Code talker is a term used to describe people who talk using a coded language. It is frequently used to describe Native Americans who served in the United States Marine Corps whose primary job was the transmission of secret tactical messages. Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples from the regions of North America now encompassed by the continental United States Military tactics ( Greek: Taktikē, the art of organizing an army are the techniques for using weapons or military units in combination for engaging and defeating Code talkers transmitted these messages over military telephone or radio communications nets using formal or informally developed codes built upon their native languages. Basic principle A traditional landline telephone system also known as "plain old telephone service" (POTS, commonly handles both signaling and audio information Radio is the transmission of signals by Modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible Light. In Communications a code is a rule for converting a piece of Information (for example a letter, Word, Phrase, or A language is a dynamic set of visual auditory or tactile Symbols of Communication and the elements used to manipulate them Their service was very valuable since codes and ciphers can be broken, but languages must be studied for a long time before being understood.

The name code talkers is strongly associated with bilingual Navajo speakers specially recruited during World War II by the Marines to serve in their standard communications units in the Pacific Theater. Navajo or Navaho ( native name: Diné bizaad) is an Athabaskan language (of Na-Dené stock spoken in the southwest United States by World War II, or the Second World War, (often abbreviated WWII) was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including The Pacific Ocean theater was one of four major naval theatres of war of the Second World War that pitted forces of the Japan against those of the United Other Native American code talkers were used by the United States Army in both World War I and World War II, using Cherokee, Choctaw and Comanche soldiers. The United States Army is a military organization whose primary mission is to "provide necessary forces and capabilities. World War I (abbreviated WWI; also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All The Cherokee (ᎠᏂᏴᏫᏯ a-ni-yv-wi-ya, in the Cherokee language) are a people native to North America, who at the time of European contact The Choctaw are a Native American people originally from the Southeastern United States ( Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana) The Comanche are a Native American ethnic group whose range (the Comancheria) consisted of present-day eastern New Mexico, southern Colorado Soldiers of Basque ancestry were used for code talking by the US Marines during World War II in areas where other Basque speakers were not expected to be operating. The Basques (Euskaldunak are a people who inhabit a region spanning over parts of north-central Spain and southwestern France.

Use of Cherokee

The first known use of Native Americans in the American military to transmit messages under fire was a group of Cherokee troops utilized by the American 30th Infantry Division serving alongside the British during the Second Battle of the Somme. The Cherokee (ᎠᏂᏴᏫᏯ a-ni-yv-wi-ya, in the Cherokee language) are a people native to North America, who at the time of European contact The 30th Infantry Division was a unit of the United States Army in World War I and World War II. During the First World War, the Second Battle of the Somme of 1918 was fought on the Western Front from the end of the summer in the basin of According to the Division Signal Officer this took place in September 1918. Their outfit was under British command at the time. ^[1]

Use of Choctaw

Choctaws in training in World War I for coded radio and telephone transmissions.

In the closing days of World War I, company commander Captain Lawrence of the U. World War I (abbreviated WWI; also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All S. Army overheard Solomon Louis and Mitchell Bobb conversing in the Choctaw language. The Choctaw language, traditionally spoken by the Native American Choctaw people of the southeastern United States, is a member of the Muskogean He found eight Choctaw men in the battalion. The Choctaw are a Native American people originally from the Southeastern United States ( Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana) ^[2] Eventually, fourteen Choctaw men in the Army's 36th Infantry Division trained to use their language in code. The 36th Infantry Division —also known as the Fighting 36th, the Panther Division, or the Texas Division —is a modular division of the They helped the American Expeditionary Force win several key battles in the Meuse-Argonne Campaign in France, the final big German push of the war. The American Expeditionary Forces or AEF was the United States military force sent to Europe in World War I. The Meuse-Argonn Offensive, also called the Battle of the Argonne Forest, was a part of the final Allied offensive of World War I (and known as the Grand This article is about the country For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic France topics. Within 24 hours after the Choctaw language was pressed into service, the tide of the battle had turned, and in less than 72 hours the Germans were retreating and the Allies were in full attack. ^[2]

Use of Comanche

Comanche code-talkers of the 4th Signal Company (U. S. Army Signal Center and Ft. Gordon)

