The Navajo Military Code

Military codes must be furtive in their approach to wartime secrecy by using decoding techniques that takes hours to encrypt and decrypt with sub-par success. This is where Navajo code comes in, which minimalizes the effort needed to safely deliver a message. Its language was primarily verbal until a dictionary was developed for it, which made it twofold for telecommunication and typed messages. The dictionary gave a wide assortment of English interpretations for new and mostly pre-existent Navajo words. People with complete mastery of the Navajo language were also proficient at the English language. However, with the introduction of the verbal language and dictionary they had to study for roughly two years to become effective in the battlefield.

The tribes used from 1940 to 1942 before the Navajo were: the Chippewas and Oneidas, who were in the Thirty-second Infantry Division; the Pueblo Indians, who joined the New Mexico National Guard and were dispatched to the Pacific islands; Fox and Sac tribesmen, who were brought into the Nineteenth Infantry Division in the Iowa National Guard Unit; and thirty Comanches, who were recruited into the Signal Corps and sent to the European Theater. “Unlike the army, Marine solicitation of Indians did not commence until after Pearl Harbor.” (Townsend; Kenneth, William) Though the marines were late to employ Navajo Indians, they were especially proactive in their usage.

During February, 1942, Philip Johnston proposed the use of the Navajo Language for military transmissions. He was the son of missionary that aided the Navajos, which led him to become one of the few non-Navajos that were fluent in the language. He had extensive experience with the language (twenty years) and believed that it thoroughly matched the prerequisite for a purported undecipherable