Code talker

Choctaw soldiers in training in World War I for coded radio and telephone transmissions

Code talkers are people in the 20th century who used obscure languages as a means of secret communication during wartime. The term is now usually associated with the United States service members during the world wars who used their knowledge of Native American languages as a basis to transmit coded messages. In particular, there were approximately 400–500 Native Americans in the United States Marine Corps whose primary job was the transmission of secret tactical messages. Code talkers transmitted these messages over military telephone or radio communications nets using formal or informally developed codes built upon their native languages. Their service improved the speed of encryption of communications at both ends in front line operations during World War II.

The name code talkers is strongly associated with bilingual Navajo speakers specially recruited during World War II by the Marines to serve in their standard communications units in the Pacific Theater. Code talking, however, was pioneered by the Cherokee and Choctaw peoples during World War I.

Other Native American code talkers were deployed by the United States Army during World War II, including Lakota,[1] Meskwaki, and Comanche soldiers; they saw service in the Pacific, North African, and European theaters.

Soldiers of Basque ancestry may have also been used for code talking by the U.S. Marines during World War II in areas where other Basque speakers were not expected to be operating. Recent research has cast doubt on this, however.

Assiniboine code talkers

Members of the Assiniboine served as code talkers during World War II, utilizing the Assiniboine language to encrypt communications.[2] The code talkers included Gilbert Horn Sr., who grew up in the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation of Montana and later became a tribal judge and politician.[2]

Basque code talkers

In November 1952, Euzko Deya magazine [3] reported that in May 1942, upon meeting about 60 U.S. Marines of Basque ancestry in a San Francisco camp, Captain Frank D. Carranza conceived the idea of using the Basque language for codes.[4][5][6] His superiors were wary as there were known settlements of Basque in the Pacific region. There were 35 Basque Jesuits in Hiroshima, led by Pedro Arrupe. In China and the Philippines, there was a colony of Basque jai alai players, and there were Basque supporters of Falange in Asia. The American Basque code talkers were kept away from these theaters; they were initially used in tests and in transmitting logistic information for Hawaii and Australia.

According to Euzko Deya, on August 1, 1942, Lieutenants Nemesio Aguirre, Fernández Bakaicoa and Juanana received a Basque-coded message from San Diego for Admiral Chester Nimitz, warning him of the upcoming Operation Apple to remove the Japanese from the Solomon Islands. They also translated the start date, August 7, for the attack on Guadalcanal. As the war extended over the Pacific, there was a shortage of Basque speakers and the U.S. military came to prefer the parallel program based on the use of Navajo speakers.

In 2017, Pedro Oiarzabal and Guillermo Tabernilla published a study [7] refuting Euzko Deya's article.[8] According to Oiarzabal and Tabernilla, they could not find Carranza, Aguirre, Fernández Bakaicoa or Juanana in the NARA or U.S. Army archives. They find a small number of U.S. Marines with Basque surnames, none of them in transmissions. They suggest that Carranza's story was an OSS operation to raise sympathy for the U.S. intelligence among Basque nationalists.

Cherokee code talkers

The first known use of Native Americans in the American military to transmit messages under fire was a group of Cherokee troops used by the American 30th Infantry Division serving alongside the British during the Second Battle of the Somme in World War I. According to the Division Signal Officer, this took place in September 1918. Their unit was under British command at the time.[9][10]

Choctaw code talkers

During World War I, company commander Captain Lawrence of the U.S. Army overheard Solomon Louis and Mitchell Bobb conversing in the Choctaw language. He found eight Choctaw men in the battalion.[11] Eventually, fourteen Choctaw men in the Army's 36th Infantry Division trained to use their language in code. They helped the American Expeditionary Forces win several key battles in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in France, during the final large German push of the war. Within 24 hours of the Choctaw language being pressed into service, the tide of the battle had turned. In less than 72 hours, the Germans were retreating and the Allies were in full attack.[11]

Comanche code talkers

Comanche code talkers of the 4th Signal Company

German authorities knew about the use of code talkers during World War I, and sent a team of some thirty anthropologists to the United States to learn Native American languages before the outbreak of World War II,[12] but the task proved too difficult because of the array of languages and dialects; nonetheless the U.S. Army, learning of the Nazi effort, did not implement a large-scale code talker program in the European Theater.

