August 13, 2021
Hello ,
August 14th is National Navajo Code Talkers Day, declared in 1982 to honor Native American men who developed codes using the Navajo language to help win WWII.
The story of the Navajo Code Talkers didn't come out until the war department declassified the program in 1968. But even when the men began to talk about their contributions to the US military victory, much of the code talkers story remained shrouded in history.
What You Didn't Know about Code Talkers
The Navajos are the most famous, but code talkers came from as many as 34 Native Nations, and the first were Choctaw, serving in the First World War.
If not for a chance circumstance, when an US officer overheard two Choctaw soldiers speaking their language, WWI might have turned out quite differently.
Code Talkers from the Choctaw Nation in the Indian Territory pioneered the use of Native languages as military code (Wyoming State Historical Society)
The American Meuse-Argonne Offensive, 1918, stretched along the entire Western Front and shaped up to be the largest and costliest battle of WWI.
In the end Germany was forced to surrender and the war ended, but the outcome was not certain at the beginning of 47 day battle.
Below: The New York National Guard's Rainbow Division in Meuse-Argonne battle that ended WWI. Courtesy New York National Guard.
As fighting began in the Meuse-Argonne region, the Germans had broken all Allied communication codes and were intercepting radio transmissions and telephone calls. The army sent runners to carry messages and the Germans captured 25-percent of them.
The situation was desperate when an officer happened to overhear Choctaw soldiers speaking in their own language. At that moment he realized the possibilities. Germans would not know Choctaw!
US officers tested the idea, and the Choctaw telephone squad was formed, locating Choctaws at the major command posts, where they translated vital information about troop positions and supply routes into their language and transmitted it to other Choctaws who translated it back to English.
Choctaw WWI soldier Tobias Frazier, one of the first US military code talkers.
A company made up of Native Americans in the 142nd Infantry Regiment, 36th Division, included men who spoke 26 different languages and dialects. Two Indian officers were selected to supervise a communications system staffed by 18 Choctaw.
All were born in the Choctaw Nation of the Indian Territory, in what is now southeastern Oklahoma, when their nation was a self-governed republic.
The timely change in US military code led to victory in the battles of St. Etienne and Forest Ferme leading up to the Armistice November 11, 1918.
Map below thanks to the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian
There are so many interesting aspects to this story, including the context of boarding schools, where Native children were beaten for speaking in their own language. How must have they felt when suddenly the language they had been told to forget was needed to win a war?
I ran out of time this week to include all that I wanted to tell you about Native code talkers who served the US military. I'll leave you with some book recommendations
and follow up next week with more on this story. Meanwhile, do celebrate Saturday, August 15th, National Navajo Code Talkers Day.
Sources
https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=CO013
https://www.choctawnation.com/history-culture/people/code-talkers
https://nativeamericatoday.com/the-native-american-warriors-in-the-u-s-military/
https://americanindian.si.edu/nk360/code-talkers/introduction/
According to the publisher, Meadows draws on "nearly thirty years of research--in U.S. military and Native American archives, surviving accounts from code talkers and their commanding officers, family records, newspaper accounts, and fieldwork in descendant communities [to explore] the origins, use, and legacy of the code talkers. In the process, he scrutinizes numerous misconceptions
and popular myths about code talking and the secrecy surrounding the practice."
The Language of Victory: Code Talkers of WWI and WWII is written by Award-winning writer and filmmaker Gary Robinson (Choctaw/Cherokee descent) who has worked most of his life to create Indigenous content in
dozens of Indigenous educational, informational, and documentary television projects. This book is suitable for adults and teens.
The Lanuage Victory features rare interviews with Comanche, Choctaw and Navajo code talkers, to recount how American Indian soldiers from twenty different tribes used their native languages to send coded military messages in two world wars that were never deciphered by the enemy and helped win American victories.
"Bruchac movingly draws a parallel between the trauma of indigenous boarding schools and war. Amini-Holmes's paintings capture the nightmarish atmosphere of both."―Publishers Weekly
His name wasn't Chester Nez. That was the English name given to him in kindergarten. In boarding school at Fort Defiance, he was punished for speaking his native language, as the teachers goal was to destory his culture and traditions. But discrimination didn't stop Chester from answering the call to defend his country after Pearl Harbor, for the Navajo have always been warriors, and his upbringing on a New Mexico reservation gave
him the strength--both physical and mental--to excel as a marine.
STARRED REVIEW "A perfect, well-rounded historical story that will engage readers of all ages. A perfect, well-rounded historical story that will engage readers of all ages."―Kirkus Reviews
"Bruchac distills his extensive knowledge about the Navajo code talkers in this complex biography for young readers."―Booklist
"A can't-miss picture book biography."―School Library Journal
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