WWII) though they also served on US Navy ships supporting amphibious operations.  Indeed, on more than one occasion they were challenged by overzealous fellow Marines who mistook them and their language for enemy infiltrators.  Despite nearly four years of continuous use, there’s is the only battlefield code in Western military history that was not broken by the enemy.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History” 10 MAY 22

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

McClain S.  Navajo Weapon.  Boulder, CO: Books Beyond Borders, Inc., 1994.

Molnar, Alexander, Jr.  “Navajo Code Talkers:  World War II Fact Sheet.”  AT:  www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq61-2.htm, 11 April 2007.

“Navajo Code Talker’s Dictionary.”  AT: www.history.navy.mil/faqs/ faq61-4.htm, 11 April 2007.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  The Navajo language proved ideal for this purpose.  Like many Native American languages, it is completely oral, with no written alphabet or characterizations.  Fluency in Navajo can only be gained through having been raised in the Navajo culture, (whites conversant in Navajo speak only a “pidgin” form of the language). 

There were 380 known code talkers who served in the Marines in WWII.  Ten were killed in action and one spent three years as a prisoner of the Japanese.  For a quarter century after the war their work remained strictly classified.  It was the Reagan administration that finally acknowledged their contribution publicly when 14 August 1982 was declared National Navajo Code Talkers Day.  The encoding dictionary developed during WWII has been declassified, below are several more interesting items:

English word        Navajo Code equivalent

aircraft carrier       bird carrier

destroyer              shark

battleship              whale

cruiser                  small whale

PT boat                 mosquito

Brigadier General one star

Colonel                 silver eagle

dive bomber          chicken hawk

fighter plane          hummingbird

Coast Guard          shore runner

Australia               rolled hat

India                     white clothes

China                   braided hair

America                our mother

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