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
Charles Chibitty was one of 17 Oklahoma Comanches attached to the 4th Infantry Division, 4th Signal Corps, during WWII. They made the D-Day landing and served as communicators through St. Lo, Huertgen Forest, Battle of the Bulge, and Germany without a single mistake or fatality to their group.
Thanks for the ping on this one. The Commanche Code Warriors were Braves of the First Calibre.