Code Talking Begins
"For three years, wherever the Marines landed, the Japanese got an
earful of strange gurgling noises interspersed with other sounds resembling
the call of a Tibetan monk and the sound of a hot water bottle being emptied. Huddled over their radio sets in bobbing assault barges, in foxholes on the
beach, in slit trenches, deep in the jungle, the Navajo Marines transmitted
and received messages, orders, vital information. The Japanese ground their
teeth and committed hari-kari."
The United States realized in 1942 that they needed a way to send fast and efficient messages throughout the Pacific. Philip Johnston sent a letter to the commander of the US military recommending the use of Navajos and their complex language for sending messages. Johnston had lived on the Navajo Reservation since he was 4 years of age, and was able to fluently speak their complex language. Besides 50,00 Navajos, only 30 people in the world knew the language of the Navajo's at that time, and none of them were Japanese.
A decision was made to recruit Navajos and train them for communication. Twenty nine young Navajo men were enlisted in the military in communication and were later known as the Navajo Code Talkers. Their job was to send, receive and transport messages across the battle field. In the beginning, most intelligence officers did not trust the use of the Navajo language for important communication since it had not been field tested. However, they quickly learned that this form of communication was the best possibility because it was quick, efficient and the code was unbreakable.
Countless times the Navajo Code Talkers successfully transmitted and received message that resulted in saving the lives of many Americans. The downside was that the Navajos resembled the Japanese and were easily mistaken for the enemy. The result of this was that an Anglo marine was sent to accompany the Navajo Code Talker on every mission as a body guard. One Navajo was captured by the Americans and was mistaken for a Japanese soldier. Right before they were about to execute him one of the intelligence officers identified him as one of the Code Talkers. The Japanese captured and tortured some Code Talkers to try to figure out the code but they were never successful.
In the battle of Iwo Jima the Navajo Code Talkers sent and translated more than 800 messages in one day flawlessly. Their efforts made communication quick and efficient between the troops. Later in the battle of Okinawa they once again were instrumental in delivering encoded messages. The Japanese were never able to decipher the Navajo code.