CODE TALKER

'Code talkers', (also sometimes known as "Wind Talkers") were Native American Marines serving in the United States Armed Forces who primarily transmitted secret tactical messages. The Code Talkers transmitted these messages over military telephone or radio communications nets using formal or informally developed codes built upon their native languages. Simply put, codes can be broken, languages must be understood.
The name is strongly associated with bilingual Navajo speakers specially recruited, for the first time during World War II, by the U.S. Marines, under the Department of the Navy to serve in their standard communications units in the Pacific Theater. However the United States Army, under the Department of War, on a smaller scale also used Native American Indians to perform the same missions in both World War I and World War II.

Contents

Use of Navajo

Cryptographic properties

Other tribal languages

See also

References

External links

Use of Navajo

Philip Johnston proposed the use of Navajo to the United States Marine Corps. The idea was accepted, and the Navajo code was formally developed and centered on the Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet that uses agreed-upon English words to represent letters. For each English letter in the phonetic alphabet system the code talkers were asked to generate several nouns and sometimes verbs in Navajo using the principle of letter and word substitution. Concurrently it was envisioned that phonetically spelling out all military terms letter by letter into words in combat can be time consuming, so some terms, concepts, tactics and instruments of modern warfare were given uniquely formal descriptive nomenclatures in Navajo. As the war progressed the baseline codes nouns, verbs, and descriptive nomenclatures were added on and incorporated program wide, and in other instances informal short cut code words were devised for a particular campaign and not disseminated beyond the area of operation. To ensure a consistent use of code terminologies throughout the Pacific Theater, representative code talkers of each of the U.S. Marine divisions met in Hawaii to discuss shortcomings in the code, incorporate new terms into the system, and update their codebooks. These representatives in turn would train the other code talkers who could not attend the meeting.
For classroom purposes, a codebook was developed to teach the many relevant words and concepts to new initiates and was never to be taken into the field. The code talker was supposed to memorize all the English/Navajo and Navajo/English word associations in the codebook. To an ordinary Navajo speaker, the entire code talking "conversation" would have been quite incomprehensible because the nouns and verbs were not used in the contextual sequence of conveying meaning within a Navajo sentence structure. What the uninitiated would hear are truncated, unrelated and disjointed strings of individual unrelated nouns and verbs. The codetalkers memorized all these variations and practiced their rapid use under stressful conditions.
The Navajo code talkers were also deployed in the Korean War; the use of code talkers ended shortly into the Vietnam War.^[1]
The movie ''Windtalkers'' is based on the Navajo codetalkers who are enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in World War II. These codetalkers are nicknamed the "windtalkers" who are deployed to front-line areas in the Pacific, to use their language as a code which is impossible to crack.

