In 1945, after four arduous days of intense fighting on Iwo Jima, U.S. Marines triumphantly raised a U.S. battle flag on the top of Mount Suribachi, Japan. This iconic moment is immortalized in the now famous Joe Rosenthal photo, which is also memorialized by the USMC War Memorial in Arlington Virginia.
This heroic triumph and numerous others during World War II were in large part made possible by the courageous efforts of a legendary group of U.S. Marines of Native American descent — the Navajo Code Talkers. We honor those brave Marines of indigenous / Native American descent for their meritorious service to a grateful Nation.
In the heat of violent wartime action within the cauldron of battlefield insertion, timeliness and signal accuracy have always been vital components to the survival of any tactical element. This reality was especially the case for U.S. forces during some of the most critical moments of World War I and World War II. Native American ancestral languages were used by courageous and heroic Native American U.S. service members of Navajo heritage in the transmission of secret tactical messages that resulted in preserving the lives of scores of U.S. service members on the violent combat objectives of the South Pacific. These battlefield messages were expertly encoded in such a manner that hostile enemy intelligence operatives were consistently unable to decode them, which prevented enemy forces from gaining lethal tactical advantage over U.S. and/or Allied Forces during the Pacific War campaign.
Following World War I, the governments of Germany and Japan both dispatched students to the United States for the explicit purposes of studying Native American languages and cultures, such as Cherokee, Choctaw, and Comanche.
Due to this reality, key U.S. military officials grew wary about the prospects of continued use Code Talkers signaling efforts during World War II combat operations. This cause for alarm amongst U.S. tactical strategists was due to an initial concern amongst analysts that the code could possibly easily be cracked, or otherwise compromised — however this naive assumption was only countenanced well before these officials became auspiciously aware of the impenetrable complexity of Navajo language as a basis for military code-signaling efforts.
In 1942, Topeka, Kansas born Philip Johnston, the son of a missionary who had been raised on a Navajo Reservation, came across a newspaper article about an armored division in Louisiana that was attempting to come up with a code using Native American languages.
This article caught Johnston’s attention and greatly resonated with him, because Johnston’s early life experiences had armed him with a unique knowledge about how Native American languages could be utilized in formulating a new, unbreakable code to be deployed in U.S. forces top-secret signal relaying efforts. Johnston had spent his formative years living on a Navajo reservation as the son of missionaries who ministered unto Navajo communities. Johnston had come of age playing with Navajo children and intimately learning the Navajo language and Navajo customs. In fact, Johnston developed such a level of fluency in the Navajo language that at age 9 he was asked to serve as an interpreter for a Navajo delegation sent to Washington, D.C., to lobby for Indian rights.
Though at the time of reading the article on code talking Johnston was living in Los Angeles, he had maintained his extensive social connections with the Navajo people with whom he grew up. Johnston had been working as a civilian in Los Angeles when news of the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Imperial Japanese Army first hit the airwaves. Immediately following the attacks Johnston coincidentally happened to come across the article about the U.S. Army’s use of Comanche signaling strategies in their Louisiana field maneuvers to transmit military communications. Johnston then began to surmise that the Navajo language could also be applied in a similar manner. Johnston later presented this idea to key officials within the United States Marine Corps (USMC), where he was directed to present his proposal.
Initially, Johnston recruited four local men of Navajo descent who happened to be working close by in the Los Angeles shipyards, and arranged to have theses men provide and live demonstration of the utility and tactical proficiency of deploying the Navajo language to transmit military communications. The officer in charge of Johnston’s initial Code Talking demonstration to U.S. Forces was USMC Major James E. Jones, Communications Officer, Amphibious Force, Fleet Marine Force (FMF), USMC at Camp Elliot, San Diego. Johnston’s demonstration event was attended by an audience that included General Clayton Barney Vogel, Commanding Officer; Amphibious Force, Pacific Fleet. Johnston initially believed that unmodified Navajo language patterns could be used for purposes of transmitting military communications, specifically from conversational Navajo. Prior to commencing with the actual language demonstration, the Navajos men received their spoken word samples of common military expressions they were to convey to one another. The Navajo speakers then informed the gathered personnel that in order to successfully transmit the military messages, word and letter substitution methods would have to be used to convey the messages.
After conferring amongst one another to come to agreement as to which Navajo words would represent English equivalents, the Navajos were then divided into two groups and sequestered into separate rooms, where field phones had been installed, at opposite ends of the same building.
Transmissions of common military expressions were then assigned to be coded into Navajo and decoded into English, by verbally encrypting, transmitting and decoding the messages nearly verbatim from English, to Navajo and back into English.
