Navajo Code Talkers 

     When World War II was beginning, the government saw the need for
secret communication.  We needed a code that was unbreakable.  While
experts were trying to invent a new code, a civilian named Philip
Johnston, a civil engineer for Los Angeles, came across a news story
about an armored division station in Louisiana that was using Native
American languages for secret communication.  Johnston was extremely
familiar with the Navajo language because his parents were
missionaries to the Navajo people.  Using native languages for codes
was not a new idea, though.  It had been tried before with ancient
languages, too, but never with the Navajo language.  Johnston set out
to show military officials what was so different about the Navajo
language.

     Johnston knew that the Navajo language would be a good military
code language because of its complexity and isolation.  Every syllable
in the language means something different and must be pronounced
correctly.  Even subtle differences in tone can change meanings.
There are four separate tones: low, high, rising, and falling.  For
example, words for "medicine" and "mouth" have the same pronunciation
but are said with different tones.  Also, the Navajo language reflects
a view of life in which everything that they do and that happens to
them is related to the world around them.  For example, instead of
saying "I am hungry" they would say "Hunger is hurting me".  Another
attractive feature was that the language had never been put into
writing, therefore, it could never actually be studied and it would be
very difficult for outsiders to learn.  In 1940, fewer than 40 people
knew the language.  Johnston stressed that what would be different
about the Navajo code is that it wouldn't be the simple translation of
a language but a code developed from that language.

     Johnston's proposal was accepted and the military started to
recruit and train Navajo Indians for this special operation of
code-learning.  First, the Navajos learned 211 military terms and had
to create a Navajo equivalent for each term.  Also, nothing could be
written down--it all had to be done by memory.  There were four basic
rules to the code-making.  The first was that the code words had to
have some logical connection with the terms for which they stood (to
make memorization easier).  Second, code words had to be unusually
descriptive or creative. Third, code words had to be relatively short
(to save time).  And fourth, the men had to avoid words that could
easily be confused with other words.  The Navajos then added an
alphabet code to spell out names of places and to take care of any
other words that didn't have a code word.  They took English letter,
thought of something that started with that letter and used the Navajo
word for that letter.

     According to one experienced "code-cracker", "It sounded like
gibberish.  We couldn't even transcribe it, much less crack it."  By
the end of the war, 450 Navajo men were recruited for code-talker
training but only 30 men completed the training.

     The Japanese military also had codes.  One of which was a cipher
code name the Purple code.  It was produced from a cipher machine.  It
consisted of two electric typewriters wired to either end of a cipher
box that contained a series of wheels, bars, and rotors.  A letter
typed on the first typewriter would send an electric signal into the
cipher box.  The spinning cipher wheels would randomly select a
different letter to represent the original letter.  This substitute
letter would then be typed out on the second typewriter.  In short,
each letter of a message typed on the first typewriter would be
changed into a randomly selected letter message on the second machine.
There was no logical way of predicting what a letter typed on the
first typewriter might end up as on the second typewriter.  Frequency
charts were useless.

     There were many different types of codes used in World War II.
The Navajo Language Code and the Japanese Purple Code were just two of the many.  The Navajo Code was very successful compared to the many and helped out the U.S.  immensely.  The Navajo people swallowed their bitterness and distrustfulness against the government to help fight in the war. They were never really appreciated or credited for their effort and great amount of help.