Fourteen Comanche code talkers did take part in the Invasion of Normandy, and continued to serve in the 4th Infantry Division in Europe.[13] Comanche of the 4th Signal Company compiled a vocabulary of over 100 code terms using words or phrases in their own language. Using a substitution method similar to the Navajo, the Comanche code word for tank was "turtle", bomber was "pregnant airplane", machine gun was "sewing machine" and Adolf Hitler was referred to as "crazy white man".[14] Two Comanche code-talkers were assigned to each regiment, the rest to 4th Infantry Division headquarters. Shortly after landing on Utah Beach on June 6, 1944, the Comanche began transmitting messages. Some were wounded but none killed.[14]

In 1989, the French government awarded the Comanche code-talkers the Chevalier of the National Order of Merit. On November 30, 1999, the United States Department of Defense presented Charles Chibitty with the Knowlton Award.[14][15]

Cree code talkers

In the World War II, native Cree speakers were used as code talkers for the Canadian Armed Forces. Due to oaths of secrecy, and official classification through 1963, the role of Cree speakers has gone unacknowledged by the Canadian government.[16] A 2015 documentary, Cree Code Talkers, tells the story of one such Métis individual, Charles "Checker" Tomkins, who died in 2003.[17]

Meskwaki code talkers

Meskwaki men used their language against the Germans while fighting in the U.S. Army in North Africa. 27 out of then 168 Meskwaki in Iowa enlisted in the U.S. Army together in January 1941.[18]

Navajo code talkers, Saipan, June 1944

Philip Johnston, a civil engineer for the city of Los Angeles,[19] proposed the use of Navajo to the United States Marine Corps at the beginning of World War II. Johnston, a World War I veteran, was raised on the Navajo reservation as the son of a missionary to the Navajo. He was one of the few non-Navajo who spoke the language fluently. Some Marines wondered whether the Navajo, who had been treated poorly by the US government, would want to fight for the U.S. But the Navajo dutifully enlisted shortly after Pearl Harbor and were eager to contribute to the war effort. "What happened to the Navajo were social conflicts," Navajo Code Talker Albert Smith said. "But this conflict involved Mother Earth being dominated by foreign countries. It was our responsibility to defend her."[20]

Because Navajo has a complex grammar, it is not nearly mutually intelligible enough with even its closest relatives within the Na-Dene family to provide meaningful information. It was still an unwritten language, and Johnston thought Navajo could satisfy the military requirement for an undecipherable code. Navajo was spoken only on the Navajo lands of the American Southwest. Its syntax and tonal qualities, not to mention dialects, made it unintelligible to anyone without extensive exposure and training. One estimate indicates that at the outbreak of World War II, fewer than 30 non-Navajo could understand the language.[21]

Early in 1942, Johnston met with Major General Clayton B. Vogel, the commanding general of Amphibious Corps, Pacific Fleet, and his staff. Johnston staged tests under simulated combat conditions which demonstrated that Navajo men could encode, transmit, and decode a three-line English message in 20 seconds, versus the 30 minutes required by machines at that time. The idea was accepted, with Vogel recommending that the Marines recruit 200 Navajo. The first 29 Navajo recruits attended boot camp in May 1942. This first group created the Navajo code at Camp Pendleton, Oceanside, California.[22]

The Navajo code was formally developed and modeled on the Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet that uses agreed-upon English words to represent letters. The Navajo Code Talkers were mainly Marines. As it was determined that phonetically spelling out all military terms letter by letter into words—while in combat—would be too time-consuming, some terms, concepts, tactics and instruments of modern warfare were given uniquely formal descriptive nomenclatures in Navajo (for example, the word for "shark" being used to refer to a destroyer, or "silver oak leaf" to the rank of lieutenant colonel).[23]

A codebook was developed to teach the many relevant words and concepts to new initiates. The text was for classroom purposes only, and was never to be taken into the field. The code talkers memorized all these variations and practiced their rapid use under stressful conditions during training. Uninitiated Navajo speakers would have no idea what the code talkers' messages meant; they would hear only truncated and disjointed strings of individual, unrelated nouns and verbs.