Philip Johnston would later indicate that this Camp Elliot exercise revealed limitations to using conversational Navajo for military communications and that he was inspired to use the letter and word substitution methods to encrypt Navajo.
On the other hand, a historical review of USMC source documents indicate that following this demonstration, when they were independently investigating the logistics of using the Navajo language as a code, it was that personnel from the Bureau of Indian Affairs stated that it was compulsory that a coding system for Navajo be created.
After observing the Camp Eliot demonstration, General Vogel was so impressed that he requested the Commandant of the Marine Corps to recruit 200 Navajos. However, Vogel was only provided authorization to recruit 30 Navajos, under the auspices of a pilot program status to “investigate the feasibility” of this proposed program with actual Navajos.
On 04 MAY 1942, 29 Navajo citizens reported to Fort Defiance, Arizona, and were driven via transport bus to the U.S. Armed Forces Induction Center ad Fort. Wingate, New Mexico. After initial processing and lunch, the Navajo recruits were then further transported overnight to undergo further processing at the U.S. Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego (MCRD, SD). After completion of administrative in-processing, the 29 recruits then began a compulsory period of standard recruit training, which lasted seven weeks. Upon completion of recruit training the first all-Navajo Platoon 382 graduated from MCRD, SD on 27 JUNE 1942.
The all-Navajo Platoon 382 then reported to Camp Elliot where they underwent approximately eight weeks of basic communications training and developed a unique tactical messaging code based on their indigenous Navajo language. In their development of the code, the Navajo service members worked closely with a USMC cryptographic officer under the command of Lt. Col. (who had been promoted from MAJ) Jones in the fundamentals of using letter and word substitution encryption methodologies in the formulation of tactical Navajo code. In the early stages of the development of the Code Talker project, three additional Navajo Marines were added to the program, and together this initial working group of 32 Navajo service members worked fastidiously to painstakingly develop and successfully complete the Navajo code. The stay of the Navajo Code Talkers at Camp Elliot ended in August 1942.
After the successful completion of the initial iteration of the Code Talker pilot program, on 25 AUG 1942, authorization to fulfill the recruitment of 200 Navajos was approved and and Marine units “were asked to submit recommendations relative to the number of Navajos service members they could usefully employ”.
Upon completions of Code Talker training, one group of 50 Navajo service members were assigned to the 1st Marine Division. A second group of 16 Navajo Code Talkers were also assigned to the 6th Marines, 2nd Signal Company of the 2nd Marine Division. Three others of the Code Talkers were assigned to fulfill stateside recruiting duties and training of other prospective Navajos citizens to become code talkers.
On 18 SEP 1942, the first group of Navajo code talkers arrived at Guadalcanal, near Lunga Point. The second group arrived as a part of the 6th Marines on 04 JAN 1943, providing relief for the code talkers attached to the 1st Marine Division code talkers. This group of code talkers then notably participated in the latter stages of the Battle of Guadalcanal.
The next all-Navajo platoon to go through boot camp was Platoon 297 in March 1943 at MCRD,SD.
As history would have it, the Navajo language was in fact the perfect option as a basis for developing a top-secret code, because it is not written and very few people not of Navajo origin were able to speak it. During the prosecution of the war, about 400 Navajos participated in the Code Talker program.
At one point during the early stages, a skeptical USMC lieutenant once decided to test the skills of the Code Talkers and the efficacy of the code before trusting them to deliver actual combat messages. The Code Talkers successfully translated, transmitted and re-translated a test message in two and a half minutes. Without using the Navajo code, it could take hours for a soldier to complete the same task. From then on, the Code Talkers were used in every major operation involving the Marines in the Pacific theater of tactical operations. The primary job of the Code Talkers was to transmit tactical information over telephone and radio. During the invasion of Iwo Jima, six Navajo Code Talkers operated continuously conducting nonstop signal communications efforts. During the invasion, the Code Talkers transmitted more than 800 messages, all of which were transmitted without error.
The Navajo Code Talkers were treated with the utmost respect by their fellow marines. Major Howard Connor, who served as signal officer for the Navajos at Iwo Jima, said, “Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima.”
In 1945, after four arduous days of intense fighting on Iwo Jima, U.S. Marines triumphantly raised a U.S. battle flag on the top of Mount Suribachi, Japan. This iconic moment is immortalized in the now famous Joe Rosenthal photo, which is also memorialized by the USMC War Memorial in Arlington Virginia.
This heroic triumph and numerous others during World War II were in large part made possible by the courageous efforts of a legendary group of U.S. Marines of Native American descent — the Navajo Code Talkers. We honor those brave Marines of indigenous / Native American descent for their meritorious service to a grateful Nation.
