Who Are The Navajos

Who are the Navajos? They are the Native American people of what is now the southwestern United States. They call themselves the Dine, and their land Dinetah. They Navajo live in a log or stone Hogan, and they are a very family oriented people. With currently about 148,500 speakers, the Navajo language is “widely credited as being the strongest of the indigenous languages of the United States” (UCLA). The Navajos of today have a much better social life than they did in all the years before World War II. The Navajo were long discriminated by the white settlers who pushed them off their land. At mission schools and in the streets, they were told that Navajos were useless and stupid. Restaurants would refuse to serve them. The discriminated
Navajos of that time period had no idea that war and their language would make them become American heroes crucial to the Allied victory of World War II.
When World War II began, there was an alarming weakness in the US Army, and this was communication. The Japanese had been surprisingly skilled at cracking codes. The top secret messages sent in code by the US Army were constantly being deciphered by the Japanese. When they did manage to send a code that could not be deciphered, it took a very long time to send and receive it. So there was a very critical need for a code that would be unbreakable and could be sent and received quickly.
The idea of using Navajo as a code came from a man named Philip Johnston.
His parents were Christian missionaries on a Navajo reservation. Because he grew up around Navajo culture and language, he came to learn Navajo and practice Navajo customs. He decided to give the Marine Corps the idea of using Navajo as a code. The Native American language Choctaw had been used in World War I, but “after the war Germany and Japan had sent students to the United States to learn Native American languages should their enemies use it in a future war” (CIA). Because of this, many officials were uneasy about using Navajo, a Native American language, as a code. But Johnston insisted that the Navajo language was not learned by Japan and Germany because of its difficulty. It is a very complex language and hard to learn. Though written in a Latin alphabet, the language is difficult because of the frequent use of the apostrophe which calls for glottal stop. Glottal stop is used to make a sound by obstructing airflow through the throat. This creates a choppy sound in the words. The pronunciation is thus difficult, and there are 33 consonants and 12 vowel sounds in
Navajo. The Marines had no other idea, so they allowed Johnston to demonstrate how Navajo could be used to send messages. The officials decided to give Navajo a try. A pilot program began, and Navajo men between the ages of 17 and 35 were scouted for. They would have to know both Navajo and English fluently, and would have to be physically fit (Wilsont). A few men snuck into the program even though they were actually too young or too old to enlist, but no one figured them out and they joined the program.
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The group consisted of 29 Navajos, who were sent to boot camp and then to Camp Elliot near San Diego to develop a Navajo code (CIA). The Marine officials had decided that simply sending a code in Navajo would be too easy for the Japanese to decipher. Because they did not want to take any chances, the officials decided that the code would not just be Navajo; rather, a code would be developed from the already code-like Navajo language.
The code was finally developed and learned.
“When a Navajo code talker received a message in code, he would hear what seemed to be a string of unrelated Navajo words” (NMCCC). Starting with the first Navajo word, he would translate it to its English equivalent. The first letter of the English equivalent was the first letter of the first word of the coded message. Because the Marines did not want to allow the Japanese to be able to crack their codes by seeing or hearing repeated words, any of 17 designated different Navajo words would stand for one letter. As an example, the coded way to say Saipan could have been the Navajo words for: sea – animal – island – pot – ant - nest.
In addition, frequently used military terms had designated Navajo words for them so that a code talker would not have to spell these out. There were 450 of these words. For example, fighter plane in code was the Navajo word for hummingbird (NMCCC). By combining the Navajo code with designated Navajo words for military terms, officials hoped that they had finally developed an unbreakable
code.
The Navajo code was very successful and was never deciphered by the Axis powers. It was also much faster. Codes that would take four hours to send with Morse code took 2 1/2 minutes to send in the Navajo code. In addition, it was discovered that the Navajos were also very good in combat and in many ways better Marines than the others in their platoons. They became very good at marching, obeying orders, and keeping their quarters very clean. They were also accustomed to carrying heavy loads in very hot weather. Because they were going to be carrying forty pound radios in addition to their regular equipment and were going to be in combat on very hot islands, this was a necessity. Even when not in combat, this trait was still useful. On one very hot day, the Marines were performing a parade. Several Marines fainted from the heat, but the Navajos, who came from the hot and dry southwest, remained in formation (Wilsont). The Navajos were becoming very useful and skilled Marines.
The Navajo Code Talkers were practically unknown and unrecognized because of the continued value of their classified code (NMCCC). They had played an integral part in the Allied victory, but they were not at first honored because no one was aware of the work they were doing. Finally, they were honored for their contributions on Sep. 17, 1992. Electronically sent messages were becoming much more efficient than using radios and codes. A code talker exhibit was dedicated, with photos, equipment and demonstrations that give information about the role that the code talkers played. It is now a stop on the Pentagon tour. In addition, they were honored with speeches by Arizona Senator John McCain, Navajo President Peterson Zah and others. A once discriminated people had indeed become heroes of one of the most tragic wars on earth.