Adolf Hitler knew about the successful use of code talkers during World War I and sent a team of some thirty anthropologists to learn Native American languages before the outbreak of World War II. Hi and welcome to Wikipedia! Please understand that this article is frequently vandalized and vandalism is reverted immediately Anthropology (/ˌænθɹəˈpɒlədʒi/ from Greek grc ἄνθρωπος anthrōpos, "human" -λογία -logia) is the study of However, it proved too difficult to learn all the many languages and dialects that existed. A dialect (from the Greek word διάλεκτος dialektos) is a variety of a Language that is characteristic of a particular group of Because of Nazi German anthropologists' attempts to learn the languages, the U. Nazi Germany and the Third Reich are the common English names for Germany under the regime of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany ( ˈbʊndəsʁepuˌbliːk ˈdɔʏtʃlant is a Country in Central Europe. S. Army did not implement a large scale code talker program in the European Theater. The European Theatre of Operations ( ETO) was an area of heavy fighting across Europe during World War II, from Nazi Germany's Invasion of Poland Fourteen Comanche code talkers took part in the Invasion of Normandy, and continued to serve in the 4th Infantry Division during further European operations. The Comanche are a Native American ethnic group whose range (the Comancheria) consisted of present-day eastern New Mexico, southern Colorado The 4th Infantry Division is a modular division of the United States Army based at Fort Carson, Colorado, with four Brigade combat ^[3] Comanches of the 4th Signal Company compiled a vocabulary of over 100 code terms using words or phrases in their own language. Using a substitution method similar to the Navajo, the Comanche code word for tank was "turtle", bomber was "pregnant airplane", machine gun was "sewing machine" and Adolf Hitler became "crazy white man. " ^[4]

Two Comanche code-talkers were assigned to each regiment, the rest to 4th Infantry Division headquarters. Shortly after landing on Utah Beach on June 6, 1944, the Comanches began transmitting messages. Utah Beach was the codename for one of the Allied landing beaches during the D-Day Invasion of Normandy, as part of Operation Overlord on 6 June Events 1508 - Maximilian I Holy Roman Emperor, is defeated in Friulia by Venetian forces; he is forced to sign a three-year Year 1944 ( MCMXLIV) was a Leap year starting on Saturday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Some were wounded but none killed. ^[4]

In 1989, the French government awarded the Comanche code-talkers the Chevalier of the National Order of Merit. The The National Order of Merit (in French Ordre national du Mérite) is an Order of Chivalry awarded by the President of the French Republic. On 30 November 1999, the United States Department of Defense presented Charles Chibitty with the Knowlton Award. Events 1700 - Battle of Narva — A Swedish army of 8500 men under Charles XII defeats Year 1999 ( MCMXCIX) was a Common year starting on Friday (link will display full 1999 Gregorian calendar) The United States Department of Defense ( DOD or DoD) is the federal department charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government Charles Chibitty ( November 20, 1921 – July 20, 2005) was a Comanche Code talker who used his native language to relay ^{[4] [5]}

Use of Meskwaki

Meskwaki men used their language against the Germans in North Africa. "Outagamie" redirects here For the Wisconsin county see Outagamie County Wisconsin. Twenty-seven Meskwaki, then 16% of Iowa's Meskwaki population, enlisted in the U. S. Army together in January 1941. ^[6]

Use of Basque

Captain Frank D. Carranza conceived the idea of using the Basque language for codes in May 1942 upon meeting about 60 US Marines of Basque ancestry in a San Francisco camp^[7][8][9]. Basque ( native name: euskara) is the Language spoken by the Basque people who inhabit the Pyrenees in North-Central Spain

His superiors were justifiably wary. There were 35 Basque Jesuits in Hiroshima, led by Pedro Arrupe. The Society of Jesus ( Latin: Societas Iesu, SJ and SI or SJ, SI) is a Catholic religious order The Japanese city of ( is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture, and the largest city in the Chūgoku region of western Honshū, the largest of Japan 's Fr Pedro Arrupe SJ ( November 14, 1907 &ndash February 5, 1991) (full name Pedro de Arrupe y Gondra) was the twenty-eighth In China and the Philippines, there was a colony of Basque jai alai players and there were Basque supporters of Falange in Asia. Jai alai (ˈhaɪəlaɪ in English and jaɪɑlaɪ or xaɪɑlaɪ in Basque This article is about the Spanish political party For the Lebanese Phalange see the Kataeb Party. The American Basque code talkers were kept from these theaters; they were initially used in tests and in logistic information for Hawaii and Australia.

