For the U.S. Marines in the Pacifac, Navajo "Code-Talkers"  were a secret communications weapon

By Richard N. Armstrong

In the gloom of the Pacific island jungle, a radio transmission pierced the night air:

"Tiger, this is King.  Over."
"This is Tiger," crackled the response.
"This is King.  Arizona, I say again, Arizona.  Over"
"Roger, King.  Wait' "

The young Marine radioman jumped up from his bunker and ran.  He dashed 50 yards to a nearby dugout and called to a dark figure within, "One of your messages, hurry."
A short, stocky figure emerged quickly from the dugout, and together the two crouched figures hurried back to the radio bunker.  "King, this is Tiger.  Send your message.

Then over the radio came a bizarre succession of guttural, nasal, tongue-twisting sounds.  Huddled over the radio, the dark-skinned, black-haired Navaho Indian received a classified message from Battalion.  In a coded message, Battalion informed regimental personnel of a trouble spot without tipping off the Japanese.  In almost every major Pacific operation during World War 11, U.S. Marine Corps Navaho signalmen transmitted important messages, usually identified as an Arizona or New Mexico message, in unbreakable codes.  Primitive tongues were a key to modern communication.

In the mid-19th century, the Morse telegraph came into use, soon followed by the telephone.  The telephone offered a convenient and rapid way to communicate, but a single wiretap could disclose the conversation.  The subsequent advent of the radiotelephone only increased the security problem, since the radiated transmissions were even easier to intercept.  Indeed, the birth of the radio-telephone was also the moment of creation for radio-intercept intelligence.

Every nation learned the value of radio-signal intercepts soon after World War I broke out.  In fact, the Germans were one of the first to exploit the interception of enemy radio traffic.
To commanders of the American Expeditionary Forces, German mastery at listening in on radio transmissions was a major problem.  As Colonel A.W. Bloor, Commander of the 142nd Infantry Regiment, 36th Division, noted in an afteraction report, "A rumor was out that our Division had given false coordinates to our supply dump, and that in 30 minutes the enemy's shells were falling on the point' " The Americans were sure the Germans heard and knew too much.  It was necessary to code every message of importance, but the coding and decoding took valuable time that negated the advantage of radios.

Interestingly, Bloor's 142nd Infantry included a company of American Indians who spoke 26 different languages or dialects.  With those little-known languages at work, reasoned the regimental commander, came a relatively risk-free chance that the Germans could not translate their speech.  Additionally, the Regiment was fortunate to have two Indian officers who spoke several of the languages.  They could comfortably manage and work the Indian soldiers with good results.  In short order, then, a number of Choctaw Indians were placed in each of the regimental and battalion command posts.

The first use of the Indians, according to Regimental Commander Bloor, came in the "delicate withdrawal of two companies of the 2nd Battalion from Chufilly to Chardeny on the night of October 26th [1918]." The movement was completed without mishap --the Americans drew no German artillery fire.  The Choctaw Indians then were used repeatedly on the 27th in preparation for the assault on an objective called Forest Farm.  The operation's complete surprise served as solid evidence that the Germans could not decipher the messages sent in the Indian tongue.

After the withdrawal of the regiment from the frontline, eight of the Choctaw Indians were detailed for training in transmitting messages, even though initial experience found that the Indian vocabulary of military terms was limited.

Another army, the Canadian forces fighting against Germany during World War 1, also tried to use Indians to secure their radio transmissions.  But the Canadians were discouraged by the lack of vocabulary for military terms.

The American Army, however, stayed with the Indians and improvised ways to work out the vocabulary problem, Since a verbatim translation was not possible, a simple method of substitution seemed to work best.  Indian for "Big Gun' was used to indicate artillery.  "Little gun shoot fast" substituted for the everpresent machine gun, and battalion numbers were indicated by one, two or three grains of corn.

After WW 1, the U.S. Army did not pursue the use of Indians to secure tactical radio transmissions.  In fact, even during World War II, the Army would not adopt any service-wide program using Indian "talkers,' considering them too great a liability for secure communications.  "Captured Indian personnel might be forced to introduce false messages into a net employing Indian linguists," cautioned one study.  Still, individual U.S. Army units did employ Indians in Italy and Germany.  Other American services thought differently, however.

In the Pacific theater, US.  Naval air commanders needed fast, secure communications between various airfields to coordinate fighter aircraft escorts, bomber strikes, and fighter defense.  Following an informal test using two Creek Indians, the Navy's South Pacific Command requested 24 well-educated American Indian soldiers who spoke the same dialect.

