In war, secrecy saves lives. If the enemy finds out where you are going to attack, shell, or retreat to, they can intercept or prepare for those movements. If they find out where you are planning on firing mortars, they can relocate troops away from that position or fortify to prepare. The Japanese were very good at breaking codes. They broke every single code the Allies created. This was the Japanese home turf, and if the Allies could not send a message without it being interpreted, they would not be able to win the war. The Navajo code talkers of WWII aided the Allied forces in the Pacific Theatre of the war, by developing an uncrackable code.
Chester Nez is a Navajo American Indian. His grandparents’ livestock were all brutally killed by the United States in order to make the Navajo tribe more reliant on the government for welfare. He was sent to boarding school as a kid, where it was forbidden to speak Navajo. Women were the teachers and disciplined the children harshly. In the book “Code Talker”, Chester remembers one child being reprimanded for speaking Navajo. His mouth was washed out with lye soap. Despite of all this, Chester and 28
…show more content…
At the invasion of Iwo Jima, six code talkers worked nonstop. They sent a total of 800 messages without missing a single word! The code talkers worked in pairs for many reasons. The first is that they had older technology, so they had to use crank radios. One person would crank the radio to give power, and the other would send or receive the message. Messages were given to the talkers by runners, people who ran back and forth between the code talkers and the officials that were sending and receiving the messages. The next reason that the talkers working in pairs was because sometimes they would become tired. They worked all the time, and even when they had down time they were hard-pressed to fall asleep due to fright and constant bombardment of shells and