Code Talkers Monument Ocala, Florida Memorial Park

The Navajo code talkers were commended for the skill, speed, and accuracy they demonstrated throughout the war. At the Battle of Iwo Jima, Major Howard Connor, 5th Marine Division signal officer, had six Navajo code talkers working around the clock during the first two days of the battle. These six sent and received over 800 messages, all without error. Connor later stated, "Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima."[22]

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 trained other code talkers who could not attend the meeting. As the war progressed, additional code words were added and incorporated program-wide. In other instances, informal shortcut code words were devised for a particular campaign and not disseminated beyond the area of operation. Examples of code words include the Navajo word for buzzard, jeeshóóʼ, which was used for bomber, while the code word used for submarine, béésh łóóʼ, meant iron fish in Navajo.[24] The last of the original 29 Navajo code talkers who developed the code, Chester Nez, died on June 4, 2014.[25]

The deployment of the Navajo code talkers continued through the Korean War and after, until it was ended early in the Vietnam War. The Navajo code is the only spoken military code never to have been deciphered.[23]

Nubian code talkers

In the 1973 Arab–Israeli War, Egypt employed Nubian-speaking Nubian people as codetalkers.[26][27][28][29][30]

Seminole code talkers

The last surviving Seminole code talker, Edmond Harjo of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, died on March 31, 2014, at the age of 96.[31][32] Harjo had served as far afield as Normandy and the Battle of Iwo Jima during the war.[32] His biography was recounted by Speaker of the United States House of Representatives John Boehner at the Congressional Gold Medal ceremony honoring Harjo and other code talkers at the U.S. Capitol on November 20, 2013.[31][32][33]

Welsh code talkers

A system employing Welsh was used by British forces, but not to any great extent during World War II. The Royal Air Force had a plan in 1942 to use Welsh for secret communications during World War II, but the plan was not implemented.[34] Welsh was used more recently in the Yugoslav Wars for non-vital messages.[35]

Wenzhou code talkers

China used Wenzhounese speaking people as code talkers during the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War.[36][37]

Cryptographic properties

Non-speakers would find it extremely difficult to accurately distinguish unfamiliar sounds used in these languages. Additionally, a speaker who has acquired a language during their childhood sounds distinctly different from a person who acquired the same language in later life, thus reducing the chance of successful impostors sending false messages.

Navajo was an attractive choice for code use because few people outside the Navajo had learned to speak the language. Virtually no books in Navajo had been published. Outside of the language, the Navajo spoken code was not very complex by cryptographic standards. It would likely have been broken if a native speaker and trained cryptographers could have 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, but not a code talker, 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.[38] The Japanese Imperial Army and Navy never cracked the spoken code.

Post-war recognition

The Navajo code talkers received no recognition until the declassification of the operation in 1968.[39] In 1982, the code talkers were given a Certificate of Recognition by U.S. President Ronald Reagan, who also named August 14, 1982, as "Navajo Code Talkers Day".[40][41]

On December 21, 2000, the U.S. Congress passed, and President Bill Clinton signed, Public Law 106-554, 114 Statute 2763, which awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to the original 29 World War II Navajo code talkers and Silver Medals to each person who qualified as a Navajo code talker (approximately 300). In July 2001, U.S. President George W. Bush personally presented the Medal to four surviving original code talkers (the fifth living original code talker was not able to attend) at a ceremony held in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C. Gold Medals were presented to the families of the deceased 24 original code talkers.[42][43]

On September 17, 2007, eighteen Choctaw code talkers were posthumously awarded the Texas Medal of Valor from the Adjutant General of the State of Texas for their World War II service.[44]

On November 15, 2008, The Code Talkers Recognition Act of 2008 (Public Law 110-420), was signed into law by President George W. Bush, which recognizes every Native American code talker who served in the United States military during WWI or WWII (with the exception of the already-awarded Navajo) with a Congressional Gold Medal, designed as distinct for each tribe, with silver duplicates awarded to the individual code talkers or their next-of-kin.[45] As of 2013, 33 tribes have been identified and were honored at a ceremony at Emancipation Hall at the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center. One surviving code talker was present, Edmond Harjo.[46]