In January 1944, Admiral Aubrey Fitch, Commander Aircraft South Pacific Force, reported to the Commanding General, South Pacific, that of the first 10 Indians to report for duty, two were selected to receive communications training.  The two Indians, both Navahos, were trained to pass messages ordering out planes and sent detailed information such as plane types, numbers, bomb loading instructions, times at rendevous points, courses and bearings.  Since their language did not permit direct translation of the English messages, three codes were employed using words familiar to the Indians as code for plane types, geographical names and a few miscellaneous words.  The result was rapid, accurate and secure transmission of messages that previously had required hours of encoding and decoding.

Since Admiral Fitch did not expect the Indian transmissions would remain secure for more than a month or two, he requested 24 more Indians from an eastern tribe as replacements for the two previously accepted Navahos.  The second increment of 14 Indians produced only four suitable for the tremendous signal task --by now, it appeared that finding well-educated Indians versed in a similar language or dialect would be a major problem.  Indeed, most Indian tribes did not have a large enough population with the requisite language skills.  As one result, the naval operation was handicapped by the inability to place more than one qualified man at each station, with no reserves to fill in, in case of illness or even the establishment of new stations.

While the use of Indians was gaining acceptance, the concern of higher headquarters was that the use of Indians as communications personnel should be limited to tactical situations where information, if intercepted by the Japanese, could not be acted upon in time to influence the situation in question.  The use of Indian dialect in place of bonafide code systems for very sensitive communications was not authorized.

Although the Navy was finding a growing use for the Indians, the Army remained skeptical.  Personnel of the Army Security Agency, the codes and ciphers specialists regarded use of Indian dialects as a breech of security in military codes and ciphers.  The Army was concerned that the Germans had been studying American Indian dialects, while prior to the outbreak of the war, Japanese personnel had been employed by the Interior Department's Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).  For some 20 years prior to 1941, German students of science, anthropology, religion and art, had been studying various American tribal dialects.  German and other foreign diplomats were among the BIA's chief customers in the purchase of publications dealing with American Indian tribes.

The American Indian languages in question are holophrastic, expressing a whole phrase or sentence in a single word, or polysynthetic, combining several words of a sentence into one word.  In the original form, Indian languages possessed no alphabet or written symbols of speech, and they were passed from generation to generation in the spoken form.  Outsiders studying these languages and dialects had to hear the spoken communication.  Another dimension to Indian languages are the phonics, the articulate sounds of the language.  The tones and intonations had developed to such an extent through the use of inflections that over time many different meanings can be given to the same word. With such factors in mind, the U.S. Marine Corps would become the war's most extensive user of Navaho Indian communicators.

The Corps selected Navaho as a code language because before the war the Navaho tongue was regarded as a "hidden' language known only to 28 outsiders, all of whom were missionaries, students of Navaho culture, or people who had been born and raised in Indian territory.  Furthermore, the Navahos as a people, were relatively confined to their native territories because of a traditional clannish reservation life.  They comprised the only major Indian group in the United States whose reservation had not been exposed to German students.  And finally, the Navaho tongue is an extremely difficult language to master.  Should a non-Navaho learn to speak it, replicating its tones, intonations and inflections would be nearly impossible.  The words must be produced with a precision difficult for any adult outsider to master, particularly because of the complexity of the Navaho verb form.

While the Navaho language did not include military terms such as jeep, battery, aircraft or flank, those and many place names, such as Iwo Jima or the Solomons, could be improvised by spelling out, letter for letter, in a Navaho phonetic alphabet.  This was the uniqueness of Navaho: not only could the "talkers" speak a native American Indian language for transmission, but they could also use code words.  Their radio transmissions would be double enciphered by the Navaho code-talkers.

The initial group of 29 young Navaho Indians selected for the Marine program had the formidable task of constructing the code, which originally used 211 words for the most frequent military terms.  This limited number of terms-to ease memory requirements- was supplemented by an alphabet to spell out proper names and other words not included on the code list.

The next phase of classroom training was to practice using code words for operational orders.  While all the students spoke basically the same Navaho, their separate dialects could have certain word variations-four different inflections could carry four different meanings.  The training had to ensure that the Navaho code-talkers agreed on the words and pronunciation.

The last two weeks of the training taught the Navahos basic signalmen skills in the operation and maintenance of signal equipment.  They also practiced in field conditions.  Putting distance between the code-talkers tested their abilitv to pass verbatim texts.

Attempting to break the code, Marine cryptographers monitored the exercise transmissions.  While successfully perplexed by the code-talkers, the cryptographers offered one major improvement to the code.  Repetition is a major key to decoding simple substitution codes (which the Navahos used when they spelled out words).  So, alternate terms for the 12 most frequently repeated letters in the English language were created.  The six most frequent letters used in English are E-T-A-0-I-N.  For example, if A " was Ant, alternates could be, Apple or Axe.  Each of the most frequent letters had three alternates.  The second set of the frequently used letters in English are S-H-K-D-L-U, and those received one alternate.  The alternate terms enhanced the code.  For example, the word Guadalcanal spelled from the basic or original word-alphabet was: 

Goat-Ute-Ant-Deer-Ant-Lamb-Cat-Ant-Nut-Ant-Lamb.  Under an alternate set, Guadalcanal could be spelled Goat-Ute-Ant-Deer-Apple-Lamb-Cat-Axe-Nut-Axe-Leg.

