Today is National Navajo Code Talkers Day, first celebrated on August 14, 1982, forty years after the Code Talkers project started and 14 years after it was declassified. In 1942, the United States was fighting World War II in the Pacific, and needed an unbreakable code for passing messages about operations, especially battle operations. The son of a missionary who had grown up in the Navajo Nation, Philip Johnston, suggested to the Marines that Diné Bizaad (Navajo language) be used as a code, after he heard of this need.
A number of Navajos in New Mexico and Arizona volunteered with the Marines. For the project’s pilot, Marines recruited Navajos at a high school in Tuba City, Arizona. In May 1942, the pilot group of 29 recruited Navajos arrived at Camp Elliott. Chester Nez, one of the original code talkers, recalled that he found it confusing that he was being encouraged to use his language by the United States when he had been punished for using his native language at boarding school. However, he and many of the code talkers were proud of their contribution to their country and very proud of the visibility of their language.
The code was never cracked by the Japanese; it is the only oral code in history never broken. Chester Nez said, “The Japanese tried, but they couldn’t decipher it. Not even another Navajo could decipher it if he wasn’t a code talker.”
On this 75th anniversary of the end of World War II, although it barely begins to express our gratitude, Ahé’hee to the code talkers and their families for their service.
Sources:
For more sources on Indigenous law, see the Indigenous Law web archive, where new resources are added monthly.
Veteran’s History Project. Navajo Code Talker’s Project.
D810.C88 Code talker / Chester Nez, with Judith Schiess Avila.
D810.C88 B77 2018 Chester Nez and the unbreakable code : a Navajo code talker’s story / Joseph Bruchac, pictures by Liz Amini-Holmes.
KIK1066 1868.U55 Treaty between the United States of America and the Navajo Tribe of Indians.
Comments
Eternal thanks to the men from the Navajo Nation who devised this brilliant code. Japanese code-breakers were thought to be some of the finest in the world at the time–and they could not break this code. World War II could have been won by the United State and its Allies…or it could’ve dragged on much longer that it did–with many more lives lost–had it not been for our Navajo Code Talkers.