THE NAVAHO CODE
TALKERS
A peaceable agricultural Native American people related to the Apache, population
about 200,000. They were attacked by Kit Carson and US troops 1864, and were rounded
up and exiled. Their reservation, created 1868, is the largest in the US 65,000 sq km/25,000
sq mi , and is mainly in NE Arizona but extends into NW New Mexico and SE Utah. Many
Navajo now herd sheep and earn an income from tourism, making and selling rugs,
blankets, and silver and turquoise jewelry. Like the Apache, they speak a Southern
Athabaskan language. Navajo speakers served the United States well during WWII. Groups
of young Navajo men were enlisted under a TOP SECRET project to train them as Marine
Corps radiomen. They are officially referred to as the "NAVAJO CODE TALKERS."
Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Peleliu, Iwo Jima the Navajo code talkers took part in every
assault the U.S. Marines conducted in the Pacific from 1942 to 1945. They served in all six
Marine divisions, Marine Raider battalions and Marine parachute units, transmitting
messages by telephone and radio in their native language , a code that the Japanese never
broke. When a Navajo code talker received a message, what he heard was a string of
seemingly unrelated Navajo words. The code talker first had to translate each Navajo word
into its English equivalent. Then he used only the first letter of the English equivalent in
spelling an English word. Thus, the Navajo words "wol-la-chee" (ant), "be-la-sana" (apple)
and "tse-nill" (axe) all stood for the letter "a." One way to say the word "Navy" in Navajo
code would be "tsah (needle) wol-la-chee (ant) ah-keh-di-glini (victor) tsah-ah-dzoh
(yucca)." Most letters had more than one Navajo word representing them. Not all words
had to be spelled out letter by letter. The developers of the original code assigned Navajo
words to represent about 450 frequently used military terms that did not exist in the Navajo
language. Several examples: "besh- lo" (iron fish) meant "submarine," "dah-he- tih-hi"
(hummingbird) meant "fighter plane" and "debeh-li-zine" (black street) meant "squad."
The idea to use Navajo for secure communications came from Philip Johnston, the son
of a missionary to the Na...
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Those six sent and received over 800 messages, all without error. The Japanese, who were
skilled code breakers, remained baffled by the Navajo language. The Japanese chief of
intelligence, Lieutenant General Seizo Arisue, said that while they were able to decipher
the codes used by the U.S. Army and Army Air Corps, they never cracked the code used by
the Marines. The Navajo code talkers even stymied a Navajo soldier taken prisoner at
Bataan.
Only about 20 Navajos served in the U.S. Army in the Philippines. The Navajo soldier,
forced to listen to the jumbled words of talker transmissions, said to a code talker after the
war, "I never figured out what you guys who got me into all that trouble were saying." In
1942, there were about 50,000 Navajo tribe members. As of 1945, about 540 Navajos
lkserved as Marines. From 375 to 420 of those trained as code talkers; the rest served in
other capacities. Navajo remained potentially valuable as code even after the war. For that
reason, the code talkers, whose skill and courage saved both American lives and military
engagements, only recently earned recognition from the the public. Government and
Riseman begins the article by quoting George W. Bush’s speech thanking the Navajo Codetalkers for their service. Bush thanks them, but he does not address the history the Navajo Nation has had with the United States government. This is a trend among many books and articles about the Codetalkers as well. They fail to mention the conflicts that surrounded them at the time and at other times in history. Riseman argues that the government “use[d] Navajos as ‘tools’ for the war” (Riseman 49). Before the war, there was extreme prejudice against the Navajo, and although they were praised during the war this prejudice returned as soon as the war was over. This started during the time of colonialism, as the Navajo had frequent conflicts with Spain and then the United States. One example of these occurred just before the war, during the Great Depression. There were many reforms in the Department of the Interior, and “the Navajo Nation resisted many of the reforms because they included the imposition of livestock reduction” (Riseman 50). Another conflict came about at the onset of World War II. The Navajos and other Native American groups protested because they were required to partake in the conscriptions for the draft even though they still did not have the right to
passage: "The courage and resistance shown by the Navajos at Big Mountain, by Polish workers,
As a result of many negative stereotypes associated with certain variations of English many students have adapted codeswitching. When this concept came up in the book it made me think about my own language. I realized that I code switch quite often between what is seen as Standard English and African American English or Ebonics. Usually with family or other friends that speak Ebonics I use that Ebonics to communicate, but when I am in school, in a
This code actually proved vital to the success of the Allied efforts in World War II. Because the Code Talkers performed their duty expertly and efficiently, the Marines could count on both the ...