Cryptographic properties

Native American languages were chosen for several reasons. Most importantly, speakers of these languages were only found inside the United States — the languages were virtually unknown elsewhere. Adolf Hitler knew about the successful use of code talkers during World War I and sent a team of some thirty anthropologists to learn Native American languages before the outbreak of World War II. However, it proved too difficult to learn all the many languages and dialects that existed. Because of Nazi German anthropologists' attempts to learn the languages, the U.S. Army did not implement a code talker program in the European Theater. Also the U.S. Department of War issued a memorandum not to create separate Native American units but to integrate Native Americans in standard U.S. Army units in accordance with standard recruitment procedures (Meadows).
The Navajo spoken code is not very complex by cryptographic standards and would likely have been broken if a native speaker and trained cryptographers worked together effectively. The Japanese had an opportunity to attempt this when they captured Joe Kieyoomia in the Philippines in 1942 during the Bataan Death March. Kieyoomia, a Navajo Sergeant in the U.S. Army, was ordered to interpret the radio messages later in the war. However, since Kieyoomia had not participated in the code training, the messages made no sense to him. When he reported that he could not understand the messages, his captors tortured him. Given the simplicity of the alphabet code involved, it is probable that the code could have been broken easily if Kieyoomia's knowledge of the language had been exploited more effectively by Japanese cryptographers.
The Japanese Imperial Army and Navy never cracked the spoken code, and high ranking military officers have stated that the United States would never have won the Battle of Iwo Jima without the secrecy afforded by the code talkers. The code talkers received no recognition until the declassification of the operation in 1968. In 1982, the code talkers were given a Certificate of Recognition by President Ronald Reagan, who also named August 14 "National Code Talkers Day."
Native American languages were used informally for military communications in both the European Theater of Operations and Pacific Theater of Operations. In these instances, two-man communications teams composed of members of the same tribe were formed on an ad hoc basis by a figure of authority to address immediate tactical needs. They primarily used their native languages in unencoded conversational exchanges of transmitted military communications. These teams were not officially documented, but their stories reside in the oral histories of Native American veterans of World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam.
An unfamiliar spoken human language is harder to crack than a code based on a familiar language. The languages chosen had no written literature, so researching them was impossible. Also, many grammatical structures in these languages are quite different from any the enemies would be expected to know, adding another layer of incomprehensibility. Non-speakers would find it extremely difficult to accurately distinguish unfamiliar sounds used in these languages. Additionally, a speaker who used the language all his life sounds distinctly different from a person who learned it in adulthood, thus reducing the chance of successful impostors sending false messages. Finally, the additional layer of an alphabet cypher was added to prevent interception by native speakers not trained as code talkers, in the event of their capture by the Japanese. A similar system employing Welsh was used by British forces, but not to any great extent.

Other tribal languages

The US Army in Europe used Comanche code talkers in Europe during World War II such as Charles Chibitty. Near the end of World War I the US Army used Choctaw code talkers.^[2]

See also

★ Native Americans and World War II

★ Navajo Nation

★ Navajo people

★ Navajo tribe

★ Southern Athabaskan languages

★ Choctaw code talkers of World War I

References

1. Navajo Code Talkers, pages 9-12 Retrieved on March 2, 2007
2. ''Choctaw Codetalkers of WW I'' [1]


★ Aaseng, Nathan. ''Navajo Code Talkers: America’s Secret Weapon in World War II.'' New York: Walker & Company, 1992.

★ Durrett, Deanne. ''Unsung Heroes of World War II: The Story of the Navajo Code Talkers.'' Library of American Indian History, Facts on File, Inc., 1998.

★ McClain, Salley. ''Navajo Weapon: The Navajo Code Talkers.'' Tucson, Arizona: Rio Nuevo Publishers, 2001.

★ Meadows, William C. ''The Comanche Code Talkers of World War II.'' Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002.

★ David Kahn, "The Codebreakers - The Story of Secret Writing", 1967. ISBN 0-684-83130-9

External links

★ 'Samuel Tom Holiday - 4th Marine Division - 25th Regiment - H & S Company'

★ 'Origins of the Navajo Code Talkers'

★ Dept. of Navy 'Navajo Code Talkers' Dictionary'

★ Dept. of Navy 'Navajo Code Talkers: World War II fact Sheet'

★ Northern Arizona University Special Collections, regarding Navajo Codetalkers

★ Teaching with Documents: Memorandum Regarding the Enlistment of Navajo Indians. U.S. National Archives.

★ "Semper Fidelis, Code Talkers," U.S National Archives. Prologue Magazine: Winter 2001, Vol. 33, No. 4

★ Smithsonian Institution: American Indian Codetalkers

★ Native Americans in the U.S. Army

★ U.S. Sen. Bingaman: Navajo code talkers page

★ The Navajo Code Talkers: Code Talkers (Part of the Story)

★ How Effective Was Navajo Code? "One Former Captive Knows" Captured Navajo

★ Hopi Code Talker

★ Code Talkers Exhibit, Burger King, Kayenta, Navajo Nation

★ Windtalker

★ Navajo Code Talkers Association

★ Code Talkers roll of honour and images