In the heat of violent wartime action within the cauldron of battlefield insertion, timeliness and signal accuracy have always been vital components to the survival of any tactical element. This reality was especially the case for U.S. forces during some of the most critical moments of World War I and World War II. Native American ancestral languages were used by courageous and heroic Native American U.S. service members of Navajo heritage in the transmission of secret tactical messages that resulted in preserving the lives of scores of U.S. service members on the violent combat objectives of the South Pacific. These battlefield messages were expertly encoded in such a manner that hostile enemy intelligence operatives were consistently unable to decode them, which prevented enemy forces from gaining lethal tactical advantage over U.S. and/or Allied Forces during the Pacific War campaign.
Following World War I, the governments of Germany and Japan both dispatched students to the United States for the explicit purposes of studying Native American languages and cultures, such as Cherokee, Choctaw, and Comanche.
Due to this reality, key U.S. military officials grew wary about the prospects of continued use Code Talkers signaling efforts during World War II combat operations. This cause for alarm amongst U.S. tactical strategists was due to an initial concern amongst analysts that the code could possibly easily be cracked, or otherwise compromised — however this naive assumption was only countenanced well before these officials became auspiciously aware of the impenetrable complexity of Navajo language as a basis for military code-signaling efforts.
In 1942, Topeka, Kansas born Philip Johnston, the son of a missionary who had been raised on a Navajo Reservation, came across a newspaper article about an armored division in Louisiana that was attempting to come up with a code using Native American languages.
This article caught Johnston’s attention and greatly resonated with him, because Johnston’s early life experiences had armed him with a unique knowledge about how Native American languages could be utilized in formulating a new, unbreakable code to be deployed in U.S. forces top-secret signal relaying efforts. Johnston had spent his formative years living on a Navajo reservation as the son of missionaries who ministered unto Navajo communities. Johnston had come of age playing with Navajo children and intimately learning the Navajo language and Navajo customs. In fact, Johnston developed such a level of fluency in the Navajo language that at age 9 he was asked to serve as an interpreter for a Navajo delegation sent to Washington, D.C., to lobby for Indian rights.
Though at the time of reading the article code stalking Johnston was living in Los Angeles, he had maintained his extensive social connections with the Navajo people with whom he grew up. Johnston had been working as a civilian in Los Angeles when news of the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Imperial Japanese Army first hit the airwaves. Immediately following the attacks Johnston coincidentally happened to come across the article about the U.S. Army’s use of Comanche signaling strategies in their Louisiana field maneuvers to transmit military communications. Johnston then began to surmise that the Navajo language could also be applied in a similar manner. Johnston later presented this idea to key officials within the United States Marine Corps (USMC), where he was directed to present his proposal.
Initially, Johnston recruited four local men of Navajo descent who happened to be working close by in the Los Angeles shipyards, and arranged to have theses men provide and live demonstration of the utility and tactical proficiency of deploying the Navajo language to transmit military communications. The officer in charge of Johnston’s initial Code Talking demonstration to U.S. Forces was USMC Major James E. Jones, Communications Officer, Amphibious Force, Fleet Marine Force (FMF), USMC at Camp Elliot, San Diego. Johnston’s demonstration event was attended by an audience that included General Clayton Barney Vogel, Commanding Officer; Amphibious Force, Pacific Fleet. Johnston initially believed that unmodified Navajo language patterns could be used for purposes of transmitting military communications, specifically from conversational Navajo. Prior to commencing with the actual language demonstration, the Navajos men received their spoken word samples of common military expressions they were to convey to one another. The Navajo speakers then informed the gathered personnel that in order to successfully transmit the military messages, word and letter substitution methods would have to be used to convey the messages.
After conferring amongst one another to come to agreement as to which Navajo words would represent English equivalents, the Navajos were then divided into two groups and sequestered into separate rooms, where field phones had been installed, at opposite ends of the same building.
Transmissions of common military expressions were then assigned to be coded into Navajo and decoded into English, by verbally encrypting, transmitting and decoding the messages nearly verbatim from English, to Navajo and back into English.
Philip Johnston would later indicate that this Camp Elliot exercise revealed limitations to using conversational Navajo for military communications and that he was inspired to use the letter and word substitution methods to encrypt Navajo.
On the other hand, a historical review of USMC source documents indicate that following this demonstration, when they were independently investigating the logistics of using the Navajo language as a code, it was that personnel from the Bureau of Indian Affairs stated that it was compulsory that a coding system for Navajo be created.