On 1 August 1942, Lieutenants Nemesio Aguirre, Fernández Bakaicoa and Juanna received a Basque-coded message from San Diego for Admiral Chester Nimitz warning him of the upcoming Operation Apple to remove the Japanese from the Solomon Islands. Events 30 BC - Octavian (later known as Augustus enters Alexandria, Egypt, bringing it under the control of the Roman Year 1942 ( MCMXLII) was a Common year starting on Thursday (the link will display the full 1942 calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Fleet Admiral Chester William Nimitz, USN, GCB ( February 24, 1885 &ndash February 20, 1966) held the dual command The Solomon Islands is a country in Melanesia, east of Papua New Guinea, consisting of nearly one thousand islands They also translated the start date, 7 August, for the attack on Guadalcanal. Events 322 BC - Battle of Crannon between Athens and Macedon following the death of Alexander the Great. The Guadalcanal Campaign, also known as the Battle of Guadalcanal, was fought between August 7, 1942, and February 9, 1943, in the As the war extended over the Pacific, there was a shortage of Basque speakers and the parallel Navajo program came to be preferred.

Use of Navajo

Page one of Navajo recommendation letter, 1942.

Page two of Navajo recommendation letter, 1942.

Philip Johnston proposed the use of Navajo to the United States Marine Corps at the beginning of World War II. Philip Johnston (1892 - 1978 proposed to the United States Marine Corps (USMC the idea of using the Navajo language as a Navajo code to be used in the Pacific The idea was accepted, and the Navajo code was formally developed and modeled on the Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet that uses agreed-upon English words to represent letters. The Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet is not a phonetic alphabet in the sense in which that term is used in Phonetics, i A spelling alphabet, radio alphabet, or telephone alphabet is a set of words which are used to stand for the letters of an Alphabet. As it was determined that phonetically spelling out all military terms letter by letter into words—while in combat—would be too time consuming, some terms, concepts, tactics and instruments of modern warfare were given uniquely formal descriptive nomenclatures in Navajo (the word for "potato" being used to refer to a hand grenade, or "tortoise" to a tank, for example). List of terms Acronyms information related to modern armour artillery infantry weapons and related military subject matter This is a list of established military terms which have been in use for at least 50 years This page contains a list of Military tactics: Principles Identification of objectives Also referred to as 'Selection and Maintenance of the Aim'

A codebook was developed to teach the many relevant words and concepts to new initiates. The text was for classroom purposes only, and was never to be taken into the field. The uninitiated would hear truncated and disjointed strings of individual unrelated nouns and verbs. The code talkers memorized all these variations and practiced their rapid use under stressful conditions.

As the war progressed, additional code words were added on and incorporated program-wide, and in other instances, informal short-cut code words were devised for a particular campaign and not disseminated beyond the area of operation. In Telecommunication, a code word is an element of a Code. Each code word is a Sequence of symbols assembled in accordance with the specific rules of In the Military sciences a military campaign is a term applied to large scale, long duration significant Military strategy plan incorporating To ensure a consistent use of code terminologies throughout the Pacific Theater, representative code talkers of each of the U. S. Marine divisions met in Hawaii to discuss shortcomings in the code, incorporate new terms into the system, and update their codebooks. A division is a large Military unit or formation usually consisting of around ten to thirty thousand soldiers The State of Hawaii ( or həˈwaɪʔiː Hawaiian: Mokuāina o Hawaii) is a state in the United States located on an Archipelago in the In Cryptography, a codebook is a document used for implementing a code. These representatives in turn would train the other code talkers who could not attend the meeting.

The Navajo code talkers were also deployed in the Korean War; the use of code talkers ended shortly into the Vietnam War. The Korean War refers to a period of military conflict between North Korean and South Korean regimes with major hostilities lasting from June 25 1950 until the The Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, or the Vietnam Conflict, occurred in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia ^[10]

Cryptographic properties

Navajo code talkers, Saipan, June 1944

Non-speakers would find it extremely difficult to accurately distinguish unfamiliar sounds used in these languages. Additionally, a speaker who has acquired a language during their childhood sounds distinctly different from a person who acquired the same language in later life, thus reducing the chance of successful impostors sending false messages. Shibboleth (ˈʃɪbəlɛθ or ˈʃɪbələθ is any practice which is indicative of one's social or regional origin Finally, the additional layer of an alphabet cypher was added to prevent interception by native speakers not trained as code talkers, in the event of their capture by the Japanese. A similar system employing Welsh was used by British forces, but not to any great extent during World War II; Welsh was used more recently in the Balkan peace-keeping efforts for non-vital messages. Welsh ( cy Cymraeg or cy y Gymraeg, kəmˈrɑːɨɡ and {{IPA|[ə ɡəmˈrɑːɨɡ]}}, is a member of the Brythonic branch of Celtic The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain,is a Sovereign state located The Yugoslav Wars were a series of violent conflicts in the territory of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY that took place between 1991 and

