Posted on 07/20/2005 8:10:35 PM PDT by Old Landmarks
The last Comanche Code-Talker, Charles Chibitty has passed away. He died at around 4 p.m. today in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
He was 83 years of age, just shy of 84. Charlie had been ill and in the hospital for several months.
He was a friend to many of us and a good father, husband and soldier.
Hero bump!
God rest his soul. God bless Charles Chibitty, and his family.
Sending him off with such gratitude.
Rest in peace Soldier.
Salute!
Rest easy.
Rest in Peace!
Prayers Up... RIP
My dad (tank commander) was a buddy of Charlie's during the War and I grew up hearing about him. Only after the government broke the silence about the talkers decades later did my dad tell me about the secret stuff. Those guys were loyal to the end.
Thank God for this hero!
May this brave and noble warrior always soar with the eagle and watch over us from above.
The Navajo code talkers took part in every assault the U.S. Marines conducted in the Pacific from 1942 to 1945. They served in all six Marine divisions, Marine Raider battalions and Marine parachute units, transmitting messages by telephone and radio in their native language -- a code that the Japanese never broke.
Why Navajo?
The idea to use Navajo for secure communications came from Philip Johnston, the son of a missionary to the Navajos and one of the few non-Navajos who spoke their language fluently. Johnston, reared on the Navajo reservation, was a World War I veteran who knew of the military's search for a code that would withstand all attempts to decipher it. He also knew that Native American languagesnotably Choctawhad been used in World War I to encode messages.
Johnston believed Navajo answered the military requirement for an undecipherable code because Navajo is an unwritten language of extreme complexity. Its syntax and tonal qualities, not to mention dialects, make it unintelligible to anyone without extensive exposure and training. It has no alphabet or symbols, and is spoken only on the Navajo lands of the American
Being from Arizona, I had heard a lot about the Navajo code talkers and what they did during World War II, but only recently found out about the service of the Comanche code talkers . This old soldier salutes another soldier who has gone to heaven.
Star, have you run across any Code Talker sites in your research?
I know the movie you're talking about, I have it on VHS. I believe it's "Windtalkers", but I'll have to watch it tomorrow night to make sure. ;^)
RIP to a good, fine, upstanding Marine, from an Army guy...
The Code-Talkers saved many lives. There is a nice Code-Talker display in Kayenta, Arizona on the Navajo reservation. It is in a Burger King, of all places -- which is perfect because it is easy to find, and open on weekends. If you are going from Durango to Flagstaff you will go right by it. After Kayenta and Tuba City you will see the herds of sheep tended only by sheep dogs. It is a beautiful part of the country.
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