Navajo 'code talkers' share war experiences

Photograph courtesy of U.S. Marine Corps. No 57875

Private First Class Preston Toledo (left) and Private First Class Frank Toledo, cousins attached to a Marine artillery regiment in the South Pacific, relay orders in Navajo over a field radio, July 1943.

everal surviving members of an elite group of Navajo veterans will discuss their efforts to develop a World War II code that could not be cracked as part of Native American Month at the College. "Desert Warriors of the Pacific: The Navajo Code Talkers of WWII" features Samuel Billison, president of the Navajo Code Talkers Association, who will share his experiences and demonstrate "code talking" at 8 p.m. on Thursday, November 8 in Hubbell Auditorium of Hutchison Hall.

From 1942 to 1945, some 400 Navajos had a pivotal role in Marine assaults in the Pacific. Using code that they developed in their own native language, they transmitted critical battlefield messages that the Japanese were never able to decipher. The skill, speed, and accuracy of the code talkers earned them praise throughout the Pacific campaign.

The idea to use the Navajo language for secure communications during World War II came from the son of missionaries to the tribe. He argued that the extreme complexity of the language was perfect for creating undecipherable code. The Marine Corps agreed and recruited code talkers, fluent in both English and Navajo, from the Navajo reservation, which covers parts of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah.

The first recruits, called "The Original 29," created the Navajo code after attending boot camp. They developed a dictionary in which each letter of the English alphabet was represented by at least one or, in most cases, several words beginning with that letter, but with its Navajo equivalent. To ensure security, they memorized the entire original dictionary as well as subsequent updates.

"Desert Warriors of the Pacific" is sponsored by the College, the Office of Minority Student Affairs, the College Diversity Roundtable, the Office of Student Activities, the Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender and Women's Studies, the Frederick Douglass Institute, the film and media studies program, and the history, linguistics, and anthropology departments. The program is free and open to the public.

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