But, spelling out often-repeated proper names and other terms proved too time consuming-another 200 terms were added to the code-talkers' vocabulary.  With the alphabet alternates and additional terms, the Navaho recruits now had the monumental task of memorizing an entire vocabulary of 411 terms.  And their memory had to be lightning fast and accurate under the stress of combat situations. Of the original 29 Navahos, two were retained at the Marine Corps training center in southern California as recruiters and instructors, and the other 27 were shipped out to use the code in combat.  The 27 code-talkers were distributed among Marine Divisions and the Marine Raider Battalions.

By the spring of 1942, Rabaul on New Britain Island had been developed into a major Japanese air and naval base and had became a major target for U.S. Naval Air.  But the Japanese seemed to be able to decode Navy messages without difficulty and knew in advance where the aerial forces would strike.  The pilots' name for Rabaul, "Dead End," was well deserved.  Many Navy pilots were lost over the landlocked harbor, victims of murderous antiaircraft fire and Japanese fighters.  Eleven of the Navaho codetalkers were assigned to the Navy air radio nets.  Immediately, the code-talkers secured the communications and prevented the Japanese from acquiring valuable information and fore-knowledge of intended strikes.  As Japanese fighter strikes against U.S. bomber flights declined, the Navahos' actions began to save lives.

A young Navaho Private First Class, Wilsie H. Bitsie, joined the Marine Raiders on New Georgia.  His code-talking enabled his battalion to maintain secret communications with the Army command at Munda while the Marines knocked out Japanese outposts in the jungle to the north.

In the heat of battle, however, the code-talkers sometimes were used for other duties.  When the Marines went ashore at Cape Gloucester on New Britain in December 1943, the monsoon rains played havoc with radio communications.  In moments of expediency, the code-talkers were employed as runners --a hazardous assignment.  Some of the best code-talkers were lost.  Corporal Leonard Webber received the Silver Star for fighting with the Second Marine Division at Tarawa.  When his radio was knocked out, he made dangerous runs on foot between the battalion command posts and front-line positions.

Much of the Iwo Jima invasion was directed through the Navaho code.  The Marine V Amphibious Corps command post was on a battleship from which orders went to the three Marine division command posts on the beachhead, and down to the lower echelons.  During the first 48 hours, while the Marines were landing and consolidating their shore positions, the 5th Division Signal Officer later noted: "I had six Navaho radio nets operating around the clock.  In that period alone they sent and received over 800 messages without an error."
Based on such performance, the Marine Corps wanted at least 200 more Navahos for work as communications personnel.  To meet that number meant an extensive canvass of schools, selective service rolls and a diligent search of the reservations and adjacent towns.
Even so, the recruitment of sufficient Navaho personnel usually fell below the goal of 25 men per month.  To compensate for the shortage of Navahos, the training center recommended the creation of an unattached pool from which assignments would be made as the need arose for their services.  The normal allocation was 38 per Marine division.

In the meantime, the frustrated Japanese would blow horns into the radio after findina the Navahos frequencies, or beat tin cans and vell. While it appeared the Japanese would be unable to break the code, strict care was taken to keep the program secret.  The use of the Navaho code-talkers was a guarded Marine Corps secret until VJ Day.  As one result, Marine intelligence officers often would receive orders to listen to radio calls that sounded like Japanese dialect.  En route to Iwo Jima aboard the Fifth Marine Division's command ship, an unidentified Navy officer mistakeningly identified Navahos' codetalking over the radio as Japanese interference.  The Indian signalmen had set up their radio net with Division headquarters on the deck, and the Navy officer was on the ship's bridge.  The Division signal officer never told his Navy colleague that the strange tongue was Navaho.

Despite the pervasive use of Navaho code-talkers, they remained a mystery to many Marines.  Their tongue was totally baffling.  When the American flag was raised in that memorable moment over Mount Suribachi, on Iwo Jima, word of the event came in Navaho code.  An onlooking general was amazed.  How, he wanted to know, could a Japanese name be sent in the Navaho language?  For the Navahos, it would have been simple to spell the name just as it is pronounced: Sheep-Uncle-Ram-Ice-Bear-Ant-Cat-Horse-Itch.

Meanwhile, little did many onlookers at Iwo Jima know at the time that Private First Class Ira Hayes, a Navaho communicator, was one of the six men who raised the US. flag on the summit of Mount Suribachi.  END