On November 27, 2017, three Navajo code talkers, along with the president of the Navajo Nation, Russell Begaye, appeared with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office in an official White House ceremony to "pay tribute to the contributions of the young Native Americans recruited by the United States military to create top-secret coded messages used to communicate during [World War II] battles."[47] The executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, Jacqueline Pata, noted that Native Americans have "a very high level of participation in the military and veterans' service." A statement by a Navajo Nation Council Delegate and comments by Pata and Begaye, among others, objected to Trump's remarks during the event, including his use "once again" of the "word Pocahontas in a negative way towards a political adversary."[48][47][49] The National Congress of American Indians objected to Trump's use of the name of an historical Native American figure as a derogatory term.[50]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ "Last Lakota code talker Clarence Wolf Guts dies at 86", Rapid City Journal (Rapid City, SD), 18 June 2010.
  2. 1 2 Murray, David (2016-03-29). "Decorated war hero, code talker Gilbert Horn Sr. dies". Great Falls Tribune. Retrieved 2016-04-24.
  3. ↑ En Euzkera se dio la orden del desembarco de Guadalcanal, Ramón de Arrieta, Euzko Deya. La Voz de los Vascos en México 149 (November 1952), page 22, México D.F.
  4. ↑ "Egon arretaz egunari", Xabier G. Argüello, El País, August 1, 2004.
  5. ↑ La orden de desembarco en Guadalcanal se dió en vascuence para que no lo descubrieran los nipones, Juan Hernani, El Diario Vasco, December 26, 1952, it quotes Revista general de marina. Bibliographic reference in Euskomedia.org. Based on Criptografía, Revista General de Marina, 143 (November 1952), pages 551–552. Ministerio de Marina, Madrid
  6. ↑ Mikel Rodríguez. "Gaiak - Los vascos y la II Guerra Mundial". euskonews.com.
  7. ↑ Pedro J. Oiarzabal and Guillermo Tabernilla (2017). "El enigma del mito y la historia: Basque Code Talkers en la Segunda Guerra Mundial'". Saibigain.
  8. ↑ (in Spanish) Un estudio desmiente que el euskera se usara en código en la Segunda Guerra Mundial, Jesús J. Hernández, 25 June 2017, El Correo.
  9. ↑ Stanley, Captain John W. Personal Experience of a Battalion Commander and Brigade Signal Officer, 105th Field Signal Battalion in the Somme Offensive, September 29 – October 8, 1997. U.S. Army, 1932.
  10. ↑ "Cherokee Code Talkers and Allied Success in WWI | NC DNCR". www.ncdcr.gov.
  11. 1 2 "Choctaw Code Talkers of World War II". Archived from the original on May 9, 2008. Retrieved February 13, 2008.
  12. ↑ NSA Code Talker Exhibit
  13. ↑ "The Comanche Code Talkers". Archived from the original on 5 July 2008. Retrieved 13 February 2008.
  14. 1 2 3 Matthew J. Seelinger, Army History Research: 124th Signal Battalion Archived February 17, 2012, at the Wayback Machine.
  15. ↑ "Comanche Code Talker Charles Chibitty Dies". Washingtonpost.com. Retrieved 2014-03-12.
  16. ↑ "Cree Code Talkers: Documentary Explores Role of Canada's Unsung WWII Heroes - Indian Country Media Network". indiancountrymedianetwork.com. Retrieved 2017-11-04.
  17. ↑ "About". Cree Code Talker. Retrieved 2017-11-04.
  18. ↑ "Last Meskwaki code talker remembers". USA Today. July 4, 2002. Retrieved February 13, 2008.
  19. ↑ Holm, Tom (2007). Code Talkers and Warriors. Chelsea House Pub. ISBN 0791093409. Retrieved November 28, 2012.
  20. ↑ "When I Met the Code Talkers". The Attic. Retrieved 13 July 2018.
  21. ↑ Vogel, Clayton; Johnston, Philip. "Letter to Commandant, USMC". Demonstration in California, 1942. Northern Arizona University, Cline Library. Retrieved July 20, 2011.
