Navajo Code Talkers
Navajo Code Talkers
National security of every country highly depends on secrecy maintainance, especially during wartime. Secrecy is an important element of victory. However, it is important not only to code messages but also to break enemy codes in order to gain military advantages. During the Second World War it was very important for the United States to send and receive codes without any risk of being deciphered. For this reason the language of American indigenous population of the Navajo was chosen by the U.S. Marine Corps. This paper focuses on contributions made by the Navajo Code Talkers during the Second World War. The military enemies of the United States did not manage to break the code. One of the reasons why the Navajo language was chosen was that it appeared to be not a written language and was of no interest either for the Germans or for the Japanese.
During the Second World War there were several prerequisites for the use of the Navajo language as the code. First of all, there were groups of English-speaking soldiers in Japan that were used by the Japanese military to track military radio messages by the United States (Jevec and Potter 2001, 263). The Japanese were eager to learn details about the American military, defenses, and troop dislocation. Secondly, the United States had to develop codes to make them more difficult in order to prevent secret information from decoding. However, codes were deciphered by enemies and needed improvement. As a result, some codes became overcomplicated and required hours for translation (Kawano 1990, 34). If a message contained some urgent information, the military just could not react in time. Therefore, the American military was searching for the code which could be both simple and unbreakable.
The person who presented the idea of using the Navajo language as the code language was Philip Johnston (Santella 2004, 65). Johnston was not a Navajo himself, but he was a son of a missionary and grew up in the Navajo
National security of every country highly depends on secrecy maintainance, especially during wartime. Secrecy is an important element of victory. However, it is important not only to code messages but also to break enemy codes in order to gain military advantages. During the Second World War it was very important for the United States to send and receive codes without any risk of being deciphered. For this reason the language of American indigenous population of the Navajo was chosen by the U.S. Marine Corps. This paper focuses on contributions made by the Navajo Code Talkers during the Second World War. The military enemies of the United States did not manage to break the code. One of the reasons why the Navajo language was chosen was that it appeared to be not a written language and was of no interest either for the Germans or for the Japanese.
During the Second World War there were several prerequisites for the use of the Navajo language as the code. First of all, there were groups of English-speaking soldiers in Japan that were used by the Japanese military to track military radio messages by the United States (Jevec and Potter 2001, 263). The Japanese were eager to learn details about the American military, defenses, and troop dislocation. Secondly, the United States had to develop codes to make them more difficult in order to prevent secret information from decoding. However, codes were deciphered by enemies and needed improvement. As a result, some codes became overcomplicated and required hours for translation (Kawano 1990, 34). If a message contained some urgent information, the military just could not react in time. Therefore, the American military was searching for the code which could be both simple and unbreakable.
The person who presented the idea of using the Navajo language as the code language was Philip Johnston (Santella 2004, 65). Johnston was not a Navajo himself, but he was a son of a missionary and grew up in the Navajo