Wind Talkers

From 1942 to 1945 most of the assaults that the U.S Marines conducted involved Navajo code talkers, these assaults took place in the Pacific, where the battles were mainly against Japan’s army. The use of Navajo code talkers was suggested by a civil engineer Philip Johnston (Navajo Code Talkers: World War II Fact Sheet, 2014). Johnston had been raised on a Navajo reservation as the son of a missionary (Navajo Code Talkers: World War II Fact Sheet, 2014). He was one of the few non-Navajos who could speak the language fluently. At the time it was an unwritten language with complex grammar, this made it a perfect system to pass coded messages that were nearly impossible to decode (Navajo Code Talkers: World War II Fact Sheet, 2014). The Navajo code talkers were an important and integral part of the victory in the Pacific for the United States.

The history of the Navajo people goes back a long time. They lived in the area around New Mexico, before they had any interaction with the first settlers. They were mainly a group of hunters and gathers (Navajo Facts, 2014). Eventually they adopted certain techniques from the Pueblo people (Navajo Facts, 2014). From the Pueblo people they learned farming and from the Spanish they learned how to raise goats and sheep (Navajo Facts, 2014). The first contact the Navajo people had with the United States government was in 1846 during the Mexican American War, when General Stephen W. Kearny invaded Santa Fe and the soldiers traveled into Navajo country (Navajo Facts, 2014). A peace treaty was signed, but it was not honored by a lot of the younger generation of Navajos and Americans. Over the next couple of years the United States built and established forts on the Navajo land and in 1861 there were...

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... to be honored for their bravery and their help during World War II. Source

At the end of World War II very little people knew about the Navajo code talkers, it was not until 1962 did people begin to learn about their existence and it was not until the 1990s did the full story come out (Navajo Code Talkers Cryptology, 2014) The Navajos were not allowed to tell anyone about the code, even their family until 1968. By the time the war was over there was about 400 Navajos trained as code talkers (Navajo Code Talkers Cryptology, 2014). Most of these young men grew up on the same reservation and went to the same Indian boarding school were they were taught to forget about their culture and their language. The irony of the situation is that the culture that the government wanted to wipe was the same culture that was the deciding factor in winning the War in the Pacific.