Navajo in particular was an attractive choice for code use because few people outside the Navajo themselves had ever learned to speak the language and virtually no books in Navajo had ever been published. Outside of the language itself, the Navajo spoken code was not very complex by cryptographic standards and would likely have been broken if a native speaker and trained cryptographers worked together effectively. Cryptography (or cryptology; from Greek grc κρυπτός kryptos, "hidden secret" and grc γράφω gráphō, "I write" The Japanese had an opportunity to attempt this when they captured Joe Kieyoomia in the Philippines in 1942 during the Bataan Death March. The Empire of Japan ( {{unicode|Kyūjitai}}: ja 大日本帝國 Shinjitai: ja 大日本帝国 pronounced Dai Nippon Teikoku Joe Kieyoomia (1925 - 1997 was a Navajo soldier in New Mexico 's 200th Coast Artillery unit and was captured by the Imperial Japanese Army after The Philippines ( Filipino: Pilipinas, officially known as the Republic of the Philippines (fil ''Republika ng Pilipinas'' RP The Bataan Death March (also known as The Death March of Bataan) took place in the Philippines in 1942 and was later accounted as a Japanese war Kieyoomia, a Navajo Sergeant in the U. S. Army, was ordered to interpret the radio messages later in the war. However, since Kieyoomia had not participated in the code training, the messages made no sense to him. When he reported that he could not understand the messages, his captors tortured him. Torture, according to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, is "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental is intentionally Given the simplicity of the alphabet code involved, it is probable that the code could have been broken easily if Kieyoomia's knowledge of the language had been exploited more effectively by Japanese cryptographers. The Japanese Imperial Army and Navy never cracked the spoken code, and high ranking military officers have stated that the United States would never have won the Battle of Iwo Jima without the secrecy afforded by the code talkers. The Imperial Japanese Army ( IJA) ( Kyūjitai: 大日本帝國陸軍 Shinjitai: ja 大日本帝国陸軍 Romaji: Dai-Nippon Teikoku For Combined Fleet, please see that article For Carrier Striking Task Force, please see that article Cryptanalysis (from the Greek kryptós, "hidden" and analýein, "to loosen" or "to untie" is the study of methods for The Battle of Iwo Jima ( February 19, 1945 &ndash March 26, 1945) was the United States capture of the island of Iwo Jima

Post-war recognition

Congressional Gold Medal awarded to Navajo code talkers in 2000

The code talkers received no recognition until the declassification of the operation in 1968. Not to be confused with the Medal of Honor, sometimes called the "Congressional Medal of Honor" which is the highest military decoration of the United States ^[11] In 1982, the code talkers were given a Certificate of Recognition by U. S. President Ronald Reagan, who also named August 14 "Navajo Code Talkers Day. Events 1183 - Taira no Munemori and the Taira clan take the young Emperor Antoku and the three sacred treasures " On December 21, 2000, the U. Events 69 - The end of the Year of the four emperors: Following Galba, Otho and Vitellius, Vespasian 2000 ( MM) was a Leap year that started on Saturday of the Common Era, in accordance with the Gregorian calendar. S. Congress passed, and President Bill Clinton signed, Public Law 106-554, 114 Statute 2763, which awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to twenty-nine World War II Navajo code talkers. William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton (born William Jefferson Blythe III, August 19 1946 served as the forty-second President of the United States Not to be confused with the Medal of Honor, sometimes called the "Congressional Medal of Honor" which is the highest military decoration of the United States In July 2001, U. S. President George W. Bush personally presented the Medal to four surviving code talkers (the fifth living code talker was not able to attend) at a ceremony held in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, DC. George Walker Bush ( born July 6 1946 is the forty-third and current President of the United States. ^[12] On September 17, 2007, 18 Choctaw code talkers received the Texas Medal of Valor (posthumously) from the Adjutant General of the State of Texas, for their World War I service. The Texas Medal of Valor is the second highest military decoration that may be awarded to a member of the Texas Military Forces. ^[13]

Popular culture

The 2002 movie Windtalkers was a fictional story based on Navajo code talkers who were enlisted in the U. See also 2002 (disambiguation Year 2002 ( MMII) was a Common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. Windtalkers is a 2002 action War film directed by John Woo. Nicolas Cage and Christian Slater star as S. Marine Corps in World War II. The movie received criticism relating to how the Navajo characters in the film were in supporting roles, and were not the primary focus of the film. ^[14] The film also fabricated a story about white bodyguards being ordered to kill them should they fall into enemy hands, and contained stereotypes of both Native Americans and east Asians. ^[15]

See also

• Native Americans and World War II
• Navajo Nation
• Navajo people
• Navajo tribe
• Southern Athabaskan languages
• Choctaw code talkers of World War I
• U.S. Army Indian Scouts

Notes

References

Bibliography

Web