Code talker
This is an accepted version of this page A code talker was a person employed by the military during wartime to use a little-known language as a means of secret communication.
The term is most often used for United States service members during the World Wars who used their knowledge of Native American languages as a basis to transmit coded messages.
In particular, there were approximately 400 to 500 Native Americans in the United States Marine Corps whose primary job was to transmit secret tactical messages.
The code talkers improved the speed of encryption and decryption of communications in front line operations during World War II and are credited with some decisive victories.
Early pioneers of Native American-based communications used by the US Military include the Cherokee, Choctaw, and Lakota peoples during World War I.
[3] Today the term Code Talker includes military personnel from all Native American communities who have contributed their language skills in service to the United States.
Other Native American communicators—now referred to as code talkers—were deployed by the United States Army during World War II, including Lakota,[4] Meskwaki, Mohawk,[5][6] Comanche, Tlingit,[7] Hopi,[8] Cree, and Crow soldiers; they served in the Pacific, North African, and European theaters.
[9] Native speakers of the Assiniboine language served as code talkers during World War II to encrypt communications.
[10] One of these code talkers was Gilbert Horn Sr., who grew up in the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation of Montana and became a tribal judge and politician.
Consequently, the US Basque code talkers were not deployed in these theaters; instead, they were used initially in tests and in transmitting logistics information for Hawaii and Australia.
According to Euzko Deya, on August 1, 1942, Lieutenants Nemesio Aguirre, Fernández Bakaicoa, and Juanana received a Basque-coded message from San Diego for Admiral Chester Nimitz.
[16][17] During World War I, company commander Captain Lawrence of the US Army overheard Solomon Louis and Mitchell Bobb having a conversation in Choctaw.
Nonetheless, after learning of the Nazi effort, the US Army opted not to implement a large-scale code talker program in the European theater.
[22] A total of 14 code talkers using the Comanche language took part in the Invasion of Normandy and served in the 4th Infantry Division in Europe.
[24] Using a substitution method similar to that of the Navajo, the code talkers used descriptive words from the Comanche language for things that did not have translations.
On November 30, 1999, the United States Department of Defense presented Charles Chibitty with the Knowlton Award, in recognition of his outstanding intelligence work.
[25][27] In World War II, the Canadian Armed Forces employed First Nations soldiers who spoke the Cree language as code talkers.
Owing to oaths of secrecy and official classification through 1963, the role of Cree code talkers was less well-known than their US counterparts and went unacknowledged by the Canadian government.
During World War II, the US Army trained eight Meskwaki men to use their native Fox language as code talkers.
[33][34] Mohawk language code talkers were used during World War II by the United States Army in the Pacific theater.
[35] The Muscogee language was used as a type two code (informal) during World War II by enlisted Seminole and Creek people in the US Army.
[38][39][40] Philip Johnston, a civil engineer for the city of Los Angeles,[41] proposed the use of the Navajo language to the United States Marine Corps at the beginning of World War II.
Johnston staged simulated combat conditions, demonstrating that Navajo men could transmit and decode a three-line message in 20 seconds, compared to the 30 minutes it took the machines of the time.
The Navajo code was formally developed and modeled on the Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet that uses agreed-upon English words to represent letters.
"[44] After incidents where Navajo code talkers were mistaken for ethnic Japanese and were captured by other American soldiers, several were assigned a personal bodyguard whose principal duty was to protect them from their side.
According to Bill Toledo, one of the second groups after the original 29, they had a secret secondary duty: if their charge was at risk of being captured, they were to shoot him to protect the code.
[79][80] Journalist Patty Talahongva directed and produced a documentary, The Power of Words: Native Languages as Weapons of War, for the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in 2006, bringing to light the story of Hopi code talkers.
The act recognized every Native American code talker who served in the United States military during WWI or WWII (except the already-awarded Navajo) with a Congressional Gold Medal.
They were there to "pay tribute to the contributions of the young Native Americans recruited by the United States military to create top-secret coded messages used to communicate during World War II battles.
A statement by a Navajo Nation Council Delegate and comments by Pata and Begaye, among others, objected to Trump's remarks during the event, including his use "once again ... [of] the word Pocahontas in a negative way towards a political adversary Elizabeth Warren who claims 'Native American heritage'.