After observing the Camp Eliot demonstration, General Vogel was so impressed that he requested the Commandant of the Marine Corps to recruit 200 Navajos. However, Vogel was only provided authorization to recruit 30 Navajos, under the auspices of a pilot program status to “investigate the feasibility” of this proposed program with actual Navajos.
On 04 MAY 1942, 29 Navajo citizens reported to Fort Defiance, Arizona, and were driven via transport bus to the U.S. Armed Forces Induction Center ad Fort. Wingate, New Mexico. After initial processing and lunch, the Navajo recruits were then further transported overnight to undergo further processing at the U.S. Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego (MCRD, SD). After completion of administrative in-processing, the 29 recruits then began a compulsory period of standard recruit training, which lasted seven weeks. Upon completion of recruit training the first all-Navajo Platoon 382 graduated from MCRD, SD on 27 JUNE 1942.
The all-Navajo Platoon 382 then reported to Camp Elliot where they underwent approximately eight weeks of basic communications training and developed a unique tactical messaging code based on their indigenous Navajo language. In their development of the code, the Navajo service members worked closely with a USMC cryptographic officer under the command of Lt. Col. (who had been promoted from MAJ) Jones in the fundamentals of using letter and word substitution encryption methodologies in the formulation of tactical Navajo code. In the early stages of the development of the Code Talker project, three additional Navajo Marines were added to the program, and together this initial working group of 32 Navajo service members worked fastidiously to painstakingly develop and successfully complete the Navajo code. The stay of the Navajo Code Talkers at Camp Elliot ended in August 1942.
After the successful completion of the initial iteration of the Code Talker pilot program, on 25 AUG 1942, authorization to fulfill the recruitment of 200 Navajos was approved and and Marine units “were asked to submit recommendations relative to the number of Navajos service members they could usefully employ”.
Upon completions of Code Talker training, one group of 50 Navajo service members were assigned to the 1st Marine Division. A second group of 16 Navajo Code Talkers were also assigned to the 6th Marines, 2nd Signal Company of the 2nd Marine Division. Three others of the Code Talkers were assigned to fulfill stateside recruiting duties and training of other prospective Navajos citizens to become code talkers.
On 18 SEP 1942, the first group of Navajo code talkers arrived at Guadalcanal, near Lunga Point. The second group arrived as a part of the 6th Marines on 04 JAN 1943, providing relief for the code talkers attached to the 1st Marine Division code talkers. This group of code talkers then notably participated in the latter stages of the Battle of Guadalcanal.
The next all-Navajo platoon to go through boot camp was Platoon 297 in March 1943 at MCRD,SD.
As history would have it, the Navajo language was in fact the perfect option as a basis for developing a top-secret code, because it is not written and very few people not of Navajo origin were able to speak it. During the prosecution of the war, about 400 Navajos participated in the Code Talker program.
At one point during the early stages, a skeptical USMC lieutenant once decided to test the skills of the Code Talkers and the efficacy of the code before trusting them to deliver actual combat messages. The Code Talkers successfully translated, transmitted and re-translated a test message in two and a half minutes. Without using the Navajo code, it could take hours for a soldier to complete the same task. From then on, the Code Talkers were used in every major operation involving the Marines in the Pacific theater of tactical operations. The primary job of the Code Talkers was to transmit tactical information over telephone and radio. During the invasion of Iwo Jima, six Navajo Code Talkers operated continuously conducting nonstop signal communications efforts. During the invasion, the Code Talkers transmitted more than 800 messages, all of which were transmitted without error.
The Navajo Code Talkers were treated with the utmost respect by their fellow marines. Major Howard Connor, who served as signal officer for the Navajos at Iwo Jima, said, “Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima.”
The hard work, tactical diligence and technical proficiency of the Navajo Code Talkers could not be officially recognized until after declassification of the highly secret details of the operation by the U.S. government in 1968.
In the year 1982 President Ronald Reagan declared declared August 14 as “Navajo Code Talkers Day” in 1982 and presented the Code Talkers with a certificate. In the year 2000, President Bill Clinton signed a law awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to the original 29 Code Talkers. In July 2001, President George W. Bush presented medals to the four surviving Code Talkers (at that time) at a ceremony held in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C.
The hard work, tactical diligence and technical proficiency of the Navajo Code Talkers could not be officially recognized until after declassification of the highly secret details of the operation by the U.S. government in 1968.
In the year 1982 President Ronald Reagan declared declared August 14 as “Navajo Code Talkers Day” in 1982 and presented the Code Talkers with a certificate. In the year 2000, President Bill Clinton signed a law awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to the original 29 Code Talkers. In July 2001, President George W. Bush presented medals to the four surviving Code Talkers (at that time) at a ceremony held in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C.