  22. 1 2 "Navajo Code Talkers: World War II Fact Sheet". Naval Historical Center. 1992-09-17. Retrieved 2014-03-12.
  23. 1 2 Fox, Margalit (June 5, 2014). "Chester Nez, 93, Dies; Navajo Words Washed From Mouth Helped Win War". The New York Times. Retrieved August 4, 2014.
  24. ↑ McLellan, Dennis (July 24, 2011). "Joe Morris Sr. dies at 85; Navajo code talker during World War II". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved July 29, 2011.
  25. ↑ Kolb, Joseph (2014-06-04). "Last of Navajo 'code talkers' dies in New Mexico". reuters.com. Retrieved 2014-06-04.
  26. ↑ "Changing Egypt Offers Hope to Long-Marginalized Nubians". News.nationalgeographic.com. 2013-12-17. Retrieved 2015-12-16.
  27. ↑ "Remembering Nubia: the Land of Gold - Politics - Egypt - Ahram Online". English.ahram.org.eg. 2012-04-18. Retrieved 2015-12-16.
  28. ↑ El Nuba (2014-04-02). "El Nuba | Cairo West Magazine". Cairowestmag.com. Retrieved 2015-12-16.
  29. ↑ "Peaceful Societies". Peaceful Societies. 2014-02-13. Retrieved 2015-12-16.
  30. ↑ "Code Talkers: Native American Languages in the Military". Alpha Omega Translations. 2015-06-17. Retrieved 2015-12-16.
  31. 1 2 Attocknie, Dana (2014-04-07). "Last living Seminole Code Talker walks on, loved ones pay respects, honor hero". Native American Times. Retrieved 2014-04-27.
  32. 1 2 3 "Seminole code talker Edmond Harjo dies at 96". Tulsa World. 2014-04-13. Retrieved 2014-04-27.
  33. ↑ Peterson, Dick (2013-11-21). "Treasury and Mint Join Congress to Honor Native American Code Talkers". United States Department of the Treasury. Retrieved 2014-04-27.
  34. ↑ Chapman, H. S. (1987). "Welsh as a Secret Language". Transactions of the Caernarvonshire Historical Society. 48: 113–117.
  35. ↑ Heath, Tony (1996-08-26). "Welsh speak up for their ancient tongue". The Independent. p. 6.
  36. ↑ Nanlai Cao (4 November 2010). Constructing China's Jerusalem: Christians, Power, and Place in Contemporary Wenzhou. Stanford University Press. pp. 195–. ISBN 978-0-8047-7360-7.
  37. ↑ Zhang Zhixiong (23 June 2015). Chinese Education in Singapore: An untold story of conflict and change. Zhixiong Zhang. pp. 38–. ISBN 978-981-09-3952-6.
  38. ↑ Korte, Tim (August 1997). "How Effective Was Navajo Code? One Former Captive Knows". The People's Path. News from Indian Country. Retrieved August 25, 2018.
  39. ↑ Fonseca, Felicia (February 11, 2008). "Navajo Code Talker dead at age 82". The Denver Post. Associated Press. Archived from the original on March 30, 2008. Retrieved March 19, 2008.
  40. ↑ "National Navaho Code Talkers Day". Lapahie.com. 1982-08-14. Retrieved 2014-03-12.
  41. ↑ "Navajo Code Talkers and the Unbreakable Code — Central Intelligence Agency". Cia.gov. 2008-11-06. Retrieved 2014-03-12.
  42. ↑ "Navajo code talkers honored after 56 years". CNN. 2001-07-27. Retrieved 2014-08-03.
  43. ↑ "P.L. 106-554, see 114 STAT. 2763A–311" (PDF). gpo.gov. Retrieved 2012-09-09.
  44. ↑ Texas military honors Choctaw code talkers. Retrieved on May 2, 2008.
  45. ↑ "P.L. 110-420" (PDF). gpo.gov. Retrieved 2012-09-09.
  46. ↑ "Treasury and Mint Join Congress to Honor Native American Code Talkers". treasury.gov. Retrieved 2015-09-12.
  47. 1 2 Davis, Julie Hirschfeld (November 27, 2017). "Trump Mocks Warren as 'Pocahontas' at Navajo Veterans' Event". The New York Times. Retrieved November 28, 2017.
  48. ↑ Statement in response to remarks by President Trump, Window Rock, Arkansas, The Navajo Nation, November 27, 2017, retrieved November 28, 2017
  49. ↑ "Navajo Nation Statement (November 27, 2017)". Wikisource. November 27, 2017. Retrieved December 1, 2017.
  50. ↑ Felicia Fonseca (November 28, 2017). "Families of Navajo Code Talkers Slam President Trump for 'Pocahontas' Slur". Time.

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