It is Written in the Wind

© 2003 Boaz Rauchwerger

During both World War I and World War II, the United States and its allies had a secret weapon that helped them win both wars.

To better understand this secret weapon, we have to better understand the second largest Indian tribe in the US, the Navajos. According to the 1990 census, there are about 220,000 Navajo. Only the Cherokee tribe has more members.

The Navajo reservation, covering some 16 million acres in parts of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah, is the nation’s biggest reservation. Large numbers of the tribe are farmers or sheep ranchers, while others are engineers, miners, teachers, or technicians. They are skilled craftsworkers, weaving wool rugs and blankets and making turquoise jewelry.

About AD 1000, the ancestors of the present day Navajo migrated to the southwestern United States from what is now Alaska and Canada. In the 1800s, an increasing number of white settlers established ranches on those southwestern Navajo lands. The Indians fought to drive the ranchers away.

It was in 1864 that US Army troops, led by Kit Carson, destroyed the farms and homes of the Navajo. About 8,000 of the Navajos were forced, by the soldiers, to march more than 300 miles to Fort Sumner, New Mexico. Thousands of them died during the march and their imprisonment at the fort. In 1868, the Navajo agreed to settle on the reservation.

The Navajo are a proud people with a rich heritage. Maybe that explains how, in the 1900s, they came to play such an important role in helping the US and its allies to win both World Wars.

Along with members of the Choctaw and Comanche Indian tribes, a small group of Navajo served in the United States armed forces and became known as Code Talkers.

They developed and used codes in Indian languages to send secret messages. The best-known Code Talkers were radio operators from the Navajo tribe during World War II. In the months following the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan was winning the war in the Pacific. Japanese intelligence broke every Allied military code.

It was Philip Johnston, an engineer raised on a Navajo reservation where his father was a missionary, who suggested that the Marines use the Navajo language as the basis for a secret code.

The Navajo language was unwritten and a total mystery to non-Navajos. It had no alphabet or symbols. It was comprised of a complex structure, difficult pronunciation, and had singsong qualities that made it almost impossible to decipher.

In World War II, the US Marine Corps recruited 29 Navajo men to develop a code. Eventually, more than 400 Navajo Code Talkers served in the war in the Pacific. Helping to turn the war against Japan, they sent vital messages between front lines and command posts on Japanese-held islands such as Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

As a testament to the uniqueness and power of the Code Talkers, the Japanese never broke the Navajo code. It was really a very simple code. They used familiar words to describe US military terms. For a fighter plane, the code talkers used the Navajo word for “hummingbird.” Sharks represented destroyers and eggs represented bombs.

The code talkers also created an alphabet, based on English words, in order to spell names. Each letter of the English alphabet was represented by one or more Navajo words. As an example, the Navajo word for “ant” indicated the letter “a”, the word for “bear” was equivalent to the letter “b”, “cat” was “c” and so on.

Because the Code Talkers were so proficient in passing top secret messages, the US military became aware of the danger to Navajo soldiers. They became targets for Japanese kidnapping. Thus, the military assigned a Marine to each as a bodyguard.

In the two World Wars, in addition to the Navajos, Choctaw Indians served in the Army and sent messages based on their language and Comanches used their language for code in the Army Signal Corps.

These incredible Indians played a very important role in those world conflicts. For many years after World War II, the efforts of the Code Talkers were kept top secret. In 1968 their work was declassified. It was in 2001 that all living Code Talkers were honored with the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor.

In 2002, the story of the Code Talkers received further recognition when it became a movie entitled “Windtalkers,” starring Nicolas Cage and Christian Slater.

There is a valuable lesson for all of us in the heroic actions of these Indian heroes. No matter how their ancestors were treated by the US in the 1800s, they came through when their country needed them during the world wars. In our lives there are many acquaintances and just a few people we can always rely on. Let’s cherish and appreciate the people we can rely on.

A Daily Affirmation of Appreciation

I appreciate the people in my life that I can truly rely on.