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Military communications have to be coded to keep them secret from the enemy. However the process of coding and decoding are time consuming processes. Furthermore the codes may be broken by the enemy. Nations have devoted considerable effort trying to create unbreakable codes. In World War II both Germany and Japan thought they had such unbreakable codes, but in fact these codes were broken and their most vital information were readily available to the enemy.
The one unbreakable code turned out to be a natural language whose phonetic and grammatical structure was so different from the languages familiar to the enemy that it was almost impossible to transcribe much less translate. The unbreakable code was coded Navajo spoken by native speakers of Navajo.
The idea of using Amerindian languages for military communications went back to World War I when Company D of the 141st Infantry Division utilized eight Choctaws to convey military orders by telephone. This experiment was considered a success and the U.S. military continued to recruit native Amerindian language speakers for the signal corps.
The idea of using specifically the Navajo language for military communications can be attributed to Philip Johnson. Johnson was the son of Protestant missionaries who spent his childhood among Navajos and learned their language fluently, so fluently that he served even as a child as a translator. From his experience Johnson believed that Navajo was a language that was almost impossible to acquire as an adult.
Some of the reasons that an enemy would not be able to translate messages from Navajo were:
The translation of military messages from English to Navajo and from Navajo to English could done almost instanteously. In contrast the coding and decoding processes were time consuming. In time trials the Navajo system won out easily and decisively against the alternative coding and decoding system. The Navajo code talk system did use a coding of military terms into Navajo words but these special terms were memorized by the code talkers.
Philip Johnson met with U.S. marine officers at Camp Elliott in Southern California to convey his ideas. Those officers passed Johnson's proposal onto officials in Washington, D.C. In February 1942 Johnson was invited to submit a formal proposal plan. Johnson proposed training 200 Navajos but the military authorities opted for a pilot trial project of 30 code talkers. In April of 1942 the project was initiated.
Despite the brillance of the concept, its implementation was not without its difficulties. First of all, the recruitment of bilingual Navajos was not that easy. The Navajo reservation was isolated and therefore there was not that much need or benefit for fluency in English among the Navajos. In addition, the recruits had to meet the age, weight and health requrements for the Marines as well as the language requirements. By marginal adjustment the program met its quota of thirty.
The code talkers had to go the standard Marine bootcamp training. This was a cultural challenge for them but not a physical challenge. In fact, the drill instructors could not find an endurance test that the Navajos could not pass easily. The bootcamp included Marine recruits who were not part of the code taker program. These recruits were in awe of the physical endurance of the Navajos.
The cultural challenges of the bootcamp for the Navajos were a different matter. For example, in the Navajo culture it is a serious breach of etiquette to step over someone. This was a difficult problem in a crowded barracks among non-Navajos who did not understand the culture. Despite the cultural difficulties the Navajos completed the bootcamp.
The task for the Navajo code talkers was to creat Navajo words for 211 military terms that were likely to be needed in military communication. Aircraft were given codes having to do with birds, bombs became eggs, etc. These codes were memorized and never written down. It was no easy task but it was accomplished. For terms not included in the set of 211 there was an option of spelling out the English term using Navajo terms for the letters of the alphabet. It was an "A is for ant, B is for bear, C is for cat, etc." arrangement in which the Navajo words for ant, bear, cat etc. were used for the letters. This was a somewhat danger strategy because if the Japanese were able to recognize the sequences where there were spelled out words they might have been able identify the letters by to a frequency count. This spelling-out option was used for geographic place names, the most critical information of the messages, but these were not English words and the frequencies of the letters would have been different from ordinary English text. HOwever the worry about the use of spelling led the supervisors of the program to expand the number of code words from 211 to nearly double that number. They also introduced alternate codes for the frequently used letters, such as using the Navajo word for apple as well as the word for ant for the letter A.
The secrecy of the project led to some unfortunate mistakes. Some commanders upon finding aNavajo code talkers assigned to their units used them as a message runners. In other cases when military personnel heard Navajo speech coming over their radios thought that it was Japanese and that it meant their units had been overun by the Japanese. There other times when Marines, not familiar with either Navajos or Japanese, thought the person operating the radio was Japanese. This led to a number of Navajo code talkers being taken prisoner as spies by their own forces. Eventually the Marines gave their code talkers body guards.
In the end the speed of translation of the code talkers proved as valuable as the security of the transmission. The code talkers were able to instantaneously convey information in battle situations in which the delay of minutes in coding and decoding transmissions would have crippled the conduct of the battles.
(To be continued.)
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