The Navajo Code Talkers: Keeping Information From The Japanese Imperial Army

It is a widely known fact that during WWII, the Navajo's were enlisted in the military to send and receive encrypted messages between different military groups embedded in combat. These messages were secret tactical messages developed solely to keep information from the Japanese Imperial Army. There were approximately 500 Native Americans enlisted in the United States Marine Corps with the purpose of using formal or informal codes that were built upon their native languages. Although the Navajo People are recognized as being the code talkers, there were many other tribes brought into the military for the same purpose as early as WWI, mainly the Cherokee and Choctaw peoples. The military also enlisted Lakota, Meskwaki and Comanche soldiers,

Margalit Fox wrote an obituary honoring Mr. Nez when he died at the age 93. Within the article, it is discussed that “The Navajo code was formally developed and modeled on the Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet that uses agreed-upon English words to represent letters. The Navajo Code Talkers mainly Marines. As it was determined that phonetically spelling out all military terms letter by letter into words—while in combat—would be too time-consuming, some terms, concepts, tactics and instruments of modern warfare were given uniquely formal descriptive nomenclatures in Navajo (for example, the word for "shark" being used to refer to a destroyer, or "silver oak leaf" to the rank of lieutenant colonel)". The codebook was used to teach concepts and words to new recruits. The codebook was never taken into battle. All codes had to be memorized with quick responses under battle conditions during their training. Those soldiers not speaking the Navajo language would not understand the talker' message. They would hear truncated and a string of unrelated nouns and verbs. The code used by the Navajo soldiers was never deciphered by the Japanese. They are credited with the winning the Battle of Iwo Jima by Major Howard Conner of the 5th Marine Division. During the battle, Major Conner had six Navajo code talkers that worked 24 hours a day for 2 days. During that time, they deciphered and sent hundreds of messages without a