The Navajo Code Talkers Of World War II

The Navajo Code Talkers of World War II

Communication was very important in World War II, as it is in every war. If an enemy had the knowledge of the next attack plan, it would be easy for them to counter that move and eventually win the war. Every country, during World War II worked to create an unbreakable, efficient code that would allow them to communicate freely without the understanding of the opposing side. The Germans came close with the creation of Enigma. Enigma was a machine that used a system of notched wheels to scramble messages. The machine reset every 24 hours with a new code. It seemed unbreakable to everyone trying to crack it. During World War II, the Allied Nations were struggling with cryptic communications. Axis Nations could intercept orders sent to the front and easily decipher their meanings. A big obstacle for the United States particularly was the Japanese. Many of the Japanese cryptographers were educated in the United States and were fluent in English. They also studied different Native American languages, like Choctaw, Comanche, and Cherokee.

Parents on the reservation worked to keep their culture alive by continuing to use their native Navajo language. The Navajo language was extremely hard, nearly impossible, for non-native speakers to understand or learn. Some have described listening to the Navajo language as ‘the rumble of a freight train, the gurgling of a partially blocked drain, or the flushing of an old fashioned commode’. Each word in the language can have four meanings, depending on the inflection, and the verbs are extra complex. There is no written alphabet or language. At the time of World War II, there was only a very small number of non-native people in the entire world who could speak and understand the Navajo language, and they were all American. Clearly, the Navajo language was the perfect opportunity for the US to create an unbreakable military