Y. Code Talkers During WWII

In 20^th century wars we watched an interesting movie based on code talkers in World War II called, Windtalkers. It starred Nicholas Cage and was a great movie. I never knew that they used code talkers in the war and I found it quite interesting so I decided to look into it a bit more.

The Navajo language was used as code to communicate over radios. Communication is essential during wars to know when to attack and when to fall back. If an enemy can hear and know what you are doing, they automatically get the upper hand. Codes were frequently used over radios, and most often broken. In 1942 Philip Johnston came up with the idea to use a code that would be very hard to break, a code based on the Navajo language. Johnston presented this idea when he read in a newspaper that people were trying to use Native American language as code. Instead of making up new words they used words already in the Navajo vocabulary. For example, “fighter plane” became known as “hummingbird” and “battleship” became known as “whale”. A demonstration using the Navajo “code” went successfully and then enlisted 30 Navajo code talkers, one dropped out so 29 started the program. The program was successful and the marines were able to recruit an unlimited amount of Navajo code talkers. By the end of the war 420 Navajo men were code talkers. There were some cons of code talkers. They were often mistaken as being Japanese. Military leaders were also very skeptical of them and they had to prove themselves. Commanders often had to have a body guard for each code talker so that they would not be misidentified as a Japanese soldier. “The Navajo code talkers played a large role in the Allied success in the Pacific. The Navajos had created a code the enemy was unable to decipher.”

Overall, it is very interesting that the Navajo language was used and played a huge role in WWII.