Codetalker

Story by Staff Sgt. Leo Salinas
Photographs by Staff Sgt. Scott Dunn
HEADQUARTERS MARINE CORPS, Washington

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After bombing Pearl Harbor, the Japanese could have anticipated a mighty American response, but when the sleeping giant spoke Navajo during the Pacific War, the enemy was lost in translation. Even if the Japanese could intercept the right radio frequency, crucial Allied information lashed right through their headsets as an undecipherable code, mastered only with a Navajo tongue, and a Navajo ear.

Twenty-nine original Code Talkers were recruited to communicate battlefield messages using their native language. Soon, more than 400 would join the originals and serve in all six Marine divisions during World War II.

The innovative, cryptic method was such a success that for 25 years after the war was over, the Code Talkers could not speak of their roles because the code was still deemed classified. It was not until 1968 that the code became declassified by the U.S. government.

Of all languages, the Marine Corps adopted Navajo because it was reported that Navajos were the only natives not compromised by Germans during the 1920s. Under the guise of art students and anthropologists, the Germans had been studying tribal dialects. The son of a missionary, and a rare non-Navajo linguist, Philip Johnston conceptualized the Navajo code as means for military message transmission.

The Code Talkers’ nine-month training included memorizing 263 codes relating to military terms. A major advantage of the code was its speed. Morse code often took hours whereas the Navajos could encode, transmit, and decode a three-line English message in 20 seconds. Machines at the time required 30 minutes to perform the same job.

In the first 48 hours of the campaign to take Iwo Jima, the Code Talkers received and transmitted an estimated 800 messages without error or interception. Fifth Marine Division signal officer Maj. Howard Connor said, “Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima.”