The Navajos and the secret Navajo Code on the Pacific Front.
After war broke out between the United States and Japan, Philip Johnston, who for part of his life had a close relationship with the Navajo culture, had the idea of using the Navajo language to convey military messages. On the morning of May 4, 1942, 29 Navajo recruits were sent to San Diego, California. It was the first time they had been on a bus. Many had never even left the reservation or seen the city lights. Like most Marines, the Navajo men struggled to complete the seven weeks of training. In many ways military expectations were at odds with Navajo traditions and culture. The Navajo Indians used to have long hair. As Marines they had to wear their hair in short, military-style haircuts. However, all 29 Navajo recruits graduated from boot camp and went on to the next level of training.
The Navajo recruits were sent to Camp Elliott in southern California. There, they were finally briefed on the Navajo Language-Based American Code Project. The men were taught about basic electronics and how to communicate through radio broadcasts. They learned how to use, care for, and repair the radios that they would use to send their messages. But first they had to create the unbreakable code. “The chief came and told us to use our language to come up with words that represent the letters from A to Z, and come up with a code for military terms,” explained Navajo code announcer Chester Nez. “They put us all in a room to figure it out and at first we all thought we would never make it. It seemed impossible because even among ourselves, we didn't agree on all the correct Navajo words." Despite the difficulty of this task, the men worked together and soon created the perfect code.
US Marine Corps commanders were so impressed with the code that they expanded the program. Philip Johnston was put in charge to recruit more Navajo Indians. Most came from Indian reservations. Some transferred from other branches of the military. The group quickly grew to include more than 400 men. Navajo code talkers were posted to the Pacific front during the summer of 1942, with Guadalcanal being their first assignment. Sometimes they were among the waves of troops to assault enemy positions. They often had to move quickly while carrying their bulky radios. They also had to set up their equipment while under heavy enemy fire. Navajo code couriers sent and decoded messages to US troops in many major battles in the Pacific, reporting locations, updating information, and making requests for reinforcements. The encoders could translate three lines of English in 20 seconds, instead of the 30 minutes it took to encode a message with existing machines, according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. And while those machines needed to be kept secure, a Navajo coder with a radio could go anywhere.
The island of Iwo Jima was the scene of a key battle that took place from February to March 1945. During the battle, six coders worked day and night to send more than 800 messages without a single error. The code worked exactly as Philip Johnston and the Marines had hoped. The American troops received important messages and the enemy ears could not understand anything of the radio transmission. This contribution helped United States troops capture Iwo Jima. Navajo men were "the simplest, fastest and most reliable" for sending secret messages, Marine Captain Ralph Sturkey wrote in his Battle of Iwo Jima report. The Japanese were never able to break the Navajo code. war 13 Navajos had died on the Pacific Front.
