One mistake- that is all it would take for a Navajo Code Talker to cost thousands of lives during World War II. Such an important job required bravery, courage, and intelligence. During World War II, the military recruited Navajo Native Americans to develop a battle communication using their complex language. Going to various locations around the globe, the Navajos communicated important messages that the Japanese failed to crack. Our victories in World War II can be attributed to the Navajo’s brave and patriotic actions. Ultimately, the Navajo Code Talkers had an influential role in World War II when they developed a battle communication using their complex language and fought in battles around the world. Many courageous Navajo Indians, including …show more content…
In 1941 and 1942, The Marine Corps started recruiting Navajos as Code Talkers. The idea came from Philip Johnson, a World War I veteran who understand the success of the Choctaw communications. Having grown up a white boy on a Navajo reservation, he guessed that Navajos would be ideal code talkers for World War II. Extremely impressed by a demonstration, the Marine Corps recruited twenty-nine Navajos to develop a complicated code. A Code Talking School was created when the code was finished. 400 Native Americans were trained intensely in communicating and memorizing the code. Soldiers both enlisted and were drafted. “All I thought when I went in the Marine Corps was going to give me a belt of ammunition, and a rifle, a steel helmet, and a uniform. Go and shoot some of those Japanese. That’s what I thought; but later on they told us differently, you know different style, different purpose of why they got us in.”- Chester Nez, Navajo Code Talker, National Museum of the American Indian Interview, 2004. Little did the Indians know that they would have a massive impact on American