During the first World War, the US military saw great benefits in relying on the Choctaw and Comanche languages to relay important messages in the battlefield (Bixler 37). When World War II began, it was the idea of an anglo-american called Philip Johnston who suggested to once again use Native American languages to send important messages during the war (Bixler 39). Philip Johnston was a World War I veteran who was born in 1892 to a missionary who lived in the Navajo Reservation. Growing up, Johnston was able to become a fluent speaker in the Navajo language and during World War II, he alongside 4 other Navajo Indians were the first to help develop the Navajo language as code for the war (Bixler 39). This turned out to be a great idea because according to a book title “Navajo Code Talkers” by Nathan Aaseng, in the year of 1940, there were “fewer than 30 people outside the Navajo tribe that knew their language (19). In addition, during the years prior to the start of WWII, Germany had sent out German students to study various Native American tribes, but they failed to connect and penetrate the Navajo tribe during those years(Aaseng 19). Thanks to this, the Navajo code talkers became one of the most well known and effective code units during and beyond the end of WWII. It is estimated that as many as 3,600 Navajo tribe members served overall during the years of WWII (Aaseng 10). Out of those 3,600 members, about 540 of them enlisted in the marine corps and about 420 became qualified as Navajo Code Talkers (Paul 117). These Code Talkers played a huge role in many of the biggest battles against Japan in the Pacific arena. A quote from communications officer Major Howard M. Conner of the fifth Marine Division states that if “Were it not for the Navajo, the Marines would have never taken Iwo Jima”(Davis
This book substantially explains the vigorous training platoon 3086 went through in order to earn the title of being a Marine.
Wheelwright, M. (1942). Navajo Creation Myth. Navajo Religion Series, Vol. 1. Santa Fe: Museum of Navajo Ceremonial Art.
The translation of the Quapaw name means “downstream people”. The tribe got the name after splitting from the Dehgiha tribe and moving down the Mississippi river. There were two tribal divisions within the tribe. The two divisions were named Han-ka or the Earth People and the ti-zho or the Shy People. The total number of clans with in the Quapaw tribe is 21, some of the tribal clan names include; Elk, Eagle, Small Bird, Turtle, and Fish. For my five words I chose; Bitter- ppahi, chicken- sikka, gray fox- to-ka xo-te, jay bird- ti-ta ni-ka, star- mi-ka- x’e. Before I listened to the audio file of the pronunciation I tried to pronounce it on my own; many of my pronunciations
Two weeks earlier in the darkness of an early April morning, I stand surrounded by close to three hundred other soldiers, filled with excitement and uncertainty. The air is heavy with the promise of another scorching day with the humidity reaching hundred percent. This day is called Zero Day. This is the day that determines which of the close to three hundred potential candidates get to make up the next class of two hundred Air Assault Students. The day begins early, 0330 to be exact, and with a lot of yelling. Immediately we are instructed to form one mass formation, the yelling continues. The Air Assault Sergeants, otherwise know as Black-shirts because of their distinctive uniform, take command. This is their yard and they make sure each and every one of us understands that. One by one soldiers are called out of ranks to receive their roster number. From this point on I am no longer be known as SGT Nealand, now I am Roster Number 442 or simply 442.
The Navajo code talkers were the people that made a very successful code for the army. By the Navajo code talkers exploring a new code, we won World War Two. This what they explored, encountered, and exchanged.
The Apsaalooke, meaning the “children of the large-beaked bird,” is now translated to Crow. They lived around Montana and Wyoming, but they are more commonly found in Montana today. The Crows live on a reservation in which the land belongs to them and is under their control.The Crow tribal leaders are elected by the people. The most famous leaders and chiefs of the Crow tribe included Chief Long Hair, Chief Sore Belly, Chief Grizzly Bear, Chief Plenty Coups, Chief Medicine Crow, Iron Bull, Long Horse and Chief Bear Wolf. They do speak English, but a lot speak the native Crow language. “Aho” means thank you in the language. Children in the tribe are just like regular children. They play with one another, go to school, and help with chores around
Rindels, M. (n.d). American Indian tribes turn to technology in race to save endangered languages. Canadian Press, The,
Whorf, Benjamin L. “Some Verbal Categories of Hopi”. Linguistic Society of America, 1938. Vol. 14, No. 4, pp. 275-286. Print.
What are some ways that the person or group that was the intended receiver and those who overheard the message could respond?
In the United States, an emphasize in learning the dominant language, English for example, can inevitably put other languages within the country in extinction. In reality, there are many other spoken languages in the United Sates, like those spoken by Native Americans, that are becoming endangered because of the immensity of more used languages. One may ask, what is an endangered language? According to Michael Cahill (Bonvillain), who has studied and researched many different endangered languages around the world, a language is endangered when "it is in fairly eminent danger of dying out." Cahill states two ways to quickly identify when a language is on its way to becoming endangered. One is when the "children in the community do not speak the native language of their parents, and the other is when there are only a small number of people left in the ethnolinguistic community" that know how to speak the language (Bonvillain). In specific, the Cherokee language fits into the category of an endangered language in the United Sates because less and less speakers speak it and because it is taught less often to younger generations as well. Although Cherokee, a language containing its own rules in grammar, morphemes, syntax, and phonetics, was once a language spoken in vast areas around the United States by native peoples, the language struggles to survive albeit historical foreign attack and current domination